He still doesn’t look at me. And the next punches that come in a fast series of jabs, Remy once again takes. Ooof, ooff, I hear, as his breath is knocked out of him.
Fight or flight rushes all over my body, and it mercilessly eats at my blood vessels, my nerve endings, my lungs. But it’s the first time in my life fear the adrenal response is overpowering that I want to take flight like never before. Run for him, grab him to me, and take him away, away from Scorpion, from himself, away from self-destruct button the man I love has pressed.
Scorpion pounds him several straight punches in the head, and then crack!
Remington falls face down on the floor.
A trail of blood that belongs to him is scattered all over his prone body. Raw, primitive grief overwhelms me, and a black snake of fear starts gnawing painfully into the thickest arteries of my heart. Remy’s face is swollen, and he’s panting for breath and shuddering with each breath as he plants one hand on the ground, and then the other. A chill black silence surrounds the room as the counting begins, and Remy tries pushing up.
His image becomes a big blur through the tears in my eyes, and I have to swallow back the plea building in my throat where I want to beg him to, for the love of god, stop with this bullshit and just stay down now!
I broke my knee by accident, but the thought of willingly breaking yourself again and again and getting up for more makes my eyes well up in horrified despair.
But Remy pushes up and spits more blood at the ground, using his arms to get back on his feet only to catch a powerful left hook right on his temple that swings his head around.
Riley and Coach yell loudly at him. “Your f**king guard! What the f**k is wrong with you?” they’re saying, over and over, their shouts loud and painfully distressed.
People yell across the room, every one of them unwilling to give up on him as long as Remy keeps standing.
“KILL HIM, RIPTIDE!!! KILL HIM!” they scream.
And as I watch him take another hit that splatters blood across the ring floor, I want to scream back at the public to please just shut the hell up! To please, for heaven’s sake, just let him f**king stay down and stop this f**king nightmare! I can’t control the spasmodic trembling within me. People shout their chant. “REM-MING-TON! RE-MING-TON!”
But I can see Remy’s hurting. One of his arms is dangling at his side, hanging limply. He’s hurting and he’s still giving it his all, like he gives every fight, like he goes all the way in every training session. He’s going to go on until he can’t get up. When that realization finally sinks into my stunned head, I’m shattered to a million pieces. A hot tear streams down my cheek as sounds rip through the room when another series of hits lands on Remington’s flesh, the awful impacts backing him up toward the ropes.
“Remy, Remy, Remy!” people continue yelling.
When the chant takes over with equal force across the room, Scorpion’s face scrunches in rage.
Remy spits right into the place where his tattoo should be, whispering something taunting that seems to anger the other man so much, he swings his arm back with a deafening roar and lands an uppercut that knocks Remy like lead on the floor. My heart stops.
Silence falls.
I blink in mute horror at Remy’s motionless form, fallen on his side, and I take in those perfect shoulders I know by memory, his beautiful bones probably broken, his beautifully trained and beautifully made body bruised purple and bleeding on that ring floor. His eyes are frightfully closed.
And I want to die.
There are gasps of outrage when the ring doctors appear up on the ring, and people start “booing” out loud as the announcer speaks.
“Our victor of the night, Benny the Black Scooooorpion! The new Underground champion, ladies and gentlemen! Scooorpioooon!”
The words somehow make it into my brain, but I don’t even register as I sit motionless in my seat, trying very hard to keep it together as I watch the medics—the medics!—surround Remy.
I never thought anything in my life would ever hurt me as much as breaking my ankle and wobbling off the field at the Olympic tryouts with my spirit broken.
But no. Now the worst day of my entire life has been this one. When I watched the man I love break his own body to unconsciousness, and every millimeter of every quadrant of my heart is broken.
Through burning eyes, I watch the medics haul his body to a stretcher, and the reality of the situation hits me like a cannon blast. I jump to my feet and am running like crazy through a throng of people as the doctors start carrying him away. I fling myself through a pair of them and reach for one bloodied hand and squeeze two bloodied fingers. “Remy!”
Strong arms wrench me away, and a familiar voice speaks close to me. “Let them look at him, B,” Riley pleads in a craggy voice, hauling me back as I struggle to be set free.
Spinning around to hit him so that he releases me, I notice his eyes are red as he tries to keep a hold of my struggling form, and suddenly, I break. Deep compulsive sobs wrack through my body as I grab his shirt, and instead of hitting him, I just cling. I need something to hang onto, and my big, strong tree is broken on a stretcher, beaten to a pulp.
“I’m sorry,” I cry, every inch of me jerking and shaking as the tears tear out of me just like they had once before, six years ago. “Oh, god, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!”
He sniffles too, then pulls away and wipes his own cheeks. “I know, B, I don’t know what the f**k… It’s just… I don’t know what the hell went on down here. Jesus!”
Coach comes to us, his face grim, his eyes also brimming with tears and disappointment. “They suspect a concussion. His pupils don’t respond correctly.”