I scrape my hand down her spine, smiling. “Did you tell her you were waiting for me?”
She laughs and pokes a finger into one of my dimples. “I’ll gladly tell her that now.” She smiles and pokes both my dimples now. We keep eating, and I feel immense satisfaction that she’s never given her heart away. It is mine. She is mine.
“Do you remember anything nice about your parents?” she asks when we get back into the bedroom.
“My mother used to cross me every night.” I lock the door, and briefly I remember my mother. “She crossed me on my forehead, over my mouth, and over my heart.” I don’t mention that she also mumbled and prayed words all day that had nothing to do with the rest of the things she did to me.
“She was religious?”
It comes easily to block out the memory as I pull out my iPod and my headphones and shrug, bring my stuff to the nightstand. I won’t be sleeping for shit tonight. My head is already starting to buzz with things to do, punching bags to hit.
“Do you miss your family?” she asks softly.
I get into bed with her and I tell her the truth. “You can’t miss anything you’ve never had.” I grew up with my music, and that will always be with me. I would miss that like crazy and couldn’t live without it. Frustrated with my robe, I pull it off her and ease the satin off her shoulders. She knows I need her na**d and pulls her arms loose for me, then cuddles her small, lean body against my bare chest.
She feels so good, I feel her br**sts rising with her breaths, my nose in her neck, her scent calming my thoughts. I might be okay for a while, but I know it won’t last and I’ll be needing to do something in a moment.
I think she notices my feet are restless. Fucking feet f**king feet f**king f**k it f**k!
“If I told you something,” she whispers with a twinkle in her eye as she slides one leg between my thighs, our bodies tangled and close, “would you remember tomorrow?”
I pull the covers over us. “I hope I do.” Fuck me, I hate myself sometimes.
I’m trying to calm down the buzzing inside me when she strokes my head, and my leg stops. I bite back a growl and close my eyes and suck in her touch, then she reaches over me to the nightstand. I see she grabs my iPod and headphones.
“Put these on,” she says. She looks so excited, I grin. I f**king love my music, and a song becomes doubly important when she shares it with me. I straighten up against the headboard, drag her with me, put on my headphones, and drag her to my lap, where she crawls on and selects a song.
It starts, and I don’t think I’ve heard it, but I have tons of shit in there.
Then I start hearing a woman singing and she sounds upbeat and hopeful. The way Brooke looks at me, smiling, watching me with brilliant gold eyes, makes my gut clench, and I hear the words and what she’s telling me and my body tightens as I hear the chorus come: You’re so beautiful, but that’s not why I love you. . . .
I scan her face because a part of me just won’t take this as the truth. I look at her eyes, her nose, her cheekbones. She’s killing me, and I need to know she’s not messing with me, but she isn’t. She almost wears the expression of being the one who is softly singing it to me.
My body seizes and tightens in excitement. I feel made love to mentally, in my head.
“Play it again,” I tell her roughly. She bites her lower lip and clicks the button to replay it, and I can’t take listening to it one more time or my chest will explode into a million pieces—I will be all in fractions from now on.
I roll her over and set her on her back and place my headphones on her little head, brushing her hair behind her ears so it doesn’t get caught. Her eyes widen as the lyrics start playing to her, and I can see the way her irises flare and her lips part in surprise. Then she closes her eyes so tight, I see the crinkles at the corners, and I watch her listen.
I kiss her, slowly parting her lips with mine, so that it’s not the lyrics that tell her I love her, not a voice, not a word, but me.
PRESENT
SEATTLE
Will you still love me if I marry you in a dress Racer just baptized with a little bit of sweet baby vomit?
I stare down at Brooke’s text, and quickly type back, Yes.
I wait for her to reply, but getting nothing for a moment, I write, I f**king love you. Don’t let me stand here like some moron today.
Never! Not even if I had to walk na**d up to you.
Don’t f**king do that.
I’d kill someone for sure.
All right. Plus you know our son pukes roses so . . . it’s okay!
Right.
I chuckle as I tuck away my phone and watch the church fill up with people. Including Melanie’s new boyfriend.
“That’s him,” Pete tells Riley. “Melanie showed me a picture on her phone the other day.”
Riley is speechless for a moment. “You’re shitting me.”
“What? Nothing else to say?” Pete baits. “He’s almost as good-looking as Remington.”
“I’ll bet he’s got a choad for a dick.”
“And . . . he’s also got manners. He’s waiting for her by the door,” Pete baits.
“Well, I could do that, but we’re kind of busy up here with Rem,” Riley grumbles.
“Will you both excuse me for a second? I believe that, over there, is mine,” Pete says, pointing at Brooke’s sister.
PAST
NEW YORK
We’re at the hotel dining room, the entire team sitting down at two separate tables, one for the ladies, one for the men, when I get an e-mail from an unknown source, with the heading Thought you might like to see this.
I open the attachment, and I see Scorpion, and a woman in familiar clothes, and familiar hair . . .
Brooke.
My.
Brooke.
On tiptoes. Mouth puckered. Kissing Scorpion. My blood drains, then shoots back through me with desperate anger. I don’t know what happened. Why I’m looking at this. But I shoot to my feet and send the table crashing to the ground. Coach ends up on the floor as I throw my cell phone and it crashes into the wall. Then I start for her.
“No, Pete, no!” she bursts out, panicked from her seat.
My blood boils as she calls out to her precious Pete, my body suddenly trembling as betrayal and hurt flood me. God, I want to shake her. I want to do more than shake her. I stop before her, breathing and trying to calm myself, squeezing my fists together with the urge to pound them on something. Brooke’s eyes are bright with worry, and the truth in them makes my gut sink.
“Do you want to talk to me, Remington?” she asks me, in deceptive calm.
My god, the gall of this woman. I’m shaking so bad my arms tremble beside me. My throat feels so raw, I can barely talk. I can barely even breathe. I’ve never given myself to anyone, and yet I’ve fallen like some f**king imbecile for her. I have never shared my music with anyone. I have never, ever, believed anyone could love me until I looked into her eyes and I thought I was her god. . . .
But I’m nobody’s god.
I’m just a f**king sick fool.
The pain is excruciating. I want to do some damage, but I just don’t want to damage her. My voice is grim with rage, and it’s a miracle I can even speak as I fight to stay in place, to keep my hands down, to try to control myself. “I want to do more than talk to you,” I rigidly tell her.
My nostrils flare, and I don’t want her to look at me in fear, but all I can see is her mouth.
Her beautiful mouth.
On that motherfucker’s face!
“All right, let’s talk. Excuse me, Diane.” She surprises me by saying it almost as calmly as if I’ve just proposed a f**king picnic to her! She pushes her chair back and makes a whole circus about folding back her napkin.
The anger builds inside me and I keep seeing, in my mind’s eye, her mouth puckered and kissing the very man whose fault it is I’m no longer a boxer. I want to grab her. I want to crush her to me and shake her. I flex my hands at my sides to keep them from doing that and more, and I can’t breathe right, I can’t think right. I want to kill Scorpion and carve his motherfucking skin off!
I want to throw something. I want to yell. I want to take her clothes off and f**k her and show her She. IS. MINE! Mine to touch, to hold, to protect.
“I just went to see my sister,” she breathes.
My gut coils in rage that she would not trust me to get her sister back to her like I’d promised.
I reach out, and my hand trembles as I touch her mouth, then I duck and angrily bite it. She gasps at the feel of my teeth, and it gives me pleasure, perverse pleasure, that she is reminded that that mouth is for me.
“You go negotiate with scum like him? Without me knowing?” I scrape my thumb across. I want to drag her up to my room and wash her mouth with soap. I want to lick it clean and then make her tell me that picture does not really exist!
“I went to see my sister, Remy. I couldn’t care less about the scum,” she softly tells me.
I touch her hair, trying to be slow while my insides roil and pull and twist, and I keep rubbing her lips. These are lips I love, lips that move me, that kiss me, the only lips I have ever thought loved me. “Yet you kiss that f**king ass**le with the same mouth you kiss me?” I growl.
“Please just count to ten.” She touches my sleeve, and the anger rises in me even more. She thinks that I can count to a f**king million and forget this?