Mine (Real Book 2)

We’re in Sin City now, and his eyes are back to his usual electric, piercing blue.

He woke up fully blue after he found out we’re expecting. We. Are. Expecting. We didn’t sleep that night. Remy was hard, and having his way with me, all night. He fucked me, sucked me, made me suck him, fondled me with his fingers, put his hand over mine so that I fondled him while he fingered me.

The next day, we were both well-fucked and sleepless when we ended up with the doctor who removed my contraceptive capsule. The kind man reminded me that after five years, any “arm thingy” needs to be changed. Mine was going on five and a half years, embarrassingly, and I admit I felt completely stupid for having completely forgotten to count, especially when I’d assured Remy I was on birth control.

But then I catch a glimpse of his twinkling, and smug, blue eyes as they silently tease me that I did it on purpose.

“Well, you could’ve used a condom,” I whispered with a scowl.

“With you?” he scoffed. Then he poked my ribs. “You’re mine.”

“Your birth control hasn’t been working for some time now, and it takes time for the body to increase its own hormonal production, although you seem to be doing just fine,” the doctor had said, and then he told us my due date. Which was thankfully almost two months after the season was to end.

I swear Remy looked so adorable at the doctor’s office, strong and athletic in his sports attire, sitting in a chair by mine, listening attentively to what the doctor said. A lot of the terms could have been Chinese to both of us. But he looked curious and concerned about me being able to run. And about how much should I eat? How many grams of protein? How many carbs? The doctor seemed confused at his need for specific gram counts, and I wanted to kiss my guy just for going to the appointment with me.

Lie. I didn’t want to just kiss him. I wanted to press my breasts against his chest until my nipples stopped aching and I wanted to blend my mouth to his, impale me down on his cock, and ride him to Australia and back.

If Remy is crazy aroused with my pregnancy, I won’t even begin to describe what the combination of his carnal blue eyes and my rioting hormones do to me. Now he’s determined that I go sniff food that doesn’t make me vomit so I can start eating for two. I’m worried that he’ll fatten me up to elephant size, so if he wants me eating, I’d rather eat fresh and filling foods than empty junk. And here we are, Diane and I, wandering through the Whole Foods on Las Vegas Boulevard.

Outside the store, there are billboards of gaming, women, and booze. This is Las Vegas, baby! But none of us are doing anything that needs to “stay here” at all. Remington is kicking ass at the gym, and Coach has actually upped his training hours.

He’s packing on more muscle and getting more ripped, and the entire team agrees that Scorpion deserves nothing but Riptide’s finest at this season’s final. So my beast has been training nine hours while I indulge in a bit of extra sleep in the mornings and then join him at the gym before he’s done. He’s eating protein like mad, and Coach has put him on L-glutamine shakes to preserve muscle mass, so now I’m also helping Diane choose the best foods for his body and mind.

Pete says if Scorpion wants to fuck with his mind again, we must make sure Remy sleeps right, exercises right, and eats right—so that he’s as stable as possible. Most especially he needs lots of omega-3 fats.

Today, we get so many fresh goods for my T. rex, that Diane and I need two carts. We stay all along the edges of the store buying fruits, vegetables, the best cheeses, dark chocolate, sprouted grains, and nuts. Then we head to the protein part and order fresh Alaskan king salmon, king among fish and as toxin free as fish hopefully get.

While we wait for several pounds of fish to be packaged, I inspect one of the lovely heads of broccoli we’ve got in one of our carts. I used to call them “little trees” and Melanie called them “green things,” which was what she called anything green—the only reason she ate veggies was because of the color. Mel loves color.

“My grandmother taught me all I know about food. She cured my grandfather’s depression with diet,” Diane tells me.

We order some wild-caught shrimp as well, and anything else that is wild caught and fresh, and the counter guy packs it all up.

“I had depression once,” I suddenly tell her, my eye on one dead fish eye. “It’s not a fun thing to have.”

“You? Brooke, I could never tell looking at you. Did something happen to bring it on?”

“I guess my life changed before I was ready for it to.”

I shrug and smile sadly at her. “I couldn’t believe the things that went through my head in those days,” I admit. “It all seemed so pointless. So dreary. It’s hard to think anyone can get out of that alone.”

“How did you?” she presses.

“I don’t know, I think a small part of me realized I was not my brain. It’s just another organ, like our kidneys or our livers.”

She’s perfectly sober, nodding in understanding, so I add, even though it sounds crazy, “My brain wanted me to die, but in some surreal way, I could feel my soul fighting it.”

Sometimes I can’t stop thinking and comparing: While I was depressed once in my life, for about two months, Remington goes through it continually, cycling again and again, rising and falling. Anyone who goes through this is a warrior. So are their loved ones, who fight with them. I swear, Remington’s soul is so strong . . . I know that when he sinks into the dark vortex, it’s his soul that conquers it. All that simmering energy inside him is too powerful not to rise back up. Like a . . . riptide.

“How did that feel?” Diane whispers as the man finally packs us several bags of ice.

“You know how you get any visual or audible stimulus, or when you touch something, your brain dictates a response to this sensual stimuli,” I tell her. “I see you, and my brain immediately sends out a response at the sight of you, which in me is comfort and happiness. But in my depression, I saw things, normal things, and the responses my brain would fling out would not match. It was crazy.”

“It sounds crazy!” she agrees.

I smile and we take the ice the man offers, say thank you, and push our carts down the lane to the deli meat and cheeses. I add, “The way I see it is as if our brains were the doctors, and the adrenals are the pharmacies that fill up the prescriptions. You could see a commercial with laughing children, and an unbalanced mind will quickly prescribe anxiety and tears over laughing children. Even if it logically makes no sense—it doesn’t matter. That’s the prescription your body was given.”

“I’m really sorry, Brooke. I’d never really thought about what all that must be like.”

We add some organic goat cheese to our carts, some coconut milk, almond milk, and whole milk. “They put me on pills, but it worsened pretty bad. The only thing that got me out of it was my family and Melanie, exercise and sun.”

“I know our guy gets it several times a year,” Diane whispers as she inspects the label on a container of organic Greek yogurt. “I knew there was something about him; I just hadn’t known the diagnosis until the guys told me the last time he was hospitalized.”

Suddenly I’m transported, once again, to the hospital, to Remington trying to tell me something, and me running away . . . and then him, trying to cope, with a thousand women in his bed.

I swear I ache deep, so deep, right where my soul is.

Before I know it, I’ve wrapped my hand around my abdomen, as though I can feel him there. In me. In our baby.

“He’s an amazing fighter,” Diane tells me admiringly, her eyes glowing with praise. “All the effort he puts into being well. You’ve got to have noticed Remington never eats something that isn’t completely right for his body. Not ever.”

My stomach rumbles as I remember his healthy mountainous breakfast and compare it to the mineral water and crackers I had. But I can’t seem to get anything into my stomach in the morning, not even my mouth-watering seedless organic dates. But of course I’ve noticed how well Remy eats. He eats the cleanest foods, and keeps his body in the most natural state possible. I love this. I love how he is, and how he treats his body kindly with food after demanding the most from it for hours and hours of each day.

And then I look at Diane, and I really see her, see how well she gets him, this woman almost in her forties, with her big smile and kind eyes, and all the aura of comfort she emanates, and all the warmth she instills into every one of our hotel suites, and I know how well she takes care of him, how she could very well be the closest thing to a mother Remington has ever had. Impulsively, I let go of my cart and hug her, whispering, “Thank you. For taking care of him, Diane.”

“Oh, bah! How can I not, when he takes care of me so well? If you think I take good care of him, I can’t say enough about all the things he’s done for us, anytime he hears we need anything. He even went to my mother’s funeral.”

She pauses at my look of surprise, and as we start down to the cashier and start unloading, she adds, “He doesn’t even have a mother, not a real one, but he knew I cared about mine, and he flew across three states to the funeral for me. He didn’t say a word—he just hugged me in the end—but just him being there . . .”

Her voice cracks unexpectedly, and I understand so much how Remy’s quiet show of affection gets to her that my throat feels tight too.

“We’re so excited about the baby,” she blurts out, changing the subject. “All of us. Pete. Riley. Coach. We’re so excited about this little baby. We think it’s the universe giving back something good and pure to Remy, we really do.”

She comes around my cart as if she wants to make contact with the baby somehow, and then she hesitates before touching me. I reach for her hand and slowly spread it on my flat stomach. I whisper to her, “I never knew how much I wanted this baby until I knew he was coming.”

Her brows quirk up in complete intrigue. “He?”

I just have this feeling in my gut. I don’t know if it’s that sixth sense females are supposed to have. If it’s the way I instinctively envision a little Remy in my head when I think about this baby. I don’t know why, or how I think I know, but it feels so certain to me, as certain as I am right now of his father’s love, that I nod excitedly. “He.”

♥  ♥  ♥

VEGAS IS COMPLETELY sucked in by Riptide.

Young college students cram the arena, and the girls? The girls are the noisiest, jumpiest group of young women I’ve ever encountered. They’re crushing on him so bad that all my jealousy, which I’ve come to realize is magnified to the tenth power by my pregnancy hormones, has been fully unleashed inside me. Girls scream, and I even hear them talk about him close behind, talking about how big his hands are and what that means.

Pete also seems to hear that, and he chuckles at my side and shakes his curly head.

Across the ring and to the left, a group of friends wear red shirts with each of his letters stamped on one, and they’re all practicing standing up at the same time, so that everyone can see they spell R I P T I D E!

There’s even an exclamation mark for the poor friend who didn’t get a letter.

By the time his fight approaches, I’ve already observed each and every one of these ladies with my jaw clamped, and then, suddenly, I love them because they love him too and he deserves the adoration.

What do I want? For them to cheer for an asshole like Scorpion? Hell no! So there. I think I’ve conquered my jealousy nicely for the evening.

In fact, I conquer it so nicely that I’m feeling as jumpy as the fans when they announce him. “Riiiiiptiiiiiiiide!!” the announcer yells, with all the enthusiasm I swear every announcer I’ve heard reserves for him. “The one and only, people!! The ONE and ONLY!”

He appears like a beautiful red bolt of lightning and then hops up into the ring. The man is strong as an ox but aerodynamic as hell, and as he jerks off his robe and I see it flutter in the air as he passes it to Riley, I can almost feel it on my skin. The satin on me, how I love the way it hugs me, and the way it smells of him.

“And now, Joey ‘the Spider’ MANN! Who has terrified his opponents tonight!”

Before the Spider-Mann can take the ring, Remington looks at me, his blue eyes burning hot. Desire swells between my legs. Last night flashes through my head. I know what he’s thinking of—I can feel it inside me. I don’t know what connects me to him, but something does, and as the testosterone spins through his body I can tell that he’s primed to fight and thinking of me watching him. And it turns him on. And he’s going to fight, like he does, and then fuck me right after. Like he likes to. Oh god, I can’t even wait. I can blame my pregnancy all I want, but the one who is truly to blame for setting me on fire with the merest look is him.

“That motherfucker gets high on you,” Pete says.

“He’s got this,” I answer. Remy tells me that a fight is half head, half body, and maybe he’s right, but when you see Remington fight, I’d bet all of myself on the fact that he fights with his whole heart. My heart whomps harder just now because of him as I watch him tap gloves with his opponent as they both get ready.

The fighting bell sounds with that familiar ting and the public goes quiet. It doesn’t really matter how many times I’ve seen him fight, I’m always mesmerized by the way he moves. They both go to center, warming up. I know Remington’s strategy is different with every opponent. He plays with some. He goes straight to the punch with others. Sometimes he tires them out and saves his swings for the heavy-handed opponents, but today he starts hitting fast, so fast, I hear the popping sounds go poo poo poof ! sending Spider-Mann—the man who’d been terrifying his opponents tonight—stumbling back within the first minute.

“We love you, Riptide!!” the R-I-P-T-I-D-E! girls scream. “Knock him out for us!”

“Although every time you’re here, he fights like a lunatic,” Pete adds.

“Lunatic” is not even the word. He’s a machine.

The fight is in full swing and my tummy’s twisting motions hardly let me pull in a good breath. His muscles ripple as he hooks with his left, then covers. Spider-Mann misses, and Remy counterattacks. He jabs several times with both right and left, then finishes off with a straight punch that slams into Spider-Mann like a fast-moving wall.

Spider-Mann rocks.

Remington bounces back and lets him breathe.

The other man charges.

Remington feints and his hapless opponent swings and swings, missing every time as Remy ducks and comes back up to punch him in the gut, the ribs, then the jaw. By the time he uses his most powerful punch and hooks with his right, Spider-Mann is sweaty, bloody, and dead tired. He stumbles.

I watch Remy wait for him to get back up, and I’m sure that all the females in the stadium are screaming and ogling the same thing I am. How drops of sweat slide down Remington’s muscled torso. How the vine tattoos on his arms glisten with a thin sheen of perspiration, and they look as inky black as his hair. How those sexy dimples flash as he smiles to himself every time he rocks his victim’s center.

The R-I-P-T-I-D-E! girls talk to each other in between their screaming, like Mel and I do when we see him fight. Two of them, the P and the T, are jumping together, hugging each other because I’ll bet the lust is just too much.

Oh, god, it’s even too much for me. And supposedly, he’s mine. But I just can’t believe it. I see him, I touch him, I kiss him, I love him, and ninety-nine point nine percent of me can’t believe someone as elusive, complex, and male as him could belong to anyone—even if he loves me.

One right hook and a noisy splat on the canvas later, Remington’s arm is being held up in the air by the ringmaster. Chest heaving, hungry blue eyes see me, eyes that singe me down to my very bones. He doesn’t smile. His nostrils flare. My heart pounds and my entire body prepares for what I see coming in his eyes.

“Do you all want more?” I hear yelled through the speakers. “Are you ready for MORE?”

The public screams, the R-I-P-T-I-D-E! girls scream, and Remington keeps looking at me as he catches his breath, his eyes brilliant blue and stripping me in my seat, and I’d bet everything that I own on the fact that he’s fucking me in his head. My sensitized breasts grow even heavier, and when he takes on his next opponent, my sex floods and grips as I see his muscles flex, the way he strategizes with that brain of his.

I’m dying to have him all to myself tonight, his tongue in my mouth, doing the things it does, him inside me, riding me hard and fast or slow and deep. . . . I just want to cuddle with my lion and give him all the love nobody in the world ever has given him but me.

The crowd shrieks, “Gooooo, Riptide!!!!!”

They want the excitement he always delivers, and I’m certain Remington wants to deliver. He glances at me, and I don’t know what he’s expecting to see in my gaze, but whatever it is, he seems to get it. He glances at his next opponent, a young fighter whom I’ve never seen before, and before I know it, with the speed of light, he delivers three fast blows, to the side, the center, and finishes with a hook up his jaw—and he falls splat.

“YES!” Pete hisses, pumping his arm into the air. “YESYES YESSSSS!”

The entire room is screaming, “Riptide!!!” while I sit motionless in my chair.

The pain starts like a throb, and it progresses into a cramp. I put my arms around my stomach and shift uncomfortably.

“Riiiiptiiiiiiiiiiiiiiide, folks! Once again, I give you, Riiiiiptide!!!!!!”

His arm is yanked up in victory, and I notice the open gash in the center of his plump bottom lip. He flashes his dimples at me, his eyes twinkling, and I’m dying to lick up that drop of blood and put salve on it. Then the cramp feels like a pinch and I fold over a little, and when they bring out his next opponent, I’m not even watching. I feel more than a little sick.

My lungs constrict as I glance up and see every possible muscle in existence working as he fights, his arms corded and flexing. I see him, but I keep retreating into my head. Worried sick. Wondering what’s happening to me.

“Pete, I need to go to the bathroom right now,” I say in a voice I’ve never heard before. It sounds scared, truly scared, and it trembles. But he stands with his eyes on the ring and distractedly follows me to the filthy makeshift bathrooms.

There, I wait in line, standing there for a couple of minutes, and when it’s my turn to go into the little plastic house, I pull down my panties—which feel gooey—and I see they’re soaked in red, as if I’m having a bad period. “Oh, god,” I say.

I drag in a thousand calming breaths, but they do nothing to actually calm me, and instead a nauseating, sinking feeling of despair takes over. For minutes, I try to settle down, then I come out and at least try to appear put together until after the fight. Pete grins at me. “Dude, I’ve never seen someone puke as much as you do. How many pounds have you lost?”

“Let’s just go sit,” I say. I walk slowly and slightly hunched over, because standing hurts even worse, and instinctively my body seems to want me to curl into myself. I lower myself to my seat with extreme caution, while Remington is still up there, his name being screamed. “Remy!!” they call.

He seems to be waiting for another opponent, his head turned in Pete’s and my direction as if he’d been waiting for us to return to our seats. He winks when he sees me. Then his sleek eyebrows pull low over his eyes and he looks at me more closely.

Suddenly he grabs the ring ropes and jumps down, and the public comes alive when they realize he is up to his usual mischief, like he always is when he climbs out of the ring. “Rem-ing-ton! Rem-ing-ton! Rem-ing-ton!” the crowd chants, and when they realize he’s headed toward me—and that all that tower of brawn and strength and testosterone is coming my way—they change their tune to “Kiss, kiss, kiss!”

He swings me up in his arms.

The public goes crazy and my heart does too.

But he looks down at me, alert and on edge. “What’s the matter?”

“I’m bleeding,” I say tearfully.

♥  ♥  ♥

THE NEXT HALF hour goes by in a blur.

“Get the car,” Remington instructs Pete as he carries me out of the arena.

The word “Riptide!” still rings in the background when we go outside, into the fresh Vegas air, and to the parking lot of the warehouse hosting the Underground tonight. He tucks me into the back of the Escalade, and Pete gets behind the wheel, punching at the GPS buttons to pull up the nearest hospital. I hear myself speak almost frantically, “I’m not losing it. I won’t lose your baby.”

Remington doesn’t hear me. He’s talking to Pete in a hushed voice as he holds me to his chest, telling him to “turn right—into the emergency” and I continue talking, in my most determined voice. “I won’t lose it. You want this baby, I want this baby, I eat right, I exercise, you eat right, you exercise.”

He carries me into the hospital and stalks over to the counter to demand attention, and when they bring a wheelchair, he speaks to the nurse behind it, “Tell me where to take her.”

I can hear his heart beating under my ear, and I’ve never heard it pump so furiously before. Poom poom poom.

He carries me into a room, sets me down on the bed, and holds my hand a little too tightly while two nurses and one doctor check me and Pete waits outside the room. Thank god because my legs are spread and I’m terribly uncomfortable having Remy see me like this. But he’s looking at our hands, intertwined, as if he’s very uncomfortable by this too, until the doctor eases back and slips off his gloves, and tells him, “Your wife is in the early stages of a miscarriage.”

While my brain tries to make sense of what I’m hearing, I roll to my side, curl my hand around my stomach in the fetal position, and shake my head, saying nothing, just shaking my head because . . . no.

Just . . . no.

I’m a healthy young woman. Healthy young women don’t just lose babies.

The doctor ushers Remington aside and speaks to him in low tones, and I lift my head to look at his face. It is the face of my dreams, and I swear I will never forget his fierce expression as he tells the doctor, in a hushed voice, “It’s impossible.”

The doctor continues speaking, and Remington shakes his head, his jaw tight. He looks suddenly younger and more vulnerable than I’ve ever seen him. God, he looks as disheartened as I imagine he looked the day they told him he’d been kicked out of pro boxing and he would never box professionally again.

He drags a hand down his face and drops it to his side, and the train of panic running inside my head is gaining such speed, I stretch my arm out of the bed and hear myself speak in a voice choking with fear. “What’s he saying? What is he saying?”

Remington leaves the doctor in midsentence and comes over to my side, instantly taking both my hands in his big, callused ones. I can’t even put into words how I feel at the contact, but a rush of calming chemicals run through me and my eyes drift shut as I desperately savor the feel of my small hand inside his bigger one. There’s no cramping. Nothing. Not even fear. Just Remington’s dry hands on mine, and his steady strength, seeping into me. He bends down and starts kissing my knuckles, and I sigh softly, angling my head to his with a drunken smile.

I don’t find out why he doesn’t smile back at me. Or why he looks so completely run-down. Until he takes me back to the hotel and calls two more doctors.