Real(49)

Dragging in a breath, my hand shakes as I signal at the door past his shoulders. “Go talk to them, Remy.”

I’ve noticed that his voice sometimes sounds terser when he speaks to me more than with anyone else, but this time it’s even more thick and textured than usual. “I want to talk to you first.”He stays, but neither us says anything. I’m busily trying to formulate an apology for fucking up his fight, and at the same time, am reluctant to accept the blame when I didn’t ask him to come after me!



He paces restlessly from the door, dragging all five fingers of his hand across his hair, down to his nape. He drops it with a sigh. “Brooke, I can't fight and keep an eye out for you.”

“Remy, I had it covered,” I insist.“My fucking ass, you had it covered!”

His tone makes me jerk in surprise, and I can’t help but notice the fists he’s just formed at his sides and the sudden width of his alarmingly challenging stance. The cloud of fury hovering above his head only serves to bring mine out with a vengeance, and I jump into defense mode. “Why is everyone looking at me like it’s my fault? You’re supposed to be fighting Scorpion!”



His eyebrows snap over his eyes. “And you’re supposed to be in your goddamned seat on the front fucking row to my left!”

“What difference does it make? You’ve been fighting for years without having me in the audience! What does it even matter where I’m at?” Suddenly this is so not about Nora that I don’t even know where this is coming from, but it’s ripping off my chest like an open wound. “I’m not even a fling, Remington! I’m your employee. And in less than two months, I won’t even be that, I’ll be nothing to you. Nothing.”

Suddenly he looks completely vexed and aggravated, and he clenches his hands until his knuckles go white. “Who is that girl you were chasing?” he demands, his face a mask of distress.

“My sister.” I drop my voice to a whisper, suddenly loathing my own weakness and my emotional outburst.“What’s your sister doing with Scorpion’s goonie?”

“Maybe she's wondering the same about me,” I say with a bitter laugh.



He joins in, but I have to say, his laugh is infinitely more bitter than mine. “Don't mistake me for a fuck up like him. I may be fucked up but that guy eats virgins and spits them out like snake vomit.”

Unsettled even more at that, I start pacing, remembering her face, so sad and lifeless. My stomach roils at the prospect of her being god knows what to a sick man like that. “Oh, god. She looked awful. Awful.”

There’s a silence, and then I hear the doorknob click open. Remy’s voice contains a new timbre, low and troubled, as if some powerful emotion had touched him. “You’re not nothing. To me.”The door shuts after him, and I feel an instant squeezing hurt as his words register. I’m in so much turmoil, suddenly I want to beg him to come back and hold me. No. I want to beg him to come back and make love to me.



But I don’t, and only stare at the spot he’d just occupied in the living room of this luxurious suite he rented for the two female members of his team. I’m so shaken it takes me a moment to register his words, and their meaning, and link them to the very real possibility of him going out in search of the very man he believes has my sister, instead of going out to talk with Pete and Riley.

Spurred to action by the thought, I storm out of my room and knock rapidly on his. “Where is he?” I ask the first figure at the door.

“We were about to come ask you the same question,” Riley says, grim-eyed.“Is he going to get in a fight?” I ask in alarm.

“Seriously, Brooke, we personally think you’re a great girl, but you’ve got the guy more wound up than—”

“Save it, Riley! I think he may have gone to look for Scorpion. Where can I find him?”

“Son of a bitch. We’re barely out of one and he’s heading directly for another. Goddammit!”



There’s no time to wait for them to formulate a plan. Instead, I run to the elevators and after him, realizing how stupid it was for me to bring Remy into this thing with my sister in the first place.

Scorpion and Remington obviously have been at each other’s throats for a while, and the last thing I need is to give cause for Remy to go fight him off ring. I'm going to have to find a way to rescue Nora from that awful insect myself.

Outside, the hotel is littered with an immense crowd of people, including photographers. Flashes burst all around me as I exit through the revolving glass doors.

“That’s her. Her fault he was disqualified tonight!”