Real(65)

“He was actually under intense scrutiny all those years at the psych ward because of the eye color change,” he adds. “It’s not uncommon for BPs to have it, but it’s rare. Two conflicting gene expressions, and varying when one is triggered and the other is shut down. We have cocky, confident Remy, and black Remy. Black Remy still has a good heart, but he’s not reasonable. He’s not mean and certainly not evil. But he’s unpredictable and violent, and tends to destroy things, even himself. He flies high and then crashes low. This time you saw his low, it wasn’t nearly as bad as his other lows. Somehow Riley and I felt maybe it was because you kept him interested. He seemed to want to see you and kept coming out at least for that.”

“Pete, how can I help him?” I ask helplessly, pushing my coffee aside and giving him my full attention. “Please tell me how to help him, I get sick thinking of you using that stupid shit you shoot up his veins again.”



He sighs and tugs on his perfect black tie, loosening it a little. “I just don’t know with you, Brooke, but I know you’re a game changer. He’s never gone after someone the way he went after you, but even then, I can’t stop using it. Remy … his whole life is waiting for the other shoe to drop. You have to understand what it’s like that his normal side sometimes doesn’t remember what the black one does. There have been instances when police come knocking to his door, telling him he just broke into a liquor store and robbed it, and he’d be, “No fucking way I’ve been in bed all night,” and they go, “Sir, the liquor is still in your car.”

“Seriously?” I blink at that.

He nods somberly. “He fears he’s going to get black, then wake up blue and you will be gone. Because he did something to hurt you.”I think of how important my contract of three months working for him had seemed. And remember the night he went crazy, yelling at Pete and Riley where the fuck I was, and what had they told me about him?

Somehow the realization makes me feel warm and claimed once more.



“Everything bad happens to Remington when he’s black,” Pete adds with a clatter of his empty coffee. “He wakes up and finds he was kicked out of boxing. Last time he bet all his money and woke up to find that if he loses this season, he’ll end up with very little to stand on. Riley and I try to get him in control, but he’s a handful. He’s too strong and too damn stubborn. And now, there’s you. I don’t know if you’re good for him, or the worst kind of Achilles’ heel there is to him. But it’s not our choice, is it? Remington wants you.”

Pete’s words roll inside my head as I stare off into the peach-colored hotel wallpaper. It’s taking me time to absorb all of this information. I don’t know what it is to love someone like this. My life in Seattle awaits … Melanie … my parents. I’ve got at least one more month, and I want to spend every second I can with him. I just love him more with every bit that I learn. He’s complicated and complex, a labyrinth I want to lose myself in. He’s my fighter, and I really want to fight to be with him.But I just don’t know what I’m going to have to fight against. If it’s some fear in me … some fear in him … or that black side of him.



“I want him badly too,” I tell Pete, patting his shoulder. “So much I might shoot some shit up your veins if you keep shooting him up with that, you know?”

He laughs.And I carry my empty cup to the sink, wash it, then fiddle around with some breakfast items, and send a text to Melanie telling her:

The earth moved. Yes! It was that freakingfuckingtastic OMG!!!!!!!!!!!

And finally, just before ten a.m. and before Riley comes to molest us, I go back to bed and lock myself in with him. Setting a tall glass I brought him on the nightstand, I lean over his naked form and murmur, while my heart and my sex organs swell up with his nearness, “Get up, you sexy piece of man ass.”

Then I grab Remy’s sexy ass and squeeze those rocks and clench my teeth because I want to bite them, he’s so frickin’ juicy and hot.



“I’m not Diane, but this used to be the breakfast of champions before the champion tore her ACL and shot her knee to hell. Now you get her services in bed, consisting of all sugary treats for this—” I squeeze his biceps, “—and this—” I slide my hand over his abs, “—and this.” I tap his lovely head and his mesmerizing maze of a brain.

Suddenly I realize if it weren’t for that double accident, I wouldn’t be here. With this man. And it’s the first time I realize I might not only be glad, but grateful, that the universe redirected me in my path.His sexy voice is muffled by the pillow. “Why are you bringing me breakfast in bed?”