Real(89)

I reach over him to the nightstand and grab headphones and his iPod, praying that I will find the song in there. I am crazy about this song and I have never, ever, identified with it until this second when I want to shout each of these lyrics to Remington Tate right now.



“Put these on,” I say excitedly. He grins because I know he loves it when I play him music. He straightens up against the headboard and puts on his headphones and then drags me toward his lap, and I crawl there.

I find it. It is the perfect song to tell him I am crazy about every special part of him.So I select Avril Lavigne’s “I Love You” and play it.

I hear the music start, and excitement courses through my veins as he raises the volume and I can hear the lyrics start speaking to him even from where I sit on his lap.



I know he might not remember this tomorrow. I know his eyes are black, and that playing him a song won’t count as having said the words, but we’ve spent so many nights together. We train with each other, bathe together, run together, eat and feed each other, caress and talk, and I don’t think Remington has ever opened up to anyone like he has to me. I’ve had my walls up all my life, and I’ve never let anyone inside until I suddenly realized he was…in.

I breathe him and live him every day, even dream about him while lying next to him in bed.

Even if this man doesn’t recognize the emotions in his raw and untamed heart, I at least hope he will know by my song that he’s become my…everything.

Excited beyond words, I hear the song continue playing and watch his face, gnawing my lip as I study his expression. Every lyric is so perfect, the entire song is meant from me to him, including the chorus which I swear I can hear right now;





You're so beautiful

But that's not why I love you

I'm not sure you know

That the reason I love you is you

Being you

Just you

Yeah the reason I love you is all that we've been through

And that's why I love you





He listens while assessing my face, his expression intent as he scans my features. My full lips. My amber eyes. My high cheekbones.

“Play it again.” His voice sounds so asperous, I almost had to read his lips to understand what he said.

I click the button to replay, but instead of listening to the song again like I expected him to, he rolls me over and lies me on my back, then sets the headphones on my head and adjusts them to my smaller frame as the song starts.And in the next second, I’m listening to the “I Love You” song that I just played for him.

And which Remington Tate now plays for me.

I close my eyes, my heart shuddering in my chest, what I feel for him swelling inside me until I feel full and helplessly consumed on the inside. I feel his lips on mine, the song playing in my ears as he starts kissing me in a way that is not sexual, but infinitely tender.



This is the way Remy opens up to me, and I’m tingling from the top of my head to the soles of my feet as I soak up every single thing he’s trying to tell me, with this song, with his lips, with his whisper touch, even knowing he might not remember any of this, it doesn’t make it any less real to me.”





Pictures of you





My afternoon was going perfectly well.Remington has a day off from training and is now completely carb loading and piling up his muscles with energy—and his plate too. He refused to eat Diane’s meals and brought us all down to the hotel restaurant buffet instead. The men are eating separately, discussing “fight” stuff, and I’m having a lovely time with Diane trying to determine the ingredients of what we’re eating. A taste of … orange? Hint of cardamom?

And then my phone bleeps. I’m thrilled to see it’s a message from Mel.

Melanie: I hate to give that ahole Riley any credit, but he was right. There’s a picture on the internet of you kissing that embodiment of Gross that night!! And it’s going viral!

My world stops.



I’m flashed back to that night, where I’m up on tiptoes kissing the embodiment of Gross, and suddenly it makes perfect sense that someone—his goonies?—would capture it on camera. Of course.

If someone spent four minutes taping me at my Olympic trials, in the most humiliating moment of my life, there would also be someone ready to tape me at the second most humiliating moment of my life. Of course they captured it on camera. Maybe not the first time I failed to hit the spot. But how about the second time I had to hold it for five seconds?My bottom drops, and I feel like I’m drowning before the storm even comes, just at the mere sight of the cloud incoming.

With frozen lungs, I lower my phone back into my purse, somehow feeling as though everything I do seems to be in slow motion. I glance at the table where the men discuss their strategy for tomorrow night, and I notice Remy is easily listening to them. One second he’s normal, relaxed and lounging back, with his legs splayed open on a pink dining chair of the hotel restaurant, and the next I see him looking intently at his phone as it vibrates.