Sweat drips down my chest, my body hot with exertion. My arm raised in victory, I glance at her to see if she’s watching. She is.
My lips curl into a smile as I point a finger at her, and I watch as a line of people start heading in her direction. Holding her gaze with an even wider smile, I point at a girl coming toward her with my red rose. Brooke’s gold eyes widen in disbelief, and my chest swells with happiness as she’s soon crowded by my fans, handing her roses.
She looks stunned, grasping each rose with an expression of consternation.
On our way back to the house, she’s trembling in her seat. I’m wound up too. There’s no way in hell she’ll be able to deny my kisses tonight.
“You were awesome, Rem!” Pete bursts out inside the car. “Man, what a great night.”
“Great fight, son,” Coach adds, his voice deep with pride. “Never broke form. Never dropped guard. Even Brooke felt the love tonight, huh, Brooke?”
Silence.
Brooke is completely silent, not looking at me, her lap filled with roses. My roses. And yet she won’t look at me.
“You totally killed it,” Riley continues.
I’ve stopped listening to the guys. The only thing I hear now is the silence coming from where Brooke sits, tense across the seat from me, with an armful of roses and completely fucking ignoring me. Frustration eats at me. Don’t all women like roses? She’s clenching her jaw and won’t even look at me, and I’m so fucking confused I want to pull my hair out.
My blood boils in my veins as I stalk into my room and step into the shower, open the cold water, and stand there, closing my eyes and reliving the way she stood there, watching the roses come at her. She’d looked surprised. But had she looked excited? Had she looked happy? This just isn’t playing out the way I’d planned. I’d planned to have her in my fucking bed tonight. Where I wanted to watch her look at me the way she does while I rammed into her panties and made her come a couple of times and gasp, Remington . . .
I’m still simmering in frustration and have just stepped out of the shower and grabbed a towel when I hear the door of my bedroom slam shut.
Suddenly my senses heighten. Every pore in my body buzzes with the knowledge she’s near.
And there she is. Brooke fucking Dumas.
I drop the towel.
She’s standing inside my bedroom and looking straight at me—even after the cold shower, my cock jumps to attention.
Her gaze drops, and her face flushes red as she stomps forward with gold eyes that flash with anger and hurt. She strikes my chest repeatedly, and the pain in her voice reaches into even deeper, more vulnerable places inside me.
“Why haven’t you touched me? Why don’t you fucking take me? Am I too fat? Too plain? Do you just delight in fucking torturing me senseless or are you just plain damn mean? For your information, I’ve wanted to have sex with you since the day I went into your stupid hotel room and got hired instead!”
I react instinctively and yank her up against me while pinning her arms down. “Why’d you want to have sex with me?” I angrily demand. “To have a fucking adventure? What was I supposed to be? Your one-night fucking stand? I’m every woman’s adventure, damn you, and I don’t want to be yours. I want to be your fucking real. You get that? If I fuck you, I want you to belong to me. To be mine. I want you to give yourself to me—not fucking Riptide!”
“I won’t ever be yours if you don’t take me,” she shoots back at me. “Take me! You son of a bitch, can’t you see how much I want you?”
“You don’t know me. You don’t know the first thing about me.”
“Then tell me! You think I’ll leave if you tell me whatever it is you don’t want me to know?”
“I don’t think it, I know it.” I grab her face, my insides roiling painfully as I look into her hungry, frustrated gold eyes. “You’ll leave me the second it gets too steep, and you’ll leave me with nothing—when I want you like I’ve never wanted anything in my life. You’re all I think about, dream about. I get high and low and it’s all about you now, it’s not even about me anymore. I can’t sleep, can’t think, can’t concentrate worth shit anymore, and it’s all because I want to be the fucking ‘one’ for you, and as soon as you realize what I am, all I’ll be is a fucking mistake!”
“How can you be a mistake? Have you seen you? Have you seen what you do to me? You had me at hello, you fucking asshole! You make me want you until it hurts and then you won’t do shit!”
“Because I’m fucking bipolar! Manic. Violent. Depressive. I’m a fucking, ticking time bomb, and if one of my staff messes up when I get another episode, the next person I hurt can be you. I was trying to break this to you as slowly as possible so I could at least stand a chance with you. This shit has taken everything from me. Everything. My career. My family. My fucking friends. If it takes this chance with you, I don’t fucking even know what I’m going to do, but the depression will hit me so deep, I’ll probably end up killing myself!”