Remy(54)

I turn to look at Scorpion. Holy god, I still want to kill him. He’s slumped and bruised, and bleeding, but he has a gleam of victory in his eyes.

“I can’t wait to break you up on that ring,” he tells me as I walk out.

And it doesn’t matter.

♥ ♥ ♥

“AND NOWWWW, LADIES and gentlemen, the moment we’ve all been waiting for. Our reigning champion, the defender, the one and only, Remington RIPTIDE Tate!”

I am zoned off from the crowd and even of the way my body is primed and pumped to fight. I trot out to the ring and all I can see is Brooke draped in this same fabric around her skin. It brushes against me. I feel calm. I am reminded that she’s the reason why tonight I’m going to be hitting the canvas.

I can feel her gaze on me as I hop into the ring and let Riley pull off my robe.

This is the moment I always look at her.

My stomach is burning with determination. If I look at her, she’ll be wearing that worried look on her face. She’ll weaken me. She’ll make me want to fight. Fuck.

The crowd yells my name in a chant, and I hate that she’s going to have to watch this. But she wants her sister back. I won’t let her be with Scorpion.

The announcer then calls, “And nooow, ladies and gentlemen, the nightmare you’ve all been dreading to come alive is here. Watch out for Benny the Blaaaaaack Scorpion!”

And here he comes, the motherfucker. Walking slow as poe to test my fucking patience, with both his middle fingers stretched out to me and the public.

He feels badass tonight ’cause he knows I won’t be having any game tonight.

I wait for him to get up here, reliving the way I stuck a pencil into his fucking tattoo. I think of Brooke kissing him and my blood boils again.

He hops onto the ring and his black cape is removed, and I’m glad to see the motherfucker looks like shit. He’s been stitched up where I carved the tattoo off his fucking skin, and his yellow eyes land on me, and I can see the joy he feels that he’ll get to publicly kick the crap out of me.

Ting ting.

For a blind second, instinctively, I feel my body start to bounce into place: guard up, feet apart, going toe to toe with him, but I catch myself before I swing and let him have it. He punches me in the ribs, then my jaw, double. I shake myself to recover, then go back toe to toe.

I’m so wired up, it even feels good.

Scorpion hits me right in the gut, then goes for an uppercut, and I straighten my head. I’m not going to be knocked down by those sissy swings. If I land on the canvas, I fucking land on it because I can’t stand.

I take three punches in the body again, chest, and rib cage, and my body, my muscle memory, is at war with my brain. I’m going against every single instinct inside me. But I tell myself I might not have the championship, but I will have her.

I can see myself and the way she will look at me when I bring her sister. She will have that young girl back and she will know, once and for all, that I will fucking do anything for her.

Scorpion goes for my jaw, then goes straight and knocks me to my knees. The public doesn’t like it. I stand up, a little dizzy.

“Boooo! Booo!”

“Kill the bastard, Riptide! KILL HIM!”

We keep going. Punch after punch, I concentrate on not protecting, on not punching back.

We’re going round after round, and I’m just taking it. I feel my systems shutting down somehow. My muscles throbbing, my skin bruised, my bones tender. My brain slowing, my lungs straining to oxygenate every bruised part of me. I don’t even know where it hurts, my body is producing tons of numbing shit, and I am grateful for it.

I wipe my forehead and keep breathing, my arm ends stained in blood from my eyebrows, my lips, my temple. I slam onto the ground again, and I hate that this motherfucker can’t knock me down unconscious even when I want him to. I jump back up and spit at him, angering the motherfucker so he will give it to me good.

“Remy, fight him!” I hear Brooke’s unmistakable voice, and it freezes me. “REMY, FIGHT HIM! FOR ME! FOR ME!”

I hear it. Holy god, she has never screamed for me like this. It breaks me, and for the briefest second, I want to knock Scorpion with whatever force I have left. I am the strongest, the fastest, so she knows I don’t go down. I am her mate and I want her to be proud of me. The jabs come, and all I can hear is her begging me to fight. For her. And for the first time in my life, I feel completely humiliated. Can’t she see I’m allowing this?

This one’s for you, little firecracker—ooof.

My breath goes, my body contracts to hold the pain. My thoughts scatter and my head spins.

He goes for my head now, and my brain spins in my cranium like jelly. I can hear his fist connecting with my jaw until my head swings on the last crack!