I go back to the suite and slam the door—
And like a vision, I see her, sitting in the living room with Pete and Riley.
She leaps to her feet and an awareness of every stitch of clothing she wears and every detail of her seizes me. I feel the calm I feel for a fraction of a second before a fight, and then the fight is inside me. A thousand emotions racing one after the other. The air buzzes with tension. I can feel arcs of lust leap between us, pulling at my gut. My chest heaves, and I am stunned, and still angry, and then I’m just desperate to bury all of this turmoil I feel inside her and remind her that she’s fucking mine.
“I’d like to talk to you, Remington, if you have a moment,” she thickly whispers.
“Yes, Brooke, I want to talk to you too.”
I start walking and let her follow, hating how her voice gets me. The scent of her reaches me, and as I lead her into the master and close the door, my instincts betray me, and I curl a hot hand around her neck and bend to drag a deep inhale of her into my lungs.
She grabs my T-shirt in her fists and buries her face in me. “Don’t let me go please,” she begs. Renewed anger makes me wrench free, and I hate my weakness.
“If you want me so much, then why’d you leave?” I demand. She sits at the foot of the bed, on a bench, and I am so vividly pained I cross my arms, blocking myself. “Did I say anything when I was manic?”
She looks at me with emotion and her voice carries it. “You wanted to take me to Paris.”
“That’s a bad thing?”
“And make love to me in an elevator.”
“Did I?”
“And to have me in my pink pants,” she admits, and blushes all the way up her throat to her cheeks.
I keep waiting for her to tell me the rest, and when she doesn’t, I remind her. Because it’s something I have played in my head this past month—every part of that moment.
“You forgot the part where we played each other a song,” I murmur, and I can’t keep looking at her when every ounce in me demands I make a connection.
I take her hand and hear her breath catch softly as I lift her fingers to my lips. My pulse starts getting faster as I turn her hand, spot the flatness of her palm, and drag my tongue over it.
“That picture made me very angry, Brooke,” I tell her into her skin as I drag my tongue all over, tasting her. “When you belong to someone . . . you don’t kiss anyone else. You don’t kiss his enemy. You don’t lie to him. Betray him.”
I add my teeth, and it affects her, and her voice trembles through her lips. “I’m sorry. I wanted to protect you, like you protect me. I won’t ever go behind your back again, Remy. I didn’t leave because you were manic, I just didn’t want you to get manic or low because of me.”
I nod in agreement, my eyes running over her in confusion. “There’s something I might have missed then. Because I still can’t understand why, the fuck, you would leave me when I fucking needed you!”
Her eyes glisten. “Remy, I’m sorry!” she cries.
I groan in pain and go get the letter from the pocket of my jeans on the chair. I have read it until my eyes can barely stay open. I have held it at night, in my fist, when I was black and depressed and kept telling myself that I was worth something to her. “Did you mean what you wrote to me?” I demand.
“Which part?”
I yank the letter open and point at the words I have clung to, like a sick man, words nobody has ever said to me before. Words I want to hear from her, feel from her:
I love you, Remy.
I want so much to hear it, it infuriates me, makes me crumple the paper again and look at her, burning with need, anger, and despair. Did she mean it? She stares at me and suddenly she begins to nod, and my body tightens with want to hear it. My senses scream. My heart hurts.
“Say it,” I whisper.
“Why?”
“I need to hear it.”
“Why do you need to hear it?”
“Is that the reason you left after the fight?”
Her eyes well with tears, and they tear at me, but I can’t stop pushing, I need to know with every part of me, I’m so fucking hurt.
“Is it, Brooke? Why you left? Or because you’re ready to quit on me? I thought you had more mettle, Little Firecracker, I really did.”
I scan her features, one by one, and suddenly feel her little finger connecting with a scar on my eyebrow, arrowing pure heat and emotion to my core.
She bursts out saying, “I love you. I love you.” My breath seizes as she painfully rushes the words out. “More than I’ve ever thought it possible to love any other human being. I left because you broke my heart, again and again that night, with every one of your bones. I left because I couldn’t take it anymore!”