I can’t sleep that night. I do sit-ups, push-ups, jump rope. I want her to marry a fucking champion, so I’ve decided I’ll be training like one. Hours later, I stop working out, sit up on the carpet, prop my arms over my knees and hang my head between them as I think of the smile I’m carrying around, branded in my head.
I take a shower and play on my iPad, beating the hell out of some guy at chess at five a.m., trying not to think how much I’m craving her. The smell of her, the feel of her, the look of her. I move my pawns and in my head I’m thrusting her and making her moan. In the morning, I’m calling the florist closest to her apartment, but it’s too early and they haven’t opened.
During breakfast, Pete and Riley study my face. “Who are you calling and calling? Let Brooke rest,” Riley says.
I sigh and put the phone down.
“Hey, look at me for a sec, Rem,” Pete says, alarm in his voice.
I lift my head, and I meet his gaze so he knows I’m not fucking black. This time my sadness doesn’t come from a chemical imbalance in my body. My sadness comes from my heart.
“Remy, here we go,” Diane says as she comes up with my breakfast, and she’s smart, that one is. She seems to sense I’m not hungry and will give her shit about the food, and she’s blended all kinds of things with egg whites in three huge glasses. I down them one by one. “Why do you keep redialing?” Pete asks, watching me. “I can do it for you, what do you need?”
“I don’t want Brooke to miss me.”
“All right, so what’s the plan?”
I drag my hands down my face and growl, “I feel like I’m breathing under fucking water without her.”
“Dude, she’s a fighter, like you. They’ll be all right. Both of them,” he stresses.
He heads over to grab my iPad to check the store number. He pats my back before he calls the florist.
“I want hundreds of roses, Pete!” I yell as he walks around the living room, talking into the receiver. “I want them all over her apartment,” I continue instructing. “All of them red. And I want every dozen to have a song so she’ll think of me. I need her to think of me.”
She does, think of me.
She calls and texts me, and I call and text her.
Every day I hear a report on what she did, how she is. The guys tell me it will get easier, but it doesn’t. It gets worse.
It doesn’t get any better until that fantastic day I finally get to go pick her up and bring her back on the circuit with me.
♥ ♥ ♥
THE FINAL, FINALLY. My little firecracker and I made an agreement when she came back, and she better fucking stick with it. The thing is, Scorpion has blackmailed her sister back to his side too. Motherfucker.
Pete and I have planted a snitch, and we now know Scorpion had something on her, which must’ve been why she went back to that asshole. But I’m not letting Brooke step in this time. Tonight I take care of it all.
This season hasn’t been easy, but then nothing worthwhile ever is.
We’re headed down the hotel elevator, on our way to the Underground, and I’ve barely been able to shake myself out of the deepest hole in the history of my lows.
I’m trying to pump myself up for the fight with some mashups as we ride down the elevator, but though my body feels ready, my mind is with my girl. As we shuffle out of the elevator and into the hotel lobby, I grab Brooke by the hips and pull her back to me, murmuring, “In my peripherals.”
Her worried gold eyes meet mine, and I yank down my headphones.
“In your seat at all times, Brooke,” I say, while winding my fingers into her hair, then I crush her sweet, hot, delicious fucking mouth under mine. She looks dazed when I pull her back an inch, and I set my forehead on hers while I keep my eyes on her. “I adore you with every breath I take—in every ounce of me, I adore you.” Another fast, hard kiss later, I slap my favorite ass and whisper, “Watch me break him.”
I play my music while we ride to the Underground. I need to concentrate, but I’m eyeing the back of her neck, the way her breasts rise and fall, and for a moment, I forward into the future, to the way she’ll look at me when I ask her. The guys tell me everything is ready, and I just hope that she is. Ready for me. For all of me.
I’m winning tonight. Even if I have to kill for it. I’m taking it all. Everything I’ve never had, by force if I have to.
My championship, my woman, I’m winning, and when the crowd is screaming my name, I’m taking the yes out of her mouth that I want.
When we reach the Underground, I keep my headphones on my head as I watch Brooke head to her seat. She ducks her head and spreads her hand over the mound of her little round stomach as she follows Pete, avoiding looking at me. God, she stirs up all my protective instincts and then some.