Real

“Remy, don’t, don’t!” I plead, and when his efforts only intensify and he growls in anger, then I open the door and yell for a nurse. “Nurse! Please!”



A nurse rushes into the room, and I feel such pain as she shoots some sort of tranquilizer up his IUV, that it’s like there is nothing else for me to feel except this knot of pain that has become me. I can’t believe I’m going to do this to him, that I’m as cowardly, as worthless, as everyone else. But when the nurse settles him down and adjusts his respirator, I stare at him from the door, his appearance calmer now as he gazes back at me, and I smile, a smile that is fake and that trembles horribly on my face, and I leave.



I hate that he will wake up again with his beautiful blue eyes and might not remember what I said, or where I am, or what happened to me. But I just can’t stay.



I find Riley at the cafeteria and show him an envelope I’d acquired from one of the nurses several days ago. “I’m leaving, Riley. My contract was over several days ago. Just … say goodbye to Pete and please…” I hand him the envelope with Remington’s name, watching it tremble violently in the air, “give this to him when his eyes are blue again.”



That night, I’m flying to Seattle, slumped in my seat, feeling as heavy and empty as an abandoned building, and I wonder as I stare unseeingly out the window if he’s already back to blue, and if he’s already reading my letter. I’ve read it a thousand times in my head, and read it a thousand times when I wrote it the third night at the hospital, when I knew I was not going to stay.



Dear Remington,



The very first moment I laid eyes on you, I think you had me. And I think you knew. How could you possibly not know? That my floor was shaking under my feet. It was. You made it move. You colored my life again. And when you came after me and kissed me, I just knew somewhere deep inside me, my life would forever be touched and changed by you. It has. I have had the most amazing, incredible, beautiful moments of my life with you. You and your team became my new family, and never for one second did I really plan to leave. Not them, but most of all, not you. Every day I spent with you only makes me crave more of you. All I wanted for days was to be closer. It hurts to be close and not to touch you, and I wanted to spend every waking moment with you and every sleeping moment in your arms. So many times now, I wanted to tell you all the ways you make me feel, but I wanted to hear you say it first. My pride is gone now. I have no room for it, and I don’t want to regret not telling you. I love you, Remy. With all my heart. You are the most beautifully complicated, gentle fighter I’ve ever known. You have made me deliriously happy. You challenge and delight me, and make me feel like a kid inside, with all the amazing things to look forward to, just because I was looking at the future and thinking of sharing it all with you. I’ve never felt so safe as when I am with you, and I want you to know I am completely in love with every part of you, even the one that just broke my heart. But I can’t stay anymore, Remy. I can’t watch you hurt yourself, because when you do, you’re hurting me in ways I never thought anybody could hurt me, and I’m afraid of breaking and never being right again. Please never, ever, let anyone hurt you like this. You are the fighter everyone wants to be, and this is why everyone in the world loves you. Even when you screw up, you get back up fighting again. Thank you, Remy, for opening your world to me. For sharing yourself with me. For my job, and for every time you smiled at me. I want to tell you to get well soon, but I know that you will. I know you will be blue-eyed and cocky and fighting again, and I’ll be in your past, like all the things you’ve overcome before me. Just please know that I will never hear “Iris” again, without thinking of you.



Yours always,



Brooke



Seattle is rainier than ever



Not even Mel can cheer me up.



I talked to my parents and told them things are great, especially when I don’t want to worry them about Nora until I figure out how I’m going to bring her home again. I’ve already researched and the next Underground season will begin in February of next year, and it will begin in Washington D.C.



I’m probably going to accept the job offer from the Military Academy of Seattle with my middle graders to begin in August, but if I do, I might not be able to travel in February in search of my sister. Which I don’t like. And yet, if I do decide to go after Nora, I honestly don’t know if I’m strong enough to see Remington in the Underground again.



Melanie, who’s been stalking Twitter, says all his fans are speculating on whether or not he will return to the fights next year.



“Please,” I tell her now, as we’re running, when she brings the topic up again. “Please don’t talk to me about him anymore.”



“Why not? Come on, little nugget. You’ve never had a love interest before and it’s fun talking of a love interest that is finally not mine.”



“Just don’t talk to me about him, please! I love him, Melanie. I love him. He’s not just a star, he’s the whole fucking sky to me. He’s the sun and every planet in this galaxy. It hurts me to think of him, don’t you understand?”



On the verge of tears that finally shut up Melanie, I grab my iPod and stick the buds in my ears, but as I turn it on, even listening to music affects me, because every song I hear makes me wonder if I want to play it to him.



Completely distressed over how volatile I’ve become, I shove my music back into my armband and focus on running, tap-tap-tap, on the ground. Now the sun is getting higher, and as we round the corner to my building, we see a black Escalade parked right before my building.



We keep trotting toward it, and as we approach, the doors open and a man in black that looks remarkably like Pete steps out. Followed by another that could be Riley.



And suddenly standing across me, every inch of him beautiful, healthy, and vital, is Remington Tate. I see his gleaming dark hair, his sexy boyish face, his slightly scruffy jaw, and all of his manly tan skin and perfect muscles, and my heart stops.



I stop running.



Stop breathing. Stop existing.



My brain goes blank, my lungs close up, my ears shut off.



I look at him. And he looks at me.



And as we stare, my eyes on his, his eyes on mine, my heart resumes with one burst of emotion.



It leaps and runs to him, slams into him, explodes in him, and although it hurts like an open wound to look at this man, all my senses have sizzled to life and I can’t take my eyes off him, even if my life depends on it. A private Fourth of July is happening in my stomach as I feel Melanie’s nudge at my back, and we begin walking toward them at a slower pace.



A nerve-wracking pace.



It feels as though the entire world is in slow motion. Every step of mine takes ages.



Remington looks so … large as we approach. Larger than life itself, and I can’t even believe this striking creature was once a little bit mine.



The bad part is, my body cannot distinguish that he’s no longer mine, and every pore of me seems magnetized by him, like they all still think that he belongs to me.



“Holy shit, that man is hot,” Melanie gasps at my side.



I nod helplessly and drink him in several times, head to toe. Something rushes through me as if this is the first sip of water I’ve had in weeks, and every pore in me is dehydrated. A tremor wraps itself around my heart. I know there’s no doubt that I’m every bit in love with him as I was before. And this is nothing, nothing, compared to the instant, the very second, he briefly, almost bored, smiles at me.



“Miss Dumas?” Pete says with a grin, as we approach. “We believe this belongs to you?”



He signals in the direction of Remington who watches me with that bored smile, slowly vanishing as he studies me. My pulse goes so wild I can hear it in my ears, and then, I realize another figure is stepping out of the car. A female figure. That looks like … Nora.



I blink, and my heart stops. “Nora?”



“Nora?” Melanie repeats, sounding even more stupid than I’m sure I do.



“We just wanted to make sure she got home safe,” Pete says.



“Nora?” I repeat. And now I really sound more stupid than Melanie.



“It’s me!” She looks lively and like her old self as she comes to hug me, and she’s shaking in excitement as she does. “It’s me, big sis! I’m back! I’ve done work in rehab. Pete helped me,” she rushes to explain. “And I got the tattoo off.” She points to her rosy cheekbone. “I felt so little when you looked at me that day, Brooke. I felt so little and so … dirty.”



“No! No, never!” Reeling in surprise, I drag her in for another hug, still stunned and disbelieving that my little sister is in my arms, and then Melanie grabs her and gives her some Mel-love.



“Nora!! Nora Camora Lalora Crazyora!” She hugs and swings her around and squeezes her, and I turn to stare at the three men before me, and since I can’t make myself speak to the one I really want to speak to, I speak to Pete instead. “Pete, what’s going on?”



“Surprise,” he says, wiggling his eyebrows and signaling to Nora. “She’s done great. She’s such a sweet girl.”



I keep staring impatiently, and he nods at Remington, who’s just rammed his hands into his jean pockets. His eyes are raking me top to bottom, nonstop, making me aware of my athletic gear and the way it hugs my butt, my breasts, and my expanding waistline from eating mood-boosting dark chocolate just to help with my completely frustrating heartbreak blues.



“The night Remy went to fight with Scorpion, Scorpion offered your sister to him instead of the championship. And Remy agreed,” Pete then tells me.



I stand motionless for a moment, blank, wavering, and very baffled. When my eyes confusedly seek out Remington’s, I feel a shock run through me at the intensity in his stare.



Then, I’m bowled over.



“You mean he agreed to … lose?” For Nora?



No, not for Nora, you idiot.



For you.



A powerful emotion zip lines through my body, settling like a burning bolt of light in my brain, illuminating me with the magnitude of something that sounds impossible, but which they have just told me to be true.



Briefly tossing my head side to side, I cling helplessly to those dark-lashed, achingly familiar blue eyes. My pulse spins with confused disbelief. A war of emotions rages within me as strange and disquieting thoughts race through my mind, clenching around my heart.



“You did this for … Nora?” I breathlessly ask Remington.



His face is so beautiful, I just want to grab his spiky hair and kiss him senseless, but at this point, I don’t think I even deserve to have this man standing here.



Looking at me without telling me what I jerk I am for leaving him the way I did.



Feeling painfully hammered inside, which is not the optimal feeling to experience when you’re told your baby sister is, thankfully, happily, back home, I sit down on the stairs leading to my small building, knocked out by my stupor as I furiously try blinking back a well of tears threatening to fall.



Pete grabs a green duffel bag from the back of the Escalade and heads inside with Nora. “Let me take this in for you, Nora.”