Riley climbs into the car, and so does Pete, but I wait for her reaction.

She looks at me, and I stare directly back at her.

My pulse is wild as I want to say a thousand things, play her a thousand songs, and nothing comes out. Out of the mess inside me, the roil and tangle of emotions, I can’t say a single word. Not even Why? Why did you leave me. Why did you say you loved me and leave me.

“You’re looking good, Remy,” Melanie says happily.

I smile briefly because I like the way she makes Brooke laugh. I like that Melanie gave me the phone number that started all of this.

She skips away and Brooke remains watching me, and I don’t even know where to begin. In my life, nobody has ever told me what she told me in that letter. I’m used to being dropped. I’m conditioned to expect it. But when she said she’d never tire of me, I believed her. When she played me a song about loving me, I fucking believed her. And I need her to come back to me on the same two long, sleek legs she used to leave me.

“You know where to find me,” I murmur, then I get in the car with the guys and we ride off.

I grab her letter and squeeze it, and for a moment I’m angry again. At myself. At her. At my fucked-up body. I could go back and carry her up to her own fucking apartment, fuck her brains off, and remind her who she cries for, who her man is, perfect or not.

But my pride is so battered, I feel like that stupid boy left at a mental institute, who kept waiting for somebody to come and get him out.

I RUN AND run until I am dripping, and even then, every inch of me is tense and waiting. Tomorrow we’re scheduled to leave. And I know I can’t leave without her. I know me, and I’m going to come back and take her if she doesn’t come.

Still, I want for once in my life for someone to come to me because they feel I’m worth it. No, not someone. Her. I want the woman I love to come to me because at last someone in this world understands me. How the fuck am I supposed to leave, to live, without her?

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!”

I close my eyes. I love you making my breath rattle, leaving me shaken, tormented.

She drops her hand and sounds pained and afflicted. “I don’t want you to ever let anyone hurt you deliberately again. Ever. Not even for me, Remy. Never. You are worth. Too. Much! Do you hear me?”

I grab her face between my open palms, and I feel the shudder that runs through her body as she absorbs my touch. I look into her eyes and I am not ashamed. I am proud. I am letting her know, quietly, before I tell her in words, what she means to me.

“I’d do it a thousand times for you.” I scent her, and I want to growl when I hear her scenting me. “A thousand. A million. I don’t care if I’m humiliated. I don’t care about anything. All I knew was you were willing to kiss that motherfucker’s ink for your sister, and I had to give her back to you.”

“Oh, Remy, you didn’t have to do anything.”

“I did. And I will. And I’d do it all over again. I’m only sorry that only Pete could know. He stayed in a hotel room with her and one of Benny’s thugs, then helped transfer her when I delivered the championship. I just couldn’t let you stop me, Brooke.”

“But you wouldn’t even look at me. . . .” She squeezes her pretty eyes shut. “That was as painful as the rest of what happened.”

“If I’d looked at you, I wouldn’t have been able to go through with it.”

She covers her face, and I can see her suffering. I can feel it inside me.

I release her, a painful sound wrenching out of me.

I stand and pace, simmering with frustration and helplessness. “I knew this would happen.” My scowl bites into my face and my fucking helplessness eats at me. “That’s why I didn’t want to touch you. I knew I’d go crazy if I touched you, and now, it tears me open to ask you to be with me when I know I’m just going to do something to fucking hurt you again!”

“Yes! Yes, you probably are, you idiot! And it’s going to be a damned skydive for me, and I’m going to hang on tight and just jump with you because that’s what you do to me. I’m crazy about you. My life now sucks without you. I’m not here for the job. Although I love it, but it’s you I want. It’s you I came for that first night. It’s always been about you. I want to be with you, but I won’t do it only on my side. I want you to love me back, Remy. You’ve never told me how you feel about me!”

I look at her questioningly, surprised at first, and then dead serious. “Brooke, you honestly don’t know?”

She stares, and I kneel before her and hold her face between my hands.

“Jesus, when I saw you that first night in Seattle, I felt like I’d just gotten plugged into a socket. I got high just with the way you smiled at me, Brooke. The way you looked at me with an expression of pain and awe drove me crazy. You turned away to leave, and you wore these really nice pants. Your butt was just up there as you walked away, all perky and round. And I just wanted to finish the damn fight so I could go after you. The former fight I swear I just fought for you to watch me. So you’d see me. See that I’m strong and could fight for you, protect you. I daydreamed of kissing you, of making love to you. I was planning it in my head even when I jumped out of that ring and went after you. When your friend gave me your number, I got to the hotel to find a roomful of girls, the kind Pete always has for me, and I couldn’t look at any of them. I wanted to look into your eyes and make you smile at me.”

I tell her how I googled her. How I immediately told Pete to send her these tickets. How I saw those videos on YouTube. How I decided to hire her.

She looks flabbergasted for a moment, her face going pale, her eyes going even wider.

“I tried taking it easy with you. I wanted to know you, and for you to know me, and every day I wanted you more, Brooke. So much. I couldn’t touch you and risk messing it up until you knew about me. I wanted you to care for me. I wanted to see if you could understand me. . . . I tortured myself every night, thinking of you in your room, while I was in mine.

“The night we went to the club, and you danced with me, I just couldn’t stop myself. I’d been so wound up. And when you knocked down two guys for me, I went crazy protective. I wanted to tuck you into bed and go back and do some serious damage to all four of them. But you stayed with me, and I forgot about fighting, and all I wanted was to have my mouth all over you. I tried to control myself, but on the plane, you killed me with those songs about making love to me. I just had to have you. The thought of having you had me so damned high, I was already drugged with it, and by the end of that fight, I was manic and high on you before I could even get you into my bed.