He zeroes his attention on me for a second longer, then he kisses the back of my ear once more and pats my bum. That’s all he does. Then he starts jumping in place, twisting his arms up and around himself, and the entire atmosphere shifts dramatically as the team starts breathing again.
“Where’s Jo?” he gruffly asks Pete.
A tingle begins in my middle as I realize he truly is coming back.
“She’s already scouting the area,” Pete says, and there’s a quiver of excitement in his voice as he probably realizes the same.
“Neither you or Jo is to take your eyes off Brooke, do you hear me?” he commands as he cracks his neck to one side, then the other.
“We got you, buddy!” Pete assures him.
“All right, are we ready here?” Coach swings the duffel containing Remy’s clean clothes, Gatorades, and extra headphones over his shoulder.
“Ready,” Remington answers as he retrieves his iPod from the speakers. The music dies instantly, and we all watch him grab his headphones from the nightstand and latch them onto the silver iPod.
“Hell yeah, that’s my boy!” Coach yells out.
Riley woots. “That’s the MAN!”
“Who’s kicking ass?” Coach pounds Remy’s back as they head for the door.
“I am.” I hear Remington’s low growl.
Coach pounds his back with an even harder thud. “What name will they all be screaming tonight?”
“Mine.”
“Say it!”
“Riptide.”
“That’s not how the motherfuckers say it!”
Remington slams a fist to his chest and yells, “RIPTIDE!!”
“THAT’S RIGHT!” Coach yells back.
They knock knuckles, and then Coach leads him out of the room and to the elevators, the rest of us following behind. “Do you have enough for this fight, boy?”
“I got it.”
Coach nods, then prods, “What will we do if he doesn’t submit, boy? You already know what to do?”
“I know what to do.”
As I listen to that last calm statement, my blood pools in my feet, and it feels like every other part of me trembles as I break out in a million goose bumps and then some. A part of me wants to be brave and watch this fight, but I don’t remember ever feeling so lacking in courage in my life.
With a sudden frown, Remington shoves a thick finger into Coach’s chest. “Whatever happens, you don’t throw in the towel. Do you hear me? We NEVER, EVER submit.”
The tension in the air rises dramatically, and a couple of gazes are exchanged. When there’s no immediate reply from Coach, Remington pushes him back a step. “Coach. You do not throw in the towel. We don’t submit. Period.”
Coach’s eyes flick briefly in my direction—briefly, yes, but not briefly enough for me to miss the hesitation in his gaze before he nods. Exhaling beside me, Pete takes my hand when we hear a ting.
“Let’s go,” he murmurs.
We board the elevator, but I’m so freaking nervous, my fiercely pounding heart is going to break a couple of my ribs by the time we get to the Underground. Remington quietly fiddles with his iPod, his black headphones in one hand. He’s trying to get into the zone. With all the love I have for him in my heart, I watch him duck his head, place his headphones on, and play his music.
“Why’d you promise?” Riley confronts Coach while Remy listens to his music, his tone accusatory. “If things get butt ugly, we’re not letting him die out there today!”
“His eyes are coming blue! If someone’s going to die tonight, it isn’t our boy!” Coach contests.
All right, this is all crazy talk! My stomach is coiled like a poised venomous rattlesnake, and I just can’t take standing here like a mute for a second longer. “Pete, what are they talking about? I’m starting to freak the hell out here.”
“There have been rumors about this being the match of the decade,” he answers under his breath. “They’re both stubborn as heck, and one needs to submit for the win, Brooke. It could get bad. Like you said . . . more than shit happening.”
A little flash of last season’s final plays in my head, unbidden and unwanted. I remember Remy’s fallen body on the bloodied canvas floor. The crowd screaming his name. And then the silence when they realized their Riptide—fierce, passionate, beautiful Riptide—was down.
While all my insides twist and tangle like pretzels at the memory, we start shuffling out of the elevator, but Remington grabs my hand and holds me back. He whispers in my ear, “In my peripherals.”
His eyes bore into me, and I pray, pray, pray that he doesn’t see the fear in my eyes, but he pulls his headphones down to his neck, and I hear the music streaming between us. Crazy and fast.
“In your seat at all times, Brooke,” he tells me, and he slides his hands into my hair and slams his mouth to mine, stealing a taste of me while giving me a taste of him that leaves me drugged and dazed. He sets his forehead on mine, his gaze incandescent as he looks at me. “I adore you with every breath I take—in every ounce of me, I adore you.” With another fast and hard kiss, he slaps my ass. “Watch me break him!”
As we ride to the Underground, he keeps an arm stretched on the back of my seat while he listens to his music. The rest of the car is dead quiet. I can taste the violence in the air as he walks away into the locker rooms, and I want to shout a thousand “I love yous,” but he’s with his iPod now, getting into his zone.
“Pete, is he really ready for this?” I whisper uncertainly.
“I sure hope so, Brooke. I’d hate for this episode to take another one of his dreams. Come on,” he says as we jostle through the crowd toward our seats.
At least two thousand people fill the arena tonight. The Underground has been teasing its public the entire season, and now they’re bloodthirsty to watch Scorpion versus Riptide. Faces are streaked with red, simulating blood. Bright red Rs adorn women’s cheeks and the top rises of some of their breasts.
I see red, Riptide’s red, streaked across the seats and way in the back, with the standing crowd, where there’s also a little bit of black too. Scorpion black.
Settling down in my seat next to Pete, I notice that Remington has once again secured two more empty seats to our sides, and it seems like we wait for a lifetime. Staring at the emptiness of the center ring only seems to makes the crowd scream louder as they wait for Remington and Scorpion to fill the 23 x 23’ square space they see.
“Riiiptiiiiide!” a group of friends scream in unison across the ring from me.
Behind me, a chant begins: “Bring them out! OUT! OUT! OUT!”
The speakers crackle as if the microphone has been turned on, and an announcer appears up onstage. I almost leap out of my skin.
“Ladies and gentlemen, hello!” People roar their greeting before the announcer continues. “Well, here we are this evening with you all! Are you people ready? Are you all READY for a fight unlike any other? Unlike ANY OTHER, people! Ringmaster?”
The ringmaster by the corner of the ring turns all his attention to the announcer.
“Sir, we won’t need your services tonight,” the announcer gallantly says, adding a dramatic bow that causes a thundering roar to blast around the arena as the crowd stands and screams its approval.
“That’s right!” the announcer yells in a booming voice back at the crowd. “Tonight, there are NO rules, NO ringmaster. Anything goes. ANYTHING GOES, PEOPLE! No knockouts—this is a fight of submission. Submit!”
“Or die!!” people excitedly yell.
“Ladies and gentlemen! Yes! It’s a submission fight here tonight in the Underground! Now, let’s call your worst nightmare into the ring! The man your daughters cry about. The man you want to run from. The man you certainly don’t want to be up in the ring with. Our defending champion, Benny, the Blaaaack, Scorpionnnnnn!”
I’m hyperventilating. I don’t know how I thought I would cope sitting here, watching this match of the fucking decade, because every organ inside me is shivering from nerves and I think I’m going to vomit my heart out. Anything goes. No referee. Just like they thought it would happen, it will, and I don’t even know for sure what state of mind Remington is fighting in.
“Pete, I’m going to puke,” I choke out, sucking in deep breaths as my stomach tightens in a hard, sudden contraction.
In the distance, a figure with a black robe flapping behind him approaches the ring, and the nausea rises full force as I see him.
Scorpion.
With his giant middle finger sticking in the air, I decide he’s even worse than my Voldemort, because this guy is actually alive.
“Such an asshole,” Pete says in disgust.
The last time I had the displeasure of watching Scorpion come out to fight, Remington threw the fight to rescue Nora from that disgusting specimen of a man. And Nora, where is she now? What is Scorpion doing to her? Remington told me to trust him, and I do, but my fear is so great as I look into the face of that disgusting nightmare, every ounce of reason in me has fled. It’s impossible to silence the frantic screaming in my mind, telling me that Remington is going to get hurt tonight. He’s going to get hurt and once again, you can’t stop it! You can’t do anything about it!
Suddenly, I spot Nora across the stands, and an awful anger and hurt sweep through me as she carefully avoids my gaze.
Scorpion jumps up to the ring, and as his team removes his robe, the extra-large black scorpion he seems to have recently tattooed all across his back greets the crowd as he turns around to let everyone see it. The guy is still uglier than someone’s asshole, and I feel a perverse pleasure seeing that scar on his terrible face courtesy of Remy.
“The good news is, he’s still disgusting,” Pete says.
“Pete, I can’t believe my sister would be clear and free of him and then go back to that. It makes me sick.” I steal another glance at Nora across the ring, and her betrayal cuts me like a knife.
“It’s not what you think, Brooke,” Pete tells me, then nods at the ring. “Your guy’s got it. Just wait and see.”
“What do you mean?” I ask in bewilderment, but if Pete answers, I don’t hear.
Scorpion just turned in Nora’s direction, and she looks up at him with a somber expression that doesn’t really strike me as the look of a love-struck young woman. Then he jerks around to look at me, only to lift his middle finger in the air. Straight at me.
“Oh boy, Brooke, for the love of—”
I lift both my middle fingers in reply, and the beast smiles his yellow smile at me.
Pete gasps and groans as if in digestive pain. “All right, if Remington knows he just flipped you off and you just flipped him . . .”
“Booooo!” people instantly yell, and he shows them the bird too, along with his yellow smile, and as if that isn’t gross enough, he also grabs his groin and squeezes. “BOOOOO!!” the crowd yells.
God, I can’t understand why my sister would be with such a specimen! She used to be so romantic. She used to want a prince. And she goes with Scorpion?