I’m on the floor, sobbing, the only thing moving on me is the awful legs belonging to these awful creatures, when I hear Diane screaming tremulously into the phone, “Get back here! Get back here please!” She keeps repeating the same thing, over and over, when she suddenly swings the door open and screams out into the hall, “REMINGTON!”

Everything’s hazy as almost immediately, or maybe a few minutes later, I don’t know, the door slams open wider with a crashing noise. Through my tears, I see him, and I can picture what he sees. Scorpions all over me and me, doing nothing, crying like a baby, as afraid as I’ve ever been in my life. My vision blurs completely from something other than tears, and I wonder if it’s the venom. I feel shocks all over me. I feel the scorpions being yanked from me with bare hands, one after the other, as I sob.

Then he grabs me, and I’m in his huge arms, steady arms that hold a body that is mine—is it mine? Is this body that is falling apart mine?—and I am shaking and in an agony of pain.

I try climbing up him higher, like a tree, and cling to his neck as I sob and try to breathe, sucking in his scent like it’s the only way my body can remember to breathe again. He’s breathing hard. His hands are fists in my back, and they are shaking. Then they start rubbing up and down. His hands reach my face and he furiously wipes my tears.

“I got you,” he hisses passionately in my ear, squeezing me none too gently. “I got you. I got you.”

“A woman just came and knocked!” Diane’s frantic words tremble with tears. “She said Remy had ordered the box for her!”

“Jesus,” Pete says in disgust. “Let’s not throw them away, Diane; we need to see what kind they are. Call an EMT and let’s just crush the motherfuckers—give me a pan.”

Remington’s voice is hard as granite in my ear. “I’m going to kill him,” he promises me. “I swear to god, I’m going to kill him so slowly.”

“Just save it for the ring, Rem. Sabotaging your championship is exactly what he wants,” Pete says between whacking noises.

Remy’s voice is a hiss as I feel him rub his hands over me. “Where did they bite you? Tell me exactly where, and I’ll suck all the poison out.”

I’m gasping for breath as if my air ducts were suddenly swelling. “I . . . e-everywhere . . .”

“You shouldn’t suck on these—let me have a look at her,” Pete says.

I cling to Remington, and he tightens his arms around me and slowly rocks me, his entire body shaking almost like my own as he speaks into my ear. “I got you, little firecracker, I got you right here in my arms,” he whispers, and I can hear the barely unleashed fury in his voice.

“Rem, let me see her,” Pete begs him.

“No,” I moan, and I clutch Remy harder because I know that if I die, this is the way I want to go. Oh my god, am I going to die? Who’s going to take care of him? “Don’t let go, don’t let go,” I moan.

“Never,” he promises in my ear.

“According to Google, they’re Arizona bark scorpions. Venomous but not deadly.”

“Hang on to me,” Remy whispers, and then we’re in motion. My vision blurs even more. My tongue is thick. Saliva in my mouth. Can’t breathe. I’m shaking as he lifts me, and the sensation of being electrocuted from the inside increases to an alarming level.

“Where the heck are you going with her, Tate?”

Remington’s growl rumbles against my chest and somehow comforts me in my shaky, altered state. “To the fucking hospital, dipshit.”

I hear the crash of the door as he opens it with all his might, and then a creak as if he unhinged it. Then we’re in motion, going somewhere . . . his breathing hard and fast. . . .

Pete calls behinds us, “Dude, Diane just called the EMT. Let’s just take a fucking chill pill and give her some Benadryl.”

“You. Take a chill pill. Pete.”

We’re walking rapidly somewhere, and I can hear in his voice that he’s hanging on by threads. The thought that this could greatly affect him and make him speedy makes me panic.

“I’m awright,” I tell him; then I hear my own voice. I sound stupid. Maybe some brain cells are dying from the venom. I can’t form the letter l. I say it again, “I’m awright, Wemy. . . .” Ohmigod.

Remington freezes, and I can feel him look at me but my eyes are blurry; then I hear him say, “FUUUUUCK ME!”

The elevator arrives. When the rolling doors open, Riley’s voice reaches me. “All right, what’s going on? Coach is waiting at the gym, Rem. . . .” He trails off.

“Live scorpions,” Pete tells Riley. “Venomous, but fortunately not deadly.”

“I can’t bweathe,” I say out loud. I am freaking. The hell out. For the first time in my life I don’t understand what the hell is going on in my body.

“The poison spreads through the nervous system, but it doesn’t enter the bloodstream. Try to stay calm, Brooke. These bark scorpions are nasty suckers. Can you feel your legs?”

I shake my head. My tongue feels leaden, every spot where I was stung hurts so bad that my face is stuck in a permanent grimace, and I’m breathing in pants.

Pete reaches out. “Let me see that. . . .” I feel Remy wrap his hand around my arm and stretch it out and whisper, “I’m going to kill him,” while Pete studies me.

“It’ll be all right, B,” Pete says. “I’ve had the experience once. Awful, but you really don’t die from a North American scorpion.”

I nod and am clinging to that reassurance when Diane calls from the door, “There’s a note! I turned the box over and there’s a note!”

“What does it say?” Pete asks. Then I hear a crumpling sound as he reads, “?‘You’ve kissed me. Now you’ve been kissed back by the Scorpion. How does it feel to have my venom in you?’?”

Remington’s body engages. I can feel it suddenly, a complete change in the way he holds me. He was protective and proprietary, and suddenly . . . he wants to fight.

An image blooms inside my head: I’m standing before that embodiment of gross and kissing his disgusting tattoo of a scorpion so I could see my sister. I moan as a fresh wave of nausea roils up my throat.

“Pete, I saw his goons downstairs in the lobby. I think he’s here at the hotel,” Riley says.

“The motherfucker is probably downstairs waiting for Remington.”

“Oh, he has it coming!” Remington thunders. “He’s already dead!” he explodes.

I close my eyes tight as his tumultuous energy surrounds me, and I know, no matter how he might have struggled to stay blue . . .

Remy has gone black.

His lips are suddenly in my ear, and he whispers as he cups the back of my head, “I need to do something right now. I love you. I fucking love you to pieces, and I’m going to come back and put you back together again, all right?”

I nod, even though I feel like shit. Little jolts run through me. I bite my lip hard to focus on that pain instead, but it cannot compete with the stings on my body. I’m trying to be brave, but I remember the scorpions on me . . . on my body . . . the ugly bodies, the pincers . . . the three black dots on the head. . . . I shudder in his arms and feel like vomiting.

“Why is she shaking like this, goddammit?” Remington demands as we start moving again.

“It’s the nervous system being affected. She sustained several stings, so it’ll be painful. While the EMT is on his way, let’s give her some Tylenol.”

We’re walking back into the room, as far as I can tell, and Remy sets me down on something soft. From the blue blur I see, I think it’s the couch. He brushes my hair back, and I can feel his eyes on my face.

“I’m going to go crush him now.”

Then he’s gone, like some sort of hurricane out to destroy anything in its path, and my brain is so stunned by how fast he made this decision—by how calm and cold he sounded when he made that last statement—that for a moment I convince myself he really just went to get me some Tylenol.

“Damn it, he’s full speed ahead, Ri, go after him before he sees Scorpion or any of his goons—Diane! Get some cold compresses and wait for the EMT. We need to go get that man!”

The last time I saw Remington have an episode and go fully manic, Pete jammed a syringe containing a sedative into his jugular, and as I hear the men’s footsteps on the carpet, I immediately yell, “Pete, don’t fucking shoot anywing up his thwoat!” then I groan, turn my head down, and start vomiting.

THE EMT HAS come and gone, and we’re still waiting, over half an hour later, with the remains of the scorpions in an awful Tupperware container glaring at me from the kitchen.

I was told to take Tylenol and Benadryl, use cold compresses, and to call if it got worse, in which case they would procure an antidote for me.

Now the Tylenol and Benadryl have kicked in and I’m a bit better. I have a trash can next to the living room couch in case I puke again.

I have thrown up half my body weight, it feels like. Diane is now putting ice on me so the stings don’t swell, but still I feel shocks. I’m now groggy thanks to the Benadryl, but at least the swelling in my tongue is down some.

“I told you that man has the reddest self-destruct button I’ve ever seen,” Diane says gently as she presses a cold compress to my arm. She reminds me of my mother, and for the briefest second, I am so homesick I want to cry. But the home I really want to cry for is the man downstairs ready to beat to death the sicko who did this to me.

“Please don’t let him even set eyes on Scorpion,” I say miserably. “If I screw things up for him again—”

“You don’t screw it up for him, Brooke,” Diane assures me. “You love him. You’re the only woman he’s ever loved and the only person who’s loved him and accepted him as is. He wasn’t given love growing up. He was rejected and cast aside. How hard do you think he will defend you?”

My eyes blur, and my voice breaks.

“I want to defend him too and can’t even stand right,” I say, feeling suddenly pitiful and weak.

By the time the guys come back, it’s been almost an hour, and all my nerve endings have been corroded by my anxiety.

I’m lying on my side on the couch with my eyes closed, drunk on the Benadryl, when I hear muffled voices outside the door.

“. . . hold the door . . .”

My heart dies. I swear it dies. Because there’s just no other reason to hold the door except if your arms are busy holding something.

Something big and reckless and beautiful.

I hold my breath as Diane goes over to help with the door, and then I see them. Not them—him. Remy.

Pete and Riley are grunting and huffing as they lug him inside, his feet dragging in the ground, his head facing the floor. His dark hair is all I can see, and the anger and protectiveness I suddenly feel is so overpowering that the only reason I don’t charge over to hit those two is because I still can’t feel one of my feet.