Something in his words—in the way the men hesitate before answering—send a new rush of alarm skittering through me. “You want to do that again,” Riley says.

He nods against his pillow. “Now,” he firmly stresses.

Riley turns helplessly to Pete, who after a moment grabs his phone. “First we need to see when it can be done. Let me call the hospital,” he says and starts dialing, stalking out of the room.

“It’ll perk you right up,” Riley says as he shoots up to his feet and pats Remington’s back with a solid thunk.

Remington grabs him by the tie and pulls him closer as he sits up. “Don’t fucking patronize me. Just take me there and don’t you dare let her see,” he grits.

My eyebrows flick upward when I realize Remington thinks I left the room, and Riley’s eyes shift momentarily my way, a signal to not to let on that I heard. But I’m not lying to Remington ever again, so I step forward.

“I want to be with you. If they medicate you or do anything else to you. I want to be there and I’m going to be there.”

He straightens at the sound of my voice, but he first looks at Riley. “Riley . . .” he warns. Riley loosens his tie as Remy swings his head to look at me. “You stay here and I’ll be back.” He speaks gruffly but with obvious caring, using a complete different tone with me than the one he’d been using with the men.

“I don’t think so,” I stubbornly counter, because, seriously, I’m not budging on this. The three are acting as if I’m an incompetent, weak little rosebud!

Remy narrows his eyes and clamps his jaw at my stubbornness, and I lift both my eyebrows and cross my arms.

“I go where you go. Understand? Whatever it is, it’s no big deal,” I say.

He stays locked on my stare, a muscle working in the back of his jaw.

“It’s no. Big. Deal!” I assure, bluffing with everything I’ve got.

But I’m not letting him out of my sight.

NINETEEN

BLACK VERSUS BLUE

Fully aware that I’m accompanying the guys almost by force, I wisely stay quiet during our ride to the hospital. Everyone seems to be on the same channel. Not a word is exchanged. Barely even a look. We all seem to expect Remy to say something, but his attention is firmly fixed on the passing city scenery, his profile hard in determination. I don’t really think he’s seeing anything; he’s lost inside his head.

When we arrive, I feel the warmth of his body suddenly envelop me as he bends down and takes my lips briefly with his. His voice shivers through me as he tells me, “I’ll be out soon.”

“No! I want to go with you!” I call to his broad back as he disappears down the hall with a nurse while Pete goes to the desk to check him in. I begin suspecting it is, in fact, kind of a big deal when Riley starts talking to me like I’m a baby.

“It’s so much better if you stayed here, Brooke,” he practically croons.

I scowl. “Don’t treat me like a flower, Riley. I want to be there for him. I need to be there for him.”

Pete heads in the direction Remington disappeared, and I quickly jog to him. “Pete, can I go in with him?”

For a moment, there’s a man-to-man communication going on between the guys, then Pete finally nods at Riley and tells me, “I’ll come get you when he’s prepped.”

“Prepped?”

Pete disappears down the same hall Remington did.

“Riley?”

I’m completely confused here.

Riley sighs. “He’s having a procedure to induce a brain seizure.” And as he starts to explain, I listen as if I’ve just slid to the other side of a tunnel, and am getting farther and farther away by the second. A fire burns in my eyes and all I know now is that the hospital walls are white. So blank, and plain, and white. “. . . while his brain will receive an electric current . . .”

The heart is a hollow muscle, and it will beat billions of times during our life.

I’ve learned, in my short life, that you can’t run if you tear a ligament, but your heart can be broken into a million pieces and you can still love with your whole being.

Your whole, miserable, insanely vulnerable fucking being . . .

I can feel my heart thumping hard as ever in my chest, thump thump thump. Even though I’m trying to act like it’s NO BIG DEAL, my brain reels as I try to grasp what Riley has just explained to me. That Remington is about to commit himself to electroshocks. A fucking electric current is going to be sent through his scalp to his brain to give him a fucking brain seizure.

Now he’s telling me that there could be some short-term memory loss, that he will be given short-acting anesthesia, that his blood oxygen levels and heart rate will be monitored, that other than the possible short- or long-term memory loss, there is no other known side effect. I swear that when I replay in my head the scene of Remington disappearing down the hall with the hospital staff, I hear a low, dull sound echoing in the cold, white walls—a low, dull sound coming from me.

“Oh, Riley.” His name comes out in a low, wretched moan, and I cover my face as panic and fear rise in me like a tide, drowning me.

My pulse falters when Pete appears and signals to me. I run over and follow him, half dying and half as alive as I’ve ever been from sheer panic, into a room. I see machines, become hyperaware of the unsurpassable coldness of the hospital, and in the middle of the room, I see him. He’s being strapped down with Velcro bands around his thick wrists.

His beautiful body spread out on the flat surface, he’s covered in a hospital robe as he faces the ceiling.

Remy.

My beautiful, cocky, playful, blue-eyed boy and my serious, somber man who loves me like nobody in my life has ever loved me.

The urge to protect him from whatever is coming is so overpowering, I approach with slow but determined steps, one hand curled under my cantaloupe-size tummy where our baby is. My whole arm is shaking uncontrollably as I reach out for the large, tanned hand that is strapped down to the table. Strapped. To the table. And my voice cracks like glass as I lightly rub my fingers through his, trying to sound calm and rational while I really feel crazy enough to scream. “Remy, don’t do this. Don’t hurt yourself, please don’t hurt yourself anymore.”

He squeezes my fingers and flicks his eyes away from me. “Pete . . .”

Pete seizes my elbow and tugs me away, and I freak out when I realize Remington really doesn’t want to see me here. He hasn’t looked into my eyes. Why won’t he look into my freaking eyes? I turn to Pete as he pulls me out of the room, my voice a degree below hysterical, “Pete, please don’t let him do this!”

Pete grabs my shoulders and hisses, low, so that we don’t draw attention, “Brooke, this is a common procedure used on people with BP—this is how they pull people from suicide watch! Not everyone finds the right dose of medicine, and the doctors are aware of that. He’ll be sedated through it.”

“But it’s just a fight, Pete,” I argue miserably, pointing into the room. “It’s just a stupid fight and this is him!”

“He’ll pull through. He’s done it before!”

“When?” I cry.

“When you were gone and we had to keep him from slitting his fucking wrists because of you!”

Ohmigod. My heart shatters so hard, I think I hear it, and it’s not just my heart, but my entire body is breaking down on the inside, cracking under the grief of what Pete has just told me. The hurt is so great, I curve myself protectively around my stomach and I frantically try to remember to breathe, if not for me, for this baby. His baby.

“Brooke, this is the shit he’s lived with his whole life. He’s up, he’s down, he’s all over the place. His decisions might hurt but making them gets him through it. This is how he was formed—this is why he’s who he is. He is strong because of this bullshit! You can be pitiful or you can be powerful, but you can’t be both. He is powerful. You have got to be strong with him—he’ll break if he knows this breaks you.”

Even though my fears have completely gnawed away all my confidence and my stomach is about to turn over, I somehow manage to pull myself into some semblance of a person. I manage to straighten my spine and lift my head, and take a small, ragged breath, because I will do this for him. I will do it with him and I will prove to myself, and to him, that I am going to be strong enough to love the hell out of him.

I suck in another breath and wipe the corners of my eyes. “I want to be there.”

Pete signals at the door and gives me an approving nod. “Be my guest.”

My steps are quiet and almost hesitant as I go into the room. He’s big and massive and strong, I know, even if my heart is a rag in my chest and all my blood seems to feel like ice inside me, I am going to prove to him that I am worthy of being his mate and the one who will stand when he can’t. I don’t know how I will prove this, because I am toppling, like a crushed building, as I walk inside. I look all right, but inside of me, in my very soul, I’m disintegrating, nerve by nerve, organ by organ.

He looks at me now—straight into my eyes, and I can see the worry in his dark eyes. Of course he’s afraid I’ll topple. He doesn’t want to see that in my eyes. “Okay?” he asks me in a husky whisper.

I nod and reach for his hand. My reply should be, “More than okay.” Right? But I just can’t get any more words past my closed throat. So I rub his fingers with mine, and when he squeezes me, I remember our flight out of Seattle, this hand, the one I will not let go of, and I squeeze back as hard as I can and smile shakily down at him.

“That’s my girl,” he rasps, brushing his thumb over mine.

He’s strapped and about to receive electroshocks and he asks me about me. Oh god, I love him so much, if he dies I want to die with him and this is no fucking joke. I blink back the tears and squeeze him harder.

“Can I hold his hand?” I ask one of the nurses.

“Sorry, you can’t during the procedure,” she tells me.

Remington cautiously watches me as I force myself to step back and they attach some electrodes to his forehead. A ball of fire is in my throat, in my heart, and in my stomach. I am not even breathing when a nurse asks him, “Are you ready?”

“Hit me,” he answers, his eyes briefly flicking over me to check my reaction before he faces the ceiling again.

They start the IV flow to sedate him.

They begin asking him questions. “Full name?”

“Remington Tate.”

My eyes well up.

“Date of birth?”

“April ten, nineteen eighty-eight.”

“Place of birth?”

“Austin, Texas.”

“Names of your parents.”

“Dora Finlay and Garrison Tate.”

I can barely take the fact that he is strapped, talking about his fucking parents, who made him black like this, his voice deep and strong, answering whatever they ask him.

Then she tells him, “Count from one to a hundred.” And they put a mouthpiece on him.

He starts to count, and I count in my head with him. His eyes shut. Beautiful dark lashes against his strong cheekbones.