My protective instincts rage so loud I want to scream at them to stop, now that he can’t see me and he can’t keep me from stopping this. But I stand here, because he wants to do this. Because he is strong. Stronger than me. He will whip himself into shape just like life has beaten him to it.

Then the shock goes.

His big body seizes and tightens on the table.

My body tightens and begins to implode.

The machine makes a beeping noise.

His toes curl.

I didn’t know if he’d be flailing, breaking things because he’s so strong, but his body remains relatively still as he takes the shock in his brain. Oh my god.

Oh my god.

Oh my fucking god.

I am in love with Remington Tate and he has Bipolar 1, and it crashes down on me like an avalanche.

I don’t think I’ve ever cried this way. Despite putting all my effort into not crying, the tears are literally exploding out of my eyes and my arms are shaking and my body so weak with grief, I edge back to lean against the wall and unsuccessfully try to suck back all my tears.

“Hey, Brooke, hey,” says Pete, kneeling at my side, hugging me.

“It’s so hard,” I say, covering my face and trying to pull away from him because Remy wouldn’t want it. Remy wouldn’t like it. “Don’t touch me, Pete, oh god, this is so fucking hard. So fucking hard!” He grabs me and shakes me a little, his voice comforting, his eyes showing pain.

“He’s not suffering, Brooke. He just wants to get better. Brooke, he is NOT a victim. He makes his choices based on his circumstances. He’ll worry about you. You need to condition yourself like he has—please, I beg you to be strong.”

I nod, while all I can think of is Remy’s beautiful brain, his beautiful body, my church, my sanctuary, enduring this.

“Brooke, it hurts me too. All right? It hurts me too. You can’t let him see that. He’s strong because as far as he’s concerned, this is his reality; he deals with it—he’s never had any different. He doesn’t lament it. Don’t let him see this breaks you or you’re going to break him. You don’t have to save him; just be with him while he saves himself.”

Getting a grip on myself, I nod and wipe my tears as I try to piece myself together. I squeeze the tears out of my eyes as I try to stand and the nurses and doctor say it’s all done.

Remy is still sedated, on the table, and they’ve removed his mouthpiece and somehow cleaned his air ducts. I grab his hand when they unstrap him, bring it to my lips, and kiss each of his knuckles, then wipe them dry of my tears with my lips.

The way Remy is taken care of . . .

Pete is such a good man, it breaks my heart that my sister must not have seen it.

“Pete, my sister really liked you—I don’t know what happened,” I whisper.

His eyebrows fly up to his hairline. “What? Brooke, I like her too—I still do. But I won’t leave my brother for just anyone.”

Nodding in silence, I study Remington’s large hand. Every callus, every line in this palm . . . the rise of his knuckles, the length and shape of his beautiful fingers, the short stubs of his clean, square nails.

Quietly, I stroke the lines in Remy’s palm and then lift my head and smile into Pete’s kind brown eyes. “One day you’ll find someone who makes you want to do anything for her. Pete, I’m going to take care of him. You’re going to teach me to take perfect care of him.”

He smiles and pats my shoulder. “Until then, neither of you is going to have to do this on your own.” He puts a hand on Remington’s shoulder, and I swear in heart and mind, even if not in blood, he truly is Remington’s brother, and at this moment, how I wish my sister and I were as close, and as loyal, as this.

“Brooke, I did something I’m very ashamed of, and I think I owe you an apology,” Pete blurts out. Seeing the despair in his eyes plants a cold little ice cube in the center of my belly.

“When you were gone, he got so bad. He was on suicide watch at the hospital, and they kept sedating him when he woke up, because he destroyed things and tried to go after you. They gave him antidepressants, and they didn’t work, and with rapid cyclers like Rem it’s not a good idea anyway. So we had to start him up on this.” He signals to the table. “We did it for several weeks so he could be discharged. . . .”

He looks at me, and I don’t think I’m even breathing. I’m just staring, waiting for more, confused and partly numb from the roller coaster of the day.

“After the first three treatments he got a little better, so he was discharged, and we came three times a week for ECT for a couple weeks. During that time, he was still black. We brought him fourteen women.”

My heart cracks at the mention of them, and I feel myself erecting several mental blocks as I grip my stomach and my brain screams, I don’t want to know, I don’t want to know, I don’t want to know!

“I make all these women sign paperwork that they won’t talk, no pictures, that they’ll use double protection. . . . They all came out half an hour later with the condom packets intact, confirming they couldn’t get him to turn over or even raise his head from the bed. He told them all to leave. All of them.”

I keep staring, and Pete rubs his face with his hands, and adds, “He didn’t sleep with any of them, Brooke, no matter how hard we tried for him to. He was obsessed with your fucking letter, reading and reading it every moment he was awake. When he finally pushed through that depression and came into his blue eyes, he had no recollection of anything. Maybe because he was black, or maybe because of the electroshock’s side effects. He had about twelve treatments. But we’d almost lost him, Brooke, you know? Riley and I were . . . we were pissed as hell with you too! So we told him he’d been having fun with all these women.”

“Pete!” I gasp in complete and utter horror.

“I’m sorry! But we wanted him to remember how it used to be, before you. So that he would remember that there are hundreds of women out there, not just you.” He shrugs and looks at me almost pleadingly. “But even when we tried to make him think he was doing fine without you, I guess his head is not what rules a man like him. He heard all about the women, didn’t comment on it, then started packing and said we were flying to Seattle, and that we had to arrange to get your sister back to take to you. So yeah. I—Riley and I—lied to him,” he says. “It’s been killing me. Now, once he knows the truth . . . he’ll never trust us again!”

His voice breaks, and he turns away as Riley comes into the room. Riley looks back and forth between us, sensing something’s up. Finally, Pete says, in a dreary, tired tone, “I told her, man.”

Riley meets my disbelieving stare, his face crestfallen. “B,” he says.

That’s all he says. A letter. The one letter that’s tattooed to Remy’s right bicep.

“You have to tell him,” I say and I glance at one, and then the other of them, not even able to bear the hurt I feel for Remington right now. “You can’t ever, ever, lie to him again. It’s not fair to him! I did that once too, and I understand you wanted to protect him as well . . . but it’s confusing to him. It’s confusing to forget some of the things you do. You can’t—none of us, can ever—lie to him again. Do you both hear me?”

Riley strokes a hand down his face and his voice wavers too. “He’s going to fire our fucking asses.”

I look at them both, their expressions torn, and I shake my head. “If you really believe that, then you don’t know him at all.”

HE WAKES UP on the bed soon after the guys leave. His eyes are lazy, but they settle on me and sharpen. They’re not yet blue, but I see a little life in those black pools, and I feel a little tingle inside me that becomes a huge knot of emotion.

“Look at you.” He speaks in a drug-thickened voice. I can hear the obvious praise in his words, as if I look pretty fantastic, and when I see a dimple peek out, the force of my emotions almost cripples me. He doesn’t know he was a mess without me, but now I do. He doesn’t know he was brought women to pleasure him and that he didn’t want them. He doesn’t know he is magnificent, perfect, beautiful, noble, good, and everything, everything, I have ever wanted.

And right now, it hurts like a bitch to know that his brothers, whom he takes care of and loves, also didn’t know what to do and ended up lying to him.

“Look at you,” I tenderly counter, immediately kneeling on the floor next to his bed and setting my cheek on his knuckles. I kiss every bruise on his hand once more.

“Hey, I’ve got this, I don’t want you to worry,” he says, stroking his free hand along the back of my head.

“I know.” Ducking my head, I rub my face against the sheet so he maybe won’t see the stray tears leaking from my eyes. I kiss his knuckles lovingly again. “I know you do.”

Even with the anesthesia’s thickening effect, his voice still has the same effect on me it always has. “Get up here. What are you doing down there?” he murmurs gruffly as he tugs me up. I know they gave him muscle relaxants, but even so, before I know it, he pulls me over him and stretches me like we sleep at night when he’s in my bed. My round stomach gets in the way, but it’s not enormous, so I tilt to the side and smell his neck and bury my face in his chest as we adjust.

“Your nurses will kick me out if they see this,” I say.

He grabs my ass and adjusts me a little better. “I won’t let them. You’re my medicine.”

I close my eyes and he smells like him. His arms are his. Everything is normal, except I’m wearing clothes and he’s in a hospital robe, and we’re not in a hotel room. He is still him, wearing my heart on his sleeve. Everything I want, right here, in my arms.

I slide my hand to his jaw and kiss any part of his face I can as I clutch him a little desperately. “Remy, you’re my king.” I hug him hard. “There’s no chess game for me without you.”

He shifts and works the control under the bed so that we sit up slightly. He adjusts me on his lap, his lips on my ear. “You’re the queen who will protect me,” he says in amusement, and when I nod because I can’t speak, he strokes my hair as he looks into my face, and I know—even if he doesn’t tell me—that my eyes are swollen and that he can tell I’ve been crying. I feel his lips press into my eyelids, first one, then the other, as he fists a hand in my hair and roughly pleads, “Stay strong, my little firecracker. Stay strong with me.”

I nod. “I’ll try, because you inspire me.”

“We got you what you wanted, Rem,” Riley says from the door. I’m so comfortable in his arms I don’t even turn to greet him. And then I feel something smooth against my cheek. I open my eyes and see Remy holding out a rose to me. Him. In the hospital. Giving me a rose with those dark but twinkling eyes with the blue flecks.

“Remy,” I say, a confused, puzzled laugh leaving me.

“I’d give you a whole fucking garden if I could.” He tips my chin back and holds me in that stare. “For being here, right now, with me.”