There’s just no song on this earth, and no playlist big enough, to tell him that I truly love him. I love him when his eyes are black, and when his eyes are blue, and although I know—deep down—that he doesn’t believe I’m here to stay—one day, I swear one day I will make him believe me. We smile as we keep listening to this song, and when he squeezes my hand, I squeeze back, telling myself no matter what happens, I will never, ever, let go of this hand.
OUR PHOENIX HOTEL looks like something out of a drawing. The long, twenty-story adobe building spreads out prettily over a desert landscape, surrounded by blossoming cacti with flowers so ginormous and bright, I have the urge to go and touch—just to make sure they’re not plastic.
Inside the marble lobby, two teenage girls whisper and point at Remy as he passes—because of course they noticed him. You notice him like you’d notice a bull walking past you in a hotel lobby. Their gazes quickly seem to scan us—the group that came in with him—and they start checking me out next.
I lift one of my eyebrows with an amused smile, and they seem to determine that I am probably his girlfriend, but I can’t help that my stomach does crazy twisting motions of proprietorship as they give him one last up-and-down with their starved little gazes.
“Look at those two infatuated girls! He’s always drawing eyes,” Diane tells me. “It doesn’t make you jealous?”
“Extremely,” I say, wrinkling my nose in disgust at my own jealousy.
Remy glances my way and winks as he and Pete wait for the keys, and Diane elbows me with a laugh.
“Goodness, that man knows his own appeal!” she says. “But I wouldn’t be jealous, Brooke, the entire team feels the love between you two. We’ve never seen him like this over anyone. No matter how many women paraded through here, he still went back for you.”
“What do you mean?” I frown at her. “Women paraded through where?”
“Our hotel.”
“You mean recently?”
My stomach drops, and I mean, drops, when Diane’s eyes widen, and her face loses all color.
She starts shaking her head, and then . . . then she starts glancing around as if she wants to hide in a f**king flowerpot! “Brooke,” she whispers, her tone apologetic as she backs up a step. Why?
Does she think I’m going to hit her?
Do I look like I’m going to hit someone?
I don’t want to hit someone, I can barely even stand.
Everything blurs as I turn to stare at Remy’s back. Across the lobby. I think of the way he moves, like a predator taking me, when we make love. In my mind, I see his eyes, the way he watches me come for him. I imagine him thrown across a hotel bed while dozens of women pleasure him, his blue eyes—my blue eyes—watching them come apart for him too.
And then, then I think that he might not have been blue. He could have been black. Remy in his rawest form, intense and manic, as reckless as he will ever be.
Because he’s not normal. Not even close to normal. He’s not only f**king Remington “Riptide” Tate—he’s bipolar and he swings from one mood spectrum to the next. When he goes manic, he does not remember, sometimes, what he does. And the month I left, he was very, very manic. His eyes, black and mysterious, looking at me desperately from a hospital bed . . .
My insides twist until my lungs feel jammed in my throat as I remember how he tried to pull his respirator off and stop me.
Heart pounding fight or flight, I locate Riley across the lobby, and he’s scanning his phone while I vividly remember him leading a bunch of glittery, beautiful women into Remington’s suite not so long ago—to “cheer” him up when he had a black episode.
Before I can stop myself, I charge over to him like a bullet, my fists trembling at my sides. “How many whores did you bring to Remington’s bed, Riley?”
“Excuse me?” He lowers his phone in complete puzzlement.
“I asked how many . . . whores . . . you brought to his bed. Was he even aware of what he was doing to them?”
He glances at Remington’s broad back, then he grabs me by the elbow and pulls me aside to the elevator bank. “You don’t get to have an opinion, Brooke. Remember? You left! You left when he was broken in a f**king hospital bed, Pete was babysitting your sister—in drug rehab—and I could barely pick up all the pieces of what your letter . . . your f**king letter . . . did to him! Something that you will never, ever even so much as comprehend! In case you have forgotten, Rem has a mood disorder. He needed to be pulled out of the f**king dark—”
“Hey.” Remington yanks him back by the collar and makes a fist as if he’s about to lift him. “What the f**k are you doing?”
Riley jerks free and glares as he retucks his tie into his stupid new Boss jacket. “I was trying to explain to Brooke, here, that things weren’t as happy as they are now when she was away.”
Remy shoves a finger into Riley’s chest. “It’s done with. You got that?”
Riley clamps his jaw, and Remington rams his finger into his chest so hard, he forces him back a step. “You got that?” he demands.
Riley nods tightly. “Yeah, I got that.”
Without another word, Remington curls his hand around the back of my neck and steers me into the elevator.