The bell rings, and my guy doesn’t waste time. He goes straight out to center ring, and while Scorpion seems to think they will jump around a bit, Remington jabs him three times, quickly enough to make the ugly animal stumble back.
Bubbles of excitement pop inside me. I cup my mouth and my screams instantly join the others. “Remy!!”
“Brooke?” Pete forces me down to my seat, but I’m so excited, I can’t stay down long. I feel him, Remington, in the weight in my belly; I feel him alive inside me and his energy within me.
The fight begins full force.
Remy slams his knuckles into Scorpion’s jaw, the punch jolting him. My chest can barely contain all the emotions inside me as my lungs labor for air. God, I’ve been waiting to see this happen for what feels like a thousand years, and I can barely stand it. The crowd has been waiting just as long to see this, and they’re yelling at the tops of their lungs. And so am I!
“Go, REMY!!!”
“Kill him, Remy!”
“Remington, I fucking love you! Ohmigod, I love you!” I scream.
“Brooke!” Pete says direly, and signals to my stomach. “All that jumping can’t be good.”
“It’s good, Pete. It’s so good!” The baby is shifting, and I’m getting some tolerable contractions, but I’ve felt them occasionally—I read the body starts practicing up to three months before delivery. I think baby feels my adrenaline. Or he knows Daddy is fighting. He squirms every time after a contraction, and I think there’s just too much action for him to relax now. How can we relax watching this? Ohmigod!
“I don’t know what it is about Remington and that ring,” Pete says. “But he just gets in it and whatever he’s living, he performs. Riley says it’s muscle memory, but I’m not too sure.”
“It’s Remy, Pete,” I tell him excitedly, and I grab and hug him.
Remington slams perfectly again, guarding, bouncing, and hitting, while Scorpion hasn’t landed a single punch. Not a single one. A chant spreads through the crowd: “Kill him, RIP! Kill him, RIP! Kill him, RIP!”
Pete told me that all the coaching in the world can’t turn a fighter into a strong hitter; you’re either a fierce puncher or you aren’t. He’d said that speed, you might work on, but not on making your hand heavy, and now I can see the difference in punching power.
Now I can see why Scorpion had to cheat to win the championship last season.
Between rounds, Remy bounces with energy, while Scorpion sits on his stool with his head lowered to the ground, his team working on smearing Vaseline or something on his cuts.
The bell dings again.
Remington comes off the ropes and jabs, but this time Scorpion jabs back, fast and accurately, disrupting his rhythm.
They go into a clinch. Remington jerks free and hooks with his right. Scorpion covers and comes back with a powerful punch that lands square in Remington’s rib cage.
The breath is knocked out of him, but Remy isn’t rocked. No. My tree isn’t rocked. Instead he starts punching those punches in bunches, his face concentrated and fierce, and Scorpion’s head starts swinging, blood pouring out of both his nostrils and from a cut near one of his eyes.
Scorpion hits back, his fist connecting with Remington’s jaw, causing blood to spill out of his mouth. Another contraction seizes me, and this time I’m having trouble remembering to breathe. The fight is intense, both thrilling and excruciatingly painful to watch.
The whirlwind of punching continues. Bouncing, chasing, they keep hitting each other. The difference in punching power is apparent. Remington is faster and stronger, and Scorpion seems to be the punching bag of choice today. He’s rocked, and he’s almost flattened out, but he won’t fall and keeps swinging out and landing punches right back at Remy. He grabs Remington by the neck and tries to throw him to the ground, and when he can’t, he lifts his knee and jams it into his stomach.
“Whaaat! That’s not fair!” I cry.
“Remington is a boxer; he never uses his legs except to stand, but anything goes here, Brooke. If Scorpion wants to bite . . .”
Fear peeks back inside me, and another contraction grips me, hard enough to make me bite back a moan of pain and sit down for a moment.
With an angry growl, Remington shoves Scorpion back and starts bulldozing him. Punch after punch. Wham! Wham! Wham!
I’ve seen him kill his speed bag, and his heavy bag, but I have never, ever seen him kill another man like this. Scorpion covers his head and ducks, and Remington charges, ramming into his gut, one, two, three times. Scorpion bounces back on the ropes and falls to his knees.
He spits on the ground and gets up with an effort, while Remington eases back as he catches his breath, his eyebrows low over his eyes, his eyes glimmering like a predator’s.
Scorpion charges forward and gets a lucky straight punch to Remy’s jaw, then he lands another hard punch to his right rib cage. Remy rocks backward.