“Brooke, oh, baby, she’s coming, isn’t she?” When I nod, he says, panting and with blazing blue eyes as he wipes my tears, “I got you, all right? You got me, baby; now I got you. Come here.” He scoops me up, and I cry into his damp throat and wind my arms around him as he starts carrying me to the exit.
“He’s not . . . supposed . . . to come yet. . . . It’s too soon. . . . What if he won’t make it . . . ?”
All my emotions had been corked up and bottled, and now they’re flooding me. We were supposed to do this after, after this fight. After we had the room ready. After we went to Seattle.
The crowd mobs us and the fans reach out to stroke his damp, tan, muscular chest as he makes a path for us, ignoring every yell, every call, everything but me.
“RIPTIDE, YOU ROCK! RRIIIIPPPPTIIIDE!”
A song begins blaring—absolutely blaring—through the speakers, and I don’t recognize the singer or the tone, when a voice joins in.
“At the request of our victor, who has a very special question to ask . . .” I hear the announcer say as Remington bulldozes us through the crowd, with my head pressed to his chest. I hear his heart beating. His breath. Every part of him, I feel it.
He keeps going through the throng of people, and even through my pain, I notice fans have white roses in their hands as we walk past them, and some are tossing them at us from the stands. Then I hear the song’s lyrics go on, until two words hit me like a shot of adrenaline racing through my bloodstream: Marry me. . . .
“Wh-what?” I gasp.
He doesn’t answer.
He’s snapping instructions to Pete to pull the car around as we finally exit the Underground, and when we get into the car, Nora climbs up in front with Pete.
Remington takes my face in his hands and looks at me, his voice thick with emotion and dehydration, his face swollen and bloodied and killing me because I can’t do anything about it.
“The song was supposed to ask you to marry me, but you’ll have to settle on me doing the asking,” he whispers, his eyes glowing blue and powerful in the dark. “Mind. Body. Soul. All of you for me. All of you mine.”
He squeezes my face between hands that are damp and callused and bleeding.
“Marry me, Brooke Dumas.”
TWENTY
WHEN THE TIME COMES
I said yes!
And I’ve been replaying his proposal in my head, over and over, while I stop thinking about these painful contractions. They’re getting closer and closer—less than a minute passes in between each. The urge to push is acute as I lie waiting in the hospital bed, but I’m not supposed to push yet.
Remy tucks a loose hair behind my ear with a pained expression. “Brooke . . .” is all he’s been able to say, almost like an apology as he looks down at me.
It hurts me to look at him. His face is streaked with blood and his jaw is slightly swollen. I want to touch and tend and mend it, but every time I try to reach out and do something about it, he stops me and sets a kiss on my palm instead.
“We need ice for your face,” I protest.
“Who cares about my fucking face,” he counters.
And then I moan when another contraction grips me and he growls like he feels it.
He clamps his jaw as he struggles to keep it together. When the nurse checks me at seven centimeters, she asks if I want to walk to get up to ten? I don’t want to, but I nod. Remington visibly shudders as he tries for control, and he helps me up from the bed. I clutch his forearm for support as we start walking out of the room, begging him, “Stay with me. Stay with me, okay?”
“Okay, Brooke,” he murmurs automatically.
We link our hands together, and his reassuring squeeze fills me with courage as we walk down the hospital hall.
He wraps his free arm around my waist as a fresh wave of contractions shakes me. “Distract me,” I plead.
“Did you like the fight?” he asks in my ear.
His blue eyes dance in delight, his lips stretched crookedly due to the swollen part of his jaw, and I painfully burst out laughing between contractions—because of course, of course, Remy would like to know.
“It kicked ass like you did, but now your baby is kicking the shit out of me.”
He helps me back to the room. Soon I’m in a haze of pain and all I want is to push, push, push.
By the time the doctor tells me I can push, I’m already exhausted.
Wrapping his strong arms around my shoulders from behind me, Remington buries his nose in my neck, as if my scent calms him. His scent calms me, and I try not to yell for his sake, because I want him with me, and I know he would never want to forget a moment like this. Chewing hard on my lip, I push and squeeze his hand while I swallow back my groans. Pushing harder against the pain, I push another time, harder and longer. I’d never wondered why it was called “labor” but now I know. After several more breath-stealing efforts, the baby finally slips out, and I groan tiredly as the pressure in my body eases, dropping my head back onto the table.
The doctor catches it, and through a gaze misted with relief, I see something wet, slick, and pink.
“It’s a boy,” we hear, and then the baby’s first cry tears into the room. His lungs may not be fully developed, but that soft little wail still makes my heart overflow with joy.