It just feels wrong to have all these seats between us, my iPod tucked in my bag, and my guy so far away.
He leans as far back in his seat as possible, and across the plane aisle, he stretches his arm and opens his large hand. I link my fingers through his, and then it feels right again. He keeps checking out his man stuff, and I keep talking with Diane about baby stuff, his hand holding mine across the aisle.
? ? ?
AS PETE AND I settle down in the Austin Underground, I have the misfortune of spotting two of Scorpion’s goons watching us from across the ring. I blink in surprise and immediately scan the crowd for Nora.
I can’t find her anywhere, and when my attention drifts back to the goons, I find that their attention is still on us.
One of the guys has a shaven head, and the other proudly wears a scorpion tattoo on his cheekbone, just like his boss used to before Remington carved it out the day he went for Nora.
Nora . . .
The thought of her fraternizing with Scorpion and his minions makes me wretched, and the thought unfortunately also comes with the sensation of a thousand legs crawling on my skin. I’m torn between the multiple urges: to vomit, to run away, and to march over to these thugs and demand they tell me where my sister is. I feel like a compass gone crazy and I don’t know what to do, where to point, or how to react, so I instead sit here and keep watching them—feeling very much like a little baby doe, even if Pete sits beside me, armed to the teeth with little gadgets.
When the two men slowly rise and start working their way around the ring, the realization that they’re heading straight for us makes my lungs constrict. My heart kicks fiercely into my rib cage while my rioting insides fall completely still in dread.
Tense in his plastic chair, Pete whispers, “They’re probably going to watch Scorpion fight later—or they’re scouting Remington. Check how he’s fighting, if there’s any visible injury. Please, for the love of god, don’t do anything, and ignore them.”
I watch the pair stop before us with a sinking in the pit of my stomach. “Don’t move, Brooke,” Pete warns under his breath.
Fiercely aware of the now nearly six-month-old baby in my round little stomach, I force my eyes down to the cement floor while my blood vessels dilate inside me. My legs shake as I curl my hands protectively around our baby, whose heart we’ve already heard and who I want as far, far away from these men as possible.
But these are two of the jerks who tried to provoke Remington into fighting at a club last season, and pretending I don’t see them when I can actually smell their stench goes against all my instincts to kick their insteps and smash their nuts in.
“Hello, Remy’s bitch. Want to give us a little kiss?” one of them sneers.
Rage and impotence well inside me as the rows of seats start filling up around us, and I force myself to keep my eyes on their feet and hope they’ll go away, or that Pete will finally grow some bigger balls and do something.
“I suggest you two get lost,” Pete says calmly.
“We’re not talking to you, skinny, we’re talking to the whore. She don’t remember her * got as wet and sopping as a seal when the boss made her kiss him? Right at this very moment your little sister is getting fucked well and hard by the boss, right in front of all his other girls.”
My head snaps back up as my body flushes in humiliation. Shaking in my seat, I clench my teeth and fist my hands at my sides as I wish for a couple of bottles to crack across their skulls. “Go back to the hole you crawled out from and tell your asshole boss that Riptide is gonna bury him this year!” I grit out.
“Brooke,” Pete grabs my elbow in warning while the two assholes laugh.
“You want us to tell him you said that? Remy’s newest whore?” The bald one spits on the ground, a centimeter from my feet. “Do you—bitch?”
“I’m warning you guys to leave,” Pete repeats, rising to his feet and reaching into his jacket.
I’m full force defense mode, and my blood is pumping as I flip out my middle finger at them. “By all means. Tell him to fuck off and that he’ll soon regret not leaving my sister alone.”
Suddenly, Josephine grabs the guys by the backs of their shirts, her voice deceptively calm as she asks, “Looking for a real woman, gentlemen?”
Pete pulls me up from my seat and drags me down the row while my heart pumps with such violence, I can barely breathe.
“What was that about?” Pete spins me around, his eyes aflame in indignation. “A little bit of pepper spray in my pocket make you feel all freaking feisty?”
“Pete, you’re a daffodil. Why didn’t you use it? They were breathing down our necks!”