Remington takes the gel pack, sets it aside, and looks directly at me, where I sit motionless on the seat across from his.
He wears his gray sweatpants and a comfortable red hoodie, the hood drawn over his head in order to keep his body temperature leveled. He’s sprawled, big and quiet, in the seat, but his nose is bleeding, his lips are bleeding, the slash above his eyebrow is bleeding. His face is such a mess, I feel like there’s a bomb inside my stomach just looking at it. And yet he looks back at me with clear, observant blue eyes.
I guess I should get used to the fact that my boyfriend gets punched for a living, but I can’t. I can’t sit here and see his face, bleeding and swelling, without wanting to hurt whoever did this. I want to punch something really badly, and I’m shaking with the need to reach out and hug and draw him to me while I mentally count the minutes it will take to reach our hotel.
I hear Riley tell me, “Here, Brooke, let’s exchange so you can tend to him.” Jolting from my seat, I settle down on Remington’s right, and quickly delve into his open duffel bag, extracting my alcohol swab packets, some salve, and strips.
“Let me try to fix you,” I whisper to him, and my voice, oh god, it sounds so intimate even when the entire car is watching. It’s just that I don’t seem to have any other tone except the one that came out: low and sandpapery with emotion.
He turns fully in my direction to let me disinfect the wounds, and his gaze . . . I can feel it, a roaming, curious, palpable thing on my face as I apply the salve to the part of his lips that always gets cut—the fleshy part of his bottom lip. My teeth instinctively bite down on my own as I press some salve into his. God, I loathe when he gets hurt.
“Do the eyebrow one too; it looks a little deep,” Pete instructs.
“Yes, I got it,” I reply, still in that voice I don’t want to use right now but can’t seem to modify. I’m trying to be efficient with my hands, but they’re shaking more than I want them to, and the heat of Remington’s body, which is extra hot after the fight, surrounds me as completely as his arms sometimes do. His fast breath bathes my temple, and it takes everything in me to quell the impulse to lean closer and breathe it inside me just to appease myself with the knowledge that he’s all right. And at least breathing. Still pumped up with adrenaline, I head to the gash above his eye and press the wound closed between two fingers. God. I almost can’t take being this close to him. A hundred little prickles run from my fingers, to my arms, straight to my throbbing little heart.
Dragging in a breath, I add gentle pressure to the cut while I inspect the rest of his face . . . to find the blue of his eyes completely zeroed in on me. Things grip inside me.
He’s sprawled in the seat, angled in my direction, but his stillness makes me hyperaware, for I can feel all the coiled energy in his body as if he’s ready to spring. On me.
My heart kicks up a little more in speed, and I hold my breath as I lean closer, grab another tissue, and whisper in the most level voice I can manage, “Close this eye.”
Keeping the slash above his eyebrow pinched together, I start cleaning the blood that’s dripped to his eyelid. Obeying me, he squints one eye closed and remains watching me with the other as if there’s something in my expression that he craves to see.
His voice suddenly rasps through the dark. “I’m all f**ked up.” The unexpected, guttural whisper prickles across my skin and almost makes me jump. “My right bicep’s f**ked and my shoulder, my left oblique and trap.”
“Dude, that’s insane. How can you f**k all that up in a night?” Riley asks in bewilderment.
“Brooke, you know what to do,” Coach commands from up front.
Quickly nodding, I look into Remington’s blue, blue eyes, the way they shine in male contentment, and I clamp my jaw when it finally dawns on me what’s going on here.
WHEN WE REACH our hotel suite, I am fuming.
“You let him punch you on purpose.”
He plops down on the bench at the foot of the bed and looks at me, tossing an empty Gatorade bottle aside. “I’m all f**ked up, come fix me.”
“You are f**ked up, all right, but it’s not the bicep that needs some tender loving care!”
“You’re right—it’s not.” His eyes shimmer in the soft lamplight as he watches me. “Are you going to come fix me?”
“Only because you pay me to.” Huffing angrily, I grab my massage oils, specifically my arnica oil and my mustard oil for inflammation, then I go and turn on the shower. “We’re getting you in a cold shower.”
His lips curl as he stands and waves me over, and when I come over in puzzlement, he wraps his big arm around my shoulders. “What? You need help to walk? You were bouncing a few minutes ago,” I tell him.