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.
“A boy,” I gasp.
“A boy,” Remington gruffly repeats, and my chest floods as I hear the acceptance and contentment in the word. Remy doesn’t need to tell me, but I know that now, our son is real to him. Our son is real to both of us.
I smile quietly to myself while my eyes brim with tears. The doctor mumbles to the nurses as they cut the cord. “Breathing on his own. No complications. He’s still preterm—we still need to incubate.”
“We want to see . . .” I cry breathlessly. My arms are so weak that I can barely lift them, and I don’t even know why, since they hardly did anything while I pushed.
The tiny baby lets out another howl as they clean him, and then at last they bring him over to us. I don’t think Remington is breathing, while my own breath rushes out of my throat as I hold this tiny bit of life for the first time.
The doctor starts fixing me up while the nurse waits to take the baby to the NICU, but Remington has bent his dark head to mine. We nuzzle each other over the baby’s bald little head.
“I love him, Remy,” I whisper as I angle my head up, eager to feel his warm breath on my face, his lips on mine. “I love you so much. Thank you for this baby.”
“Brooke,” he tersely rasps as he engulfs us in his arms. I know that deep down Remy doesn’t believe he deserves this. Nobody taught him that he did, so I squeeze his big shoulders to me as tight as I can with one of my weak, trembling, tired arms while I hold the baby with the other.
“If he’s like me, we will support him,” he whispers worriedly in my ear. “If he’s like me . . . we’ll be there for him.”
“Yes, Remy. We will teach him music. And exercise. And how to take care of this little body. It will be strong and astound him and maybe frustrate him sometimes too. We will teach him to love it. And himself. We will teach him love.”
He wipes his eyes with the backs of his hands. “Yeah.” And he sets a kiss on my forehead. “Yeah, we’ll teach him all that.”
“Come hug us again,” I plead when he steps back as if I and this baby making the little chipmunk crying noises couldn’t possibly be his.
He moves back in and we melt in his embrace. He has the best hugs, and we fit perfectly right in. I feel him wipe a tear from the top of my head again, and it makes me start crying softly too. He is so strong. I never thought this small moment would do him in. I hold our baby in one arm because I need to hold Remington in the other. “Come here,” I encourage, holding out one arm. Then he drops his head and nuzzles me and I don’t know if my face is wetter than his. “I am so in love with you,” I whisper to him. “You deserve this and more. While you fight out there, I will fight for you to come home to this.”
He growls an exasperated sound and wipes his eyes again, like he hates crying. Then he grabs my face and kisses the back of my ear, his voice thicker than I’ve ever heard it. “I fucking love you to pieces. To pieces. Thank you for this baby. Thank you for loving me. I can’t wait to make you my wife.”
♥ ♥ ♥
I’M IN A private room by the time I get to see Nora again. She comes in looking flushed and happy, followed by Pete, who looks almost as flushed as she does. Maybe even more so. While Pete slaps Remington’s back and congratulates the new dad, Nora makes a beeline straight for me.
“Brooke, I saw him! I saw him through the window! He’s the tiniest baby there is!”
“I know, Nora, he’s so very little!” My voice quivers with emotion as I talk about him. “He’s not supposed to even be here yet, but the doctors are amazed by how well he’s developed for his age.”
She settles down at the corner of my bed and reaches for my hand, her eyes sparkling with happiness. We hold stares for a moment, and though I don’t want to wipe that smile from her face, I have to ask the question nagging at the back of my mind.
“Nora, what were you doing with Scorpion?” I wince as I try to sit up straighter, then I reach under the bed and adjust my position a little better. “Why didn’t you tell us he was blackmailing you so that we could help?”
A flush spreads from her chin up to her forehead, and she buries her face in her hands again. “It’s just so embarrassing.”
Remington signals from the door that he’s going out with Pete, and I lock gazes with my big lion, his hair disheveled, in the sweatpants and hoodie he just changed into, and I realize we have a baby together, and my chest swells so powerfully, I feel like I’m going to float like a cloud.
He whispers softly, his gaze shining with a mate’s pride, “We’ll be outside.”
“I’m sorry I caused you so much trouble,” Nora tells him.
He holds the door open and shakes his head, with one dimple peeking out. “No trouble at all.”
When the door shuts behind him, all I can hear is my sister’s soft sobs in the room, and my own voice as I reach out to pat the back of her head and gently ask her, “Did he hurt you?”
She grabs a tissue from inside her small purse and pats the corners of her eyes. “No. He was a mess. He said he missed me. He wanted me back and would do anything to keep me. It’s probably why he was fighting so fucking bad,” she says. “I’m glad he lost. I just hate that it still hurts me.”
“Oh, Nora.”
“When you came home, I couldn’t even think straight. You’re so . . . protected. Having his baby! He’s so in love with you. While I was in hell! Benny said he would spread the video around if I didn’t come back. He wanted to hurt you again. He wanted to have a way to make Remington lose. I didn’t want to be with him, but I was afraid he would blackmail you guys with that video about me! So I did. He offered me . . . drugs. . . . I wanted them. I really did, but I knew if I took them I’d never come home. My plan was to stay with him”—she pats her cheeks as her tears keep streaming, even though her voice is steady and strong—“until the season ended, and then he wouldn’t need me to hurt you two anymore. I figured I’d find a way to get the video back and run away from him.”
“Nora . . .” I open my arms, and she leans over and rests her head on my shoulder. “We need to move forward now,” I whisper. The words come out almost like a plea, because I have a baby now. A baby. He will need me, like my partner does, and I need Nora to be strong on her own. Remy has protected her for me, but I appoint it as my duty to protect my son and my guy just as fiercely—and this includes from my own family.
She curls out her pinky, like we used to pinky promise when we were young. Laughing, we hook them together. “Just don’t tell Mom and Dad. They’re desperate to see their grandchild and are flying over as we speak,” she tells me.
“Nobody has to know about the video. But they must have been thrilled to hear your voice on the phone.”
With new, curious excitement, she signals at the door. “So what are you guys going to call the little thing?”
I grin at her, ear to ear, and whisper, “I have no idea, so I hope the dad does.”
♥ ♥ ♥
HIS NAME IS Racer.
Racer Dumas Tate.
Because he was racing to the finish line, before we even set up camp.
The nurses say he’s a big boy, for a preemie, even though Remy and I think he’s so tiny.
God, he is perfection. Ten tiny fingers. Ten tiny toes. Pink little mouth. Little button nose.
He’s needed the incubator for four weeks now, but apparently he’s almost ready to go home. He doesn’t need a tube to be fed anymore, and he now weighs eight healthy pounds, which impresses everyone who can’t believe he was a preemie. Then, of course, they see the father and understand why this preemie is kind of big and healthy.
Remington spends the day training for next season while I hang around the hospital, determined to feed him my own breast milk so he’ll get all the nutrients and immune system benefits he needs. I’d also read about a “kangaroo method” where the nurses set the baby against the mother’s bare skin to strengthen and mature all of his systems. I love reading about all the scientific evidence of what skin-to-skin contact can do.
So once a day, the nurses bring Racer out to me, where I open my shirt and feel our naked little baby on my bare skin. Sometimes Remy is here, and he spreads out behind me, so he’s my kangaroo, and then I’m the baby’s kangaroo—as the method is called. But no. Remy doesn’t feel like a kangaroo behind me; he’s too primal for that. He nuzzles my collarbone and peers down at our baby while I feel him on my skin, and it’s exactly today, as we are doing this, when Racer finally opens his eyes to look up at us. And they are blue, an achingly familiar pristine blue, and I fall in love for the second time in my life.
♥ ♥ ♥
WE’VE BEEN DISCHARGED from the hospital, and the three of us are in Seattle, playing house at last.
Today is the fortieth day after labor, and tonight Remington and I will finally be able to have sex. Except he’s determined that the first time he takes me again . . . I be completely his. So, at noon, we’re off to city hall.
God, I am. Dying. To have my way with my baby’s sexy daddy.
“He’s asleep,” I whisper, from the chair in the living room where I sat to feed Racer this morning.
Remington is still in his pajama bottoms and bare-chested, and he comes over with such a proud, protective gleam in his eye, I die at the look on his face.
“Come smell him,” I whisper with a big, besotted smile.
He comes and takes a big whiff from the top of Racer’s head.
“He smells good, right?” I say.
“As good as you,” Remington gruffly whispers, and as I smell the baby, he scents me.
We laugh, and he slides his hands under my body to scoop me up and tells me, “Hang on to him.”
I do. He lifts me up while I hold the baby and carries us to the bed. “Diane is so excited about him—they all are. Is she here yet?” I ask.
“She’s on her way,” he says.
I nod eagerly.
Our iPod speakers are playing “Kiss Me” by Ed Sheeran. The song seems familiar somehow, but the familiarity of it really hits me as I set Racer down on the small cradle on my side of the bed, and Remington wraps me in his arms and starts kissing me. I want to do the girl thing and complain about my stomach. It’s still not completely flat, but he likes it, he kisses it. I want to complain with all these hormones in me, but I feel precious, treasured, and so lucky, I don’t even have words to say how much I wish this for the people I love. I know what it means to Remington to have a family now. He never lamented not having one. But now that he has one, I know he sees the difference. I know he sees what he was missing. Now he has a family to take care of, and one that takes care of him.
The knock on the door breaks us apart, and when Remy opens it, Diane steps in, beaming as she sees me in Remington’s red robe and him in his pajama bottoms. “I thought you two would be ready already!”
He kisses me roughly and excitedly, his eyes burning with a sheen of fire. “Go get ready. I can’t wait. To make you Mine.”
“I’m yours already!”
He scrubs his thumb down my lip. “I’ll be making you Mine your whole life.”
Running into the bathroom where I’d set my clothes out, I slip into them with fast, eager hands.
I can’t really leave Racer for more than a couple of hours, and our appointment is at twelve, so I didn’t want to torture myself with complicated attire. So I choose a plain but pretty white skirt and lacy white top to wear. Remington told me he’ll give me a big church wedding later, that he just can’t wait to make me his. I told him I don’t care about that, I just want the man!
The butterflies he gives me flutter full force as I pull my hair back in a bun that looks careless but pretty; then I try to perk up my face a little bit by pinching my cheeks so that nobody can tell Racer wakes me up so often at night.
When I walk out, my guy is already in the living room. Every single hormone in my body threatens to crash in on me and give me the weepy baby blues when I look at Remy in his black suit. Tall and broad-shouldered, he’s perfectly sculpted, his spiky hair all mussed as always, his blue eyes twinkling with love and excitement, and his dimples . . . he is all man, all boy, and all mine.
Before I know I’m crying, he comes over and he wipes my tears with his thumbs, laughing softly at me for being so emotional. Then he licks the corners of my eyes, sweeps me off my feet, and carries me out of our apartment.
The entire gang crowds city hall, everyone except Diane and our precious Racer, who we’re not supposed to expose too much until he gets stronger.
There’s Melanie, Riley, Coach Lupe. Coach even holds up a five-by-eight picture of a smiling Diane, telling us, “She wanted to be in both places at once, so I offered to bring her picture while she takes care of the future champion!”
My parents laugh by his side. My mother has tears in her eyes, and my father is beaming with pride. Pete and Nora stand by them, holding hands, since they’re trying to make a relationship work now that we will be in Seattle for a couple of months during the off-season. And Jo. She’s here, too, with that pert little grin and that army stance.
The excitement I feel bubbles in my chest and burns inside me as Remington and I walk up to where we will sign, my hand linked to his—to this tanned, callused, huge hand that I will never let go of.
And then we’re officially signing, getting married. He takes my hand in both of his, his blue eyes twinkling and liquid and entirely proprietary as he slips a ring on my finger.
The ring is platinum. “The white diamond is you,” he says in a terse whisper, lifting my hand up to my line of vision. And to the right of the central white diamond is a blue diamond, and to its left, a black diamond.
“You’re the other two,” I say, and the depth of my feelings nearly choke me as I frame his hard jaw between my small hands and kiss the hell out of him. “I love you.”
Then I take his big hand and slip the platinum band I got him, engraved smoothly on the inside, TO MY REAL, YOUR BROOKE DUMAS.
“MR. and MRS. RIPTIDE!!!” the gang calls when we’re done.
We laugh and Remington lifts me up from the ground, flings me up in the air and catches me. “Now you’re Mine,” he claims happily then squeezes me close and his laugh turns into a smoldering gaze. Running his eyes admiringly over my face, he holds the back of my neck, leans down, and gives me the softest, gentlest, most lingering kiss he’s ever given me in his life.
“We got you a gift, Brooke.” Pete and Riley hold out a box as they come over. “It’s from the team, including our new member, Jo.” I wave at Jo at the end of the aisle and then tear open the gift.
A flash of red appears, and I pull out a shiny red robe identical to Remy’s boxing robe. But this one reads RIPTIDE’S GIRL.
Smiling delightedly, I hug them, but not for long, because I hear a growl and am pulled into bigger, stronger, more possessive arms.
Forty days of pent-up sexual desire ride with us on the way home. Primitive sexual energy swirls between us like a growing tornado, feeding on our emotions. On our happiness, our love. Our need. When we enter our apartment, Racer is sound asleep in his cradle, which Diane seems to have pulled out to the living room. She sets down a magazine when we come in and, with a happy squeal, embraces Remington so tight, he chuckles in surprise. Then she wraps her warm arms around me.
“I hope you both know I will treat this baby like a grandson,” she tells us.
“Diane,” I say with emotion, completely moved by her words, “thank you.”
Remington smiles at her, his dimples all gorgeous, and Diane hugs him one last time before she leaves. Remy pulls off his black tie and tosses it aside. Flicking open the top button of his snowy white shirt, he pulls me into his arms and takes my mouth, mating his tongue to mine as he lifts me to a sleek wood console by the entry.
“I need to kiss”—he slides his hands all over my curves—“my beautiful wife.”
Shudders of happiness and love course through all my body as I slide my hands into his spiky hair and devour his lips as fiercely as he does mine. Racer wakes up, on the clock, with a sudden wail, and we both tear free and turn to the noise. Before I can push off the console, Remington sets me down and kisses the back of my ear, his voice terse: “Feed him so you can feed me next.”
“I have a good idea of what you want, so okay.”
“Okay?” he calls as he ambles into the kitchen, and I lift Racer from his cradle.
“More than okay!” I shout. “Bring the cradle when you come to the bedroom.”
Quickly, I sit at the edge of the bed and I jerk my top off, pull my bra down, and press our protesting little baby up to my breast, checking the clock to alternate between breasts.
Soon, Remy sets the cradle down on my side of the bed and starts pacing.
My lion is restless.
A supercharged sexual current floats between us—it has been charging for forty days. In my mind, I have fucked Remington a thousand ways, and I know he’s been eye-fucking me every day.
While I feed Racer, Remington watches intently. He finishes one peach and two apples, and he is now pacing again, watching me feed our son as he flicks open the buttons of his jacket, then of his entire shirt. His eyes are hungry. I am so hungry. I’ve never yearned like this. We’re used to quick fixes in this life, but there’s no quick way of fixing your body after childbirth, and we had to wait no matter what. But god, Racer is such a good baby. He eats and sleeps. I feel like he knows that Daddy is special. And he tries to make it easy on me. I guess if he doesn’t, we’ll just get help. We have options. Choices. We own ourselves, our lives, and we and the people around us are happy with them.
“You done yet?” he asks roughly, pacing to come see as he untucks his shirt from his slacks. He’s so possessive. Every day, every night, he pulls me close and tells me I’m his. But he doesn’t realize every time he says that, he’s also saying he’s mine. You can’t really own something that doesn’t own you right back, not even a car.
While I feed our son, we listen to music and play each other songs, and play songs for Racer. Now Remy’s shirt drapes to his sides, revealing his eight-pack, and he comes and puts his hand on the breast Racer isn’t already occupying. He holds my neck and leans down and kisses me.
Desire rushes through my veins, and by the time Racer stops suckling and dozes off, Remington edges back and looks at me, his lids weighted, my lips throbbing from his kiss.
“Do you remember asking about family you didn’t miss because you never had one?” I whisper, reaching out and curling my fingers on his jaw, loving that his lips look swollen from our kiss too. “You don’t miss it because you do have one. You built one, Remington. You went straight to being the head of one. And you know what? Your family isn’t with you because of destiny or blood or because they have no choice. They’re with you because they love you. And chose you.” I gaze into his blue eyes. “I choose you.”
Still keeping Racer to my breast, I reach behind me and pull out a folded envelope that I tucked into my nightstand behind me. “I wrote you a letter.”
Lips curling cockily, he reaches out for it, but I hold it back with a smile of mischief. “I’ll trade it with you, in exchange for my old letter.”
“No,” he says, tweaking my nose.
I laugh. “You greedy man! Yes!” I insist.
“What does it say?” he asks, his eyebrows raising in a dare.
“You’ll get to see if you give me my old one, which I wrote when I was young and scared, and you get this new one, which I wrote now when I am . . . when I am yours.”
His eyes blaze at my last words. When he pulls the old letter out of his nightstand, I quickly take it away, so that he never has to remember that I left him, because now I will never leave. “You can read this new one any time,” I tell him as I stand and head for the cradle, and his eyes flash. He nods as he places it on the nightstand.
Instead of reading it, he watches me set Racer down, and as he waits for me to settle him on his side, he goes to the iPod already sitting on our speakers. When we drove back from city hall, I told him I felt like playing him “From This Moment” by Shania Twain and Bryan White, and all of a sudden, the song is filling our bedroom.
My heart trembles as I turn around to look at him, my hands empty, empty of him. He curls his fingers at his sides and drags in a deep breath, his gaze blazing with blue-hot yearning, and in a fraction of a second, we both snap into movement on the opposite sides of the bed. I start to frantically strip off my skirt and he jerks off his shirt, our eyes watching what the other does.
I’m naked before he is, and I climb into bed and crawl across it, reaching out to undo his pants. In one jerk, he grabs the back of my head and crushes my mouth like he hasn’t kissed me in his whole life. Sparks race throughout my body as our mouths feast and we both make starved groaning sounds. Eagerly I push his dark slacks down his hips, and the buckle hits the floor. He kicks them aside and lowers me to the bed, and not for a moment does his mouth leave mine. My hands slide up his hard muscles, his smooth skin, as I feel all his calluses rasping over me and every part of my body awakens for him.
“I want you, I love you like nothing in my fucking life, nothing,” he passionately rasps, brushing my hair back, and I shudder as our lips lock again and we roll on the bed. He pulls my arms up and laces our fingers together as I lock my legs around him. He eases inside me, and I gasp and mew and lick into his mouth as I feel his length, his width, his pulsing hardness advancing in me. Groaning in pleasure, he licks me back, penetrating with slow, delicious control even though I feel the vibrant tension in his body above mine.
“You okay?” he rasps, heatedly kissing my neck, opening his fingers on mine and linking them together tighter as his lips rub and dance over mine.
“More than okay,” I breathe. Arching my spine, I part my mouth as his tongue delves and takes mine, our hips rocking, our mouths moving fast while our bodies move slow and lingeringly as we make love to each other for the first time as husband and wife.
“I love you,” I whisper like a chant as he fills me, over and over, and he repeats it back to me every time he pushes inside, squeezing my hands. “I love you too.”
He leaves me all sticky, on the inside, and on the outside, and when we’re spent and tired, he growls and pulls me close and slides his finger down my thigh, then he slowly and lovingly pushes his semen back in with his fingers as he spoons me. Using his nose, he brushes my hair back, nuzzling my neck as he does all his lionlike things, grooming and licking and loving me, whispering that I am his. And I close my eyes as he clutches my stomach, like we sometimes forget Racer isn’t there anymore, and I clutch his hand over mine and nod when he murmurs in my ear, “Mine.”
At night, Racer doesn’t cry out to eat, and I wake up startled and concerned, only to find Racer soundly sleeping in his father’s arms. Remington holds him like he holds me, firmly but gently. Racer makes little chipmunk noises as he breathes, his hair dark as Daddy’s, but his skin pink and soft, whereas Daddy is big and hard, and suddenly, I am quietly crying from the happiness I feel.
The heart is a hollow muscle, and it will beat billions of times during our life. About the size of a fist, it has four chambers, two atria, and two ventricles. I use it like I use my soul, and my body, and my bones, my fibers, my nerves, to love with every particle and molecule in me. It pumps life into me so I can give this love freely to this one man, and to this little boy he gave me.
I’m in love and I will be forever changed by this love, by this man, and our new little family.
I used to dream of medals and championships, and now I dream of a blue-eyed boy who will grow into a man, and of my blue-eyed fighter who one day changed my life when he put his lips on mine.
