I go to the bathroom and start throwing up.

* * *

THE HEAT IN the Phoenix Underground arena is oppressive.

The costly seats are crammed together, one after the other, and about five hundred people are now wildly screaming as Butcher and Hammer have a go up in the ring. Then wham! Smack! And Hammer ends up bloody and motionless on the floor.

“Wow, that was unfortunate for Hammer,” Pete says.

Kirk “the Hammer” Dirkwood hasn’t even twitched since he dropped splat on the canvas.

Butcher, though, is an enormous fighter. So meaty he’s double or triple the size of any other fighter, his fists look like iron balls, and his knuckles look like spikes. He’s just been announced the victor, and now he yells out a string of curses to the crowd, tells them he’s the “greatest motherfucker this ring has ever seen!” and suddenly, the canvas shudders under his feet as he angrily starts marching in the ring, yelling even louder, “BRING ME RIPTIDE! Let me have a fucking go at Riptide!!!!”

They’re dragging an unconscious Hammer out of the ring, and my stomach is knotting up by the second as Butcher bangs his chest like a gorilla and keeps yelling in a voice that is frighteningly craggy and monster-like. “RIPTIDE!! You hear me? Come out, pussy! Come face me like you did Benny!”

“He’s chums with you-know-who,” Pete tells me with a roll of his eyes. “And now, thanks to last year’s final, he thinks he can beat Rip too.”

The crowd gets restless. I notice that the Butcher’s hunger has only aroused the public. They heard the name, and it spreads like wildfire across the stands, starting with murmurs and rising to a crescendo: Riptide! Riptide! RIPTIDE!

Immediately I know, with every fiber in me, that they’re going to bring him out. He’s wanted, not only by Butcher, but by the entire screaming arena.

“Riptide! Riptide! RIPTIDE!” they chant.

I feel like a ginormous fist is squeezing the contents out of my stomach as I wait for a glimpse of him. He’s angry at me. He’s angry at me because I’m being ridiculous and I hate that I can’t stop being ridiculous and then I’m angry at myself.

“Riptide, Riptide!!” the crowd continues screaming for him.

There’s a commotion as the organizers seem to scramble to comply as the crowd’s demands get even louder.

“RIPTIDE! RIPTIDE!”

“Give us fucking RIPTIDE!”

The speakers flare to life, and the announcer sounds breathless. “You asked for him, ladies and gentlemen! You asked for him! Now, let’s bring out tonight the one you are all here to see! The one, the only, RRRRRRRiiiiiiippppppppppptiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiide!”

The crowd roars in delight and my body screams in silence as all my systems kick into overdrive. My heart pumps, my lungs expand, and my eyes hurt as I pin them fixedly on the walkway. All the vessels and capillaries in my body dilate to accommodate blood flow, and my leg muscles feel ready to run, even though all I can do is squirm uneasily in my chair. I can’t ever seem to make my body realize that Remy is not in danger. Nor am I. My brain cannot comprehend that the man I love does this for sport, for a living. For his mental well-being. So I sit here while my body unleashes all the same hormones it would if I were being cornered by three raving bears ready to eat me.

And then I see him enter the arena—strong, magnificent, in control.

He takes the stage quickly and removes his robe while Butcher keeps pounding his chest as the crowd receives Remington with all their love and devotion. Like they always do.

I hold my breath and my hands fist in my lap as I wait for him to look at me.

It kills me. First, I watch in anticipation, then in dread, then in disbelief, as he makes his turn, unsmiling, then drops his arms at his sides and gets into place. The bell rings.

The men charge. I wince when Remy’s head flies to the side from the impact.

“Oh, no!” My stomach drops, my eyes blurring when I see blood.

The awful sounds of bone cracking against flesh follow, one after the other, as Butcher delivers three more consecutive blows, all to Remy’s face.

“Oh, god, Pete,” I gasp, covering my face.

“Shit,” Pete tells me. “Why didn’t he fucking look at you?”

“He hates me.”

“Brooke, come on.”

“We . . . he’s . . . I’m having trouble coping with the women, all right?”

Pete looks at me with a conflicted expression, and his stare bores into my profile, as if he wants to say something but can’t.

Remington growls angrily and lifts his guard as he shakes his head, easing back. His face is bloodied from the nose, the lips, the little scar on his eyebrow, and I don’t even know where else.

Butcher swings again, but Remy blocks, and they exchange jabs for about a minute until the round break is called and they go to their corners. Riley puts something on the wounds, and Coach is yelling stuff to him. He nods, shakes his arms out, flexes his fingers, and comes back, angry now, as he goes toe-to-toe with that burly awful beast and his spiked knuckles.

They go at it again. Swinging and slamming.

Remington feints to the side and Butcher throws his fist into the space where Remy used to be. Remington comes back with an uppercut to the face that connects so hard Butcher rocks sideways.

It takes a few moments for Butcher to recover his footing. He swings out his arm, but Remy ducks and comes back with a punch to the ribs, the gut, and the face, all landing with perfect speed and precision. Pow, pow, pow!

Butcher throws a fist out once again, aiming for Remy’s face, but Remy blocks the punch and once again returns with a hit of his own—slamming his knuckles straight into Butcher’s ugly fat face. Butcher falls to his knees.

At my side, Pete’s excitement keeps building, and I hear him mumble, “Come on, Rem. Why are you letting him get in? You’ve got this.” He turns to me and whispers, “You can teach speed and agility, but you can’t ever teach a man to be a heavy puncher like Rem is. Soon as he starts hitting like he wants to, it’s over.” I see he’s grinning, but I am not.

Remy is still bleeding, and as the fight progresses, he keeps catching a couple of punches with his body.

I loathe, loathe, loathe when he gets injured, even though it’s my job to help him recover. He laughs and spits, almost like he’s enjoying it.

Last season’s nightmare of a fight did something to me, and watching this—this—kills me all over again.

My fear has grown and festered, and tonight, it is overwhelming. For a moment, my head spins faintly—but at the same time, I’m sure my adrenaline is keeping me awake, keeping my body fed and ready to defend him.

Butcher stands up again and whacks out another punch to the face, and Remington’s head swings, but his body stays firmly planted. My tree is always so firmly planted. He swings, and hits back even harder. The two men clinch, then shove away from each other, and Remington charges again, the blood on his face pouring in streams now as, once again, he goes pow pow pow!

His rapid, consecutive punches cause Butcher to start backing off. The fat man bounces on the ropes behind him but refuses to fall. Remy corners him, his chest glistening with sweat and his muscles rippling as he smashes Butcher’s gut and then his face.

My breath has left me. Fear chafes my insides along with other, colliding, sensations, like this incredible arousal that always seizes me as I watch him battle. He’s so spectacular. The power in his body, the ripple of his muscles, the perfect flex when each muscle hardens and lets go. Remington uses both intellect and gut instinct to fight. He seems to plan, plot, then just roll with it, but more than anything, he seems to live in the moment. To love it.

His face is concentrated now as he pummels Butcher until the man has crashed down in a red pool at his feet. Literally, at his feet. His face splat on Remy’s boots.

Remy’s lips curl in pleasure by the sight, and he steps aside, turning his body in my direction.

“RIPTIDE!” the announcer yells, and as his arm is yanked up high in the air, his gaze finally targets me.

My pulse stops inside me. The noise is gone. Even my heartbeat feels nonexistent. It’s stupid how much I need this, but when he finally lifts his arm and swings his head to me and his desperate, angry, blue eyes land on me, I shudder in my seat.

His gaze is vividly possessive and furious, a drop of blood sliding to his eyelid from his cut eyebrow, blood dripping from his nose and lips.

And when the ringmaster asks him something, he nods, and they call up another fighter for him.

“Yeah, now he’s gonna need to work off that rage,” Pete mumbles to himself.

A new tornado of nerves sweeps through me when I hear this. I swear, if I didn’t know better, I’d think he was doing this just to torture and punish me. The endorphins will keep him from feeling any pain. In fact, he’s so proud and driven that he’s relentlessly taught his body to embrace it. He constantly pushes it to the limits, and I think his threshold for pain might be higher than that of any other athlete I’ve ever met, but my own limits have been way beyond met for the evening.

Remington scores several hits on the new guy, using great combinations of punches, but although Riley tried curing him at his corner, blood continues pouring down his face.

Both fighters exchange hard jabs and suddenly the ring is a swirling maelstrom of flesh moving and muscles hardening. I keep track of Remy through the ink bracelets on his biceps as he throws what I’ve heard Riley call “punches in bunches.” He scores one in the ribs, one in the jaw, and then he throws in a right hook, his most powerful punch.