A CHAMPION IS SOMEONE WHO GETS UP WHEN HE CAN’T—JACK DEMPSEY

There’s a big wall with pinned photographs. And there she is, sprinting past the finish line with a number 06 in her chest.

I reach out to run the pad of my thumb down the length of her running figure. “Look at you,” I say, turning. She’s right behind me. Standing, like she shouldn’t be. I scoop her up and set her on the center of the bed, brushing some escaped tendrils of hair behind her shoulder. “Stay off your feet for me,” I chide.

“I will. I forgot. It’s habit.” She scoot backs on the mattress to make room for me and then she pulls me over her, whispering in my ear, “You should go or I won’t let you leave me.”

Instead, I cuddle her to me, my arms wrapped around her waist as I scent her, slow and deep, then I lick her slowly, then kiss her and murmur, “When you tell me you’re in bed, this is what I’ll picture. This is what you see.” Her eyes glisten with tears as she quietly nods.

“I’ll be back soon,” I assure her, curling my palm around her cheek as one lone tear slides down her cheek. I try to smile. “I’ll be here soon,” I repeat.

“I know.” She wipes her cheek, turns her head, and kisses the inside of my palm, then she forces my finger closed around her kiss. “I’ll be waiting for you.”

“Shit, come here.” I crush her in my arms, and she trembles and starts crying for real.

“It’s all right,” I whisper, rubbing her back, but she sobs harder. I whisper it’s all right, but the way she cries guts me. It’s not anything close to right. She needs me. She fucking needs me and she will be here, without me, struggling to keep our baby. Our baby that might just end up being like me, and instead of making the woman I love happy, our baby will hurt her, just like I do. It pains me. Maybe the child I put in her isn’t right. Maybe it’s not strong. Maybe it’s just like me, and everything I don’t want her to have to struggle with.

But I’m so fucking selfish, I still want it.

I don’t want her to lose it.

I want her, I want everything with her.

“You need to go,” she whispers, suddenly pushing me away.

Fuck, I haven’t even left and it already hurts as I breathe her in one last time and set my forehead against hers. I take her face in my hand and wipe her tears with my thumbs, rasping, “You okay, baby firecracker?”

“I will be. More than okay,” she assures.

Her phone vibrates, and she checks the message, her eyelashes wet with her tears. “Melanie is five minutes away.” Her voice cracks in the end as she turns her attention back to me. “Please go before I cry,” she begs.

I curl my fingers around the back of her neck and shut my eyes closed as I lean my head on her. “Think of me like crazy.”

“You know I will.”

I lean closer. “Now give me a kiss.”

She presses her lips to mine, and I spread out my hand on the small of her back, memorizing her, drinking her up because I’m going to be thirsty and there won’t be water for me until she’s home. With me. I feel a tear against my jaw and I lick it up from her cheek when we hear Melanie outside.

“Brookey!! Where’s the hot dad and the upcoming momma?”

I curse and take another hard, fast kiss before I go, sucking on her tongue, taking everything I can, then I ease back and survey her pink swollen mouth and beautiful wide eyes, with the dilated pupils, just for me.

“You’re everything I never knew I wanted,” I huskily whisper, tucking her hair behind her. “And all mine, remember that tidbit,” I add, forcing myself to stand. “Completely mine . . . Brooke Dumas.”

She watches me back up to the door, her chest heaving, her heart in her eyes. “I’m pregnant with your baby, if there was any doubt about whose I was,” she says, with a shaky smile.

“You’re both mine.” I point right at her. “Especially you.”

When I turn, she calls me.

“Hey! You’re mine, too.”

Nodding, I pull out my iPod and toss it straight at her. “Don’t miss me too much.”

She catches it like she just caught my soul, holding it tightly. “I won’t!” she cries, and I memorize every inch of the smile on her face. Brand it inside your fucking skull, Tate.

And I do.

It’s still in my head when I meet her friend out in the hall. “Hey, Melanie.”

She gives me the same doting look all my fans give me. “Hey, Remy.”

My eyebrows furrow. “I want to be the first to know anything. If she’s sick, if she’s lonely, if she needs me.”

She keeps nodding with that ridiculous smile. “Don’t worry, I will call you or make sure she does,” she assures, patting my chest with sparkling green eyes. “Now go.” She pats my chest again, this time flattening her palms and pushing, to no avail. “Go! You sex god! I’ll take care of your girl.”

I grab her wrists, lower them, then force myself to head to the elevator. In the car, I’m drumming my fingers on my knees. In the plane, I’m flying with my headphones at my side, but no music. She has my music now. She’s ALL. MY MUSIC.

When we land and I power up my phone, I get a message from her.

Call me tonight if you want to?

Hell, of course I fucking want to.

I’m still sweaty in the gym as I try to work out, but I grab my phone and call her, dropping down onto a bench while I suck up my Gatorade. No answer.

I call again.

No answer. After several tries, it vibrates with a text message.

My friends are still here. Maybe we should talk tomorrow?

I set my Gatorade aside to text. Same time?

Yes, any time

My thumbs are too blunt and big and I struggle to pound out Ok

Good night Remy

More struggling to write down You too.

Then I stare at the screen, but there’s no more.

I can’t sleep that night. I do sit-ups, push-ups, jump rope. I want her to marry a fucking champion, so I’ve decided I’ll be training like one. Hours later, I stop working out, sit up on the carpet, prop my arms over my knees and hang my head between them as I think of the smile I’m carrying around, branded in my head.

I take a shower and play on my iPad, beating the hell out of some guy at chess at five a.m., trying not to think how much I’m craving her. The smell of her, the feel of her, the look of her. I move my pawns and in my head I’m thrusting her and making her moan. In the morning, I’m calling the florist closest to her apartment, but it’s too early and they haven’t opened.

During breakfast, Pete and Riley study my face. “Who are you calling and calling? Let Brooke rest,” Riley says.

I sigh and put the phone down.

“Hey, look at me for a sec, Rem,” Pete says, alarm in his voice.

I lift my head, and I meet his gaze so he knows I’m not fucking black. This time my sadness doesn’t come from a chemical imbalance in my body. My sadness comes from my heart.

“Remy, here we go,” Diane says as she comes up with my breakfast, and she’s smart, that one is. She seems to sense I’m not hungry and will give her shit about the food, and she’s blended all kinds of things with egg whites in three huge glasses. I down them one by one. “Why do you keep redialing?” Pete asks, watching me. “I can do it for you, what do you need?”

“I don’t want Brooke to miss me.”

“All right, so what’s the plan?”

I drag my hands down my face and growl, “I feel like I’m breathing under fucking water without her.”

“Dude, she’s a fighter, like you. They’ll be all right. Both of them,” he stresses.

He heads over to grab my iPad to check the store number. He pats my back before he calls the florist.

“I want hundreds of roses, Pete!” I yell as he walks around the living room, talking into the receiver. “I want them all over her apartment,” I continue instructing. “All of them red. And I want every dozen to have a song so she’ll think of me. I need her to think of me.”

She does, think of me.

She calls and texts me, and I call and text her.

Every day I hear a report on what she did, how she is. The guys tell me it will get easier, but it doesn’t. It gets worse.

It doesn’t get any better until that fantastic day I finally get to go pick her up and bring her back on the circuit with me.

* * *

THE FINAL, FINALLY. My little firecracker and I made an agreement when she came back, and she better fucking stick with it. The thing is, Scorpion has blackmailed her sister back to his side too. Motherfucker.

Pete and I have planted a snitch, and we now know Scorpion had something on her, which must’ve been why she went back to that asshole. But I’m not letting Brooke step in this time. Tonight I take care of it all.

This season hasn’t been easy, but then nothing worthwhile ever is.

We’re headed down the hotel elevator, on our way to the Underground, and I’ve barely been able to shake myself out of the deepest hole in the history of my lows.

I’m trying to pump myself up for the fight with some mashups as we ride down the elevator, but though my body feels ready, my mind is with my girl. As we shuffle out of the elevator and into the hotel lobby, I grab Brooke by the hips and pull her back to me, murmuring, “In my peripherals.”

Her worried gold eyes meet mine, and I yank down my headphones.

“In your seat at all times, Brooke,” I say, while winding my fingers into her hair, then I crush her sweet, hot, delicious fucking mouth under mine. She looks dazed when I pull her back an inch, and I set my forehead on hers while I keep my eyes on her. “I adore you with every breath I take—in every ounce of me, I adore you.” Another fast, hard kiss later, I slap my favorite ass and whisper, “Watch me break him.”