Mine (9 page)

Sunlight steals through the window. Remington isn’t in bed. I twist to scan our cute little cottage but can’t see him anywhere. I force myself to slide out of bed and hop into my track pants, then my sports bra and top.

After freshening up, I grab my sneakers and pad out barefoot to find Diane in the kitchen. “Good morning, Brooke,” she says merrily. I love how she travels with her aprons and gives every one of our hotel rooms such a cozy ambience.

She even travels with her green ceramic pans—ones that don’t shed aluminum, so Remington’s food is completely pure.

“Hmm, it smells divine,” I say as I wander around in search of breakfast.

“Dive in. The big man asked me to set a ton aside for you.”

I lift a bowl of sweet potato hash and munch. “What time did he leave?”

“Pete came and got him a couple of minutes ago.”

“Pete? Not Riley? What gym did he go to?” There’s a knock on the door, and I lick the coconut oil Diane used to cook the hash from my fingers as I go to open it.

“Brooke Dumas?”

A woman stands holding a medium-size box wrapped in red paper but without a bow. “Yes?”

Her smile widens. “Mr. Tate ordered this for you.” She hands me the huge box, and I stare in disbelief.

“Remington sent me this?” I ask stupidly.

“Yes, miss. Enjoy.” I kick the door shut as she leaves, my hands full of the big box of surprise Remington sent me.

Ohmigod. He’s completely unexpected. He not only seduces me with music, with his blue devil eyes, with his spiky hair, with his dimples and his delicious fucking smell, he gets me presents?

I immediately tear the box open and discard the top, and I see lots of white packing peanuts inside. I stick my hand among the bubblelike shapes and feel a bunch of tickles running up my finger. Frowning, I take my hand out, and three enormous scorpions come out attached to it.

For a moment, everything is in slow motion.

Everything.

I can see the insects perfectly moving up my arm. I can see the long, segmented tails. The claw on the tail’s tip, the two claws up front, and the eight legs moving on my forearm. I also dazedly register three black dots on each of their heads, as if they have three eyes. Do scorpions have three eyes?

Everything, I register.

In half a second.

And then, in the very next second, I register something else. That this is one of the most WHAT-THE-FUCK MOMENTS
OF MY LIFE
.

I fall back and kick the box. A dozen or more scorpions come crawling out as I try shaking off the ones already on me. My heart has flown up to my throat and now it’s constricting my airway as it flutters and pounds in my pure building hysteria.

“HOLY SHIT! HOLY SHIT! DIANE!”

I have scorpions. Scorpions. Crawling. Up my fucking arm! They are huge, half the size of my palm, each with eight legs. Seriously? Only eight legs? I feel
a thousand
legs on me. I feel legs on every inch and centimeter of my skin. I start convulsing and shaking like crazy on the floor, screaming when I feel my first sting on my forearm. “OH MY GOD, DIANE!!”

Suddenly I feel a fourth one crawling up my ankle and I notice that all this time, Diane has been screaming hysterically. “
Brooke! Oh my god! Somebody do something!”

“GET THEM OFF ME, DIANE!! GET THEM OFF!”

I don’t know why I am yelling frantically as if that will scare them away. Afraid to touch them with my hand, I’m instead twisting and squirming on the floor when a bucket of water crashes upon me. I suck in my breath as I watch Diane rush back to the kitchen, fill another pan full of water, and throw it at me. But the scorpions are hanging on.

I reach for one and try to push it off me, and its tail snaps at me. The stinger hits my thumb. Instant pain shoots into me as the others keep crawling. Crawling. On me. I don’t know if these animals have been drugged or starved or given something to alter them. They are almost crawling on me like spiders, fast and frantic over me. One swings its tail and sticks its stinger into the skin of my forearm. Then it sticks a second stinger into me. Pain shoots through me. I feel another sting up on my arm, and then I stop squirming and freeze. Fight or flight is full force in me. But I can’t run, and I can’t fight, and now I freeze, my body paralyzed in fear while all my organs go wild at the threat these things pose to me. All my fear rushes to the forefront, and I start crying helplessly.

I’m on the floor, sobbing, the only thing moving on me is the awful legs belonging to these awful creatures, when I hear Diane screaming tremulously into the phone, “Get back here! Get back here
please
!” She keeps repeating the same thing, over and over, when she suddenly swings the door open and screams out into the hall, “REMINGTON!”

Everything’s hazy as almost immediately, or maybe a few minutes later, I don’t know, the door slams open wider with a crashing noise. Through my tears, I see
him
, and I can picture what he sees. Scorpions all over me and
me
, doing nothing, crying like a baby, as afraid as I’ve ever been in my life. My vision blurs completely from something other than tears, and I wonder if it’s the venom. I feel shocks all over me. I feel the scorpions being yanked from me with bare hands, one after the other, as I sob.

Then he grabs me, and I’m in his huge arms, steady arms that hold a body that is mine—is it mine? Is this body that is falling apart mine?—and I am shaking and in an agony of pain.

I try climbing up him higher, like a tree, and cling to his neck as I sob and try to breathe, sucking in his scent like it’s the only way my body can remember to breathe again. He’s breathing hard. His hands are fists in my back, and they are shaking. Then they start rubbing up and down. His hands reach my face and he furiously wipes my tears.

“I got you,” he hisses passionately in my ear, squeezing me none too gently. “I got you.
I got you
.”

“A woman just came and knocked!” Diane’s frantic words tremble with tears. “She said Remy had ordered the box for her!”

“
Jesus
,” Pete says in disgust. “Let’s not throw them away, Diane; we need to see what kind they are. Call an EMT and let’s just crush the motherfuckers—give me a pan.”

Remington’s voice is hard as granite in my ear. “I’m going to kill him,” he promises me. “I swear to god, I’m going to kill him so slowly.”

“Just save it for the ring, Rem. Sabotaging your championship is exactly what he wants,” Pete says between whacking noises.

Remy’s voice is a hiss as I feel him rub his hands over me. “Where did they bite you? Tell me exactly where, and I’ll suck all the poison out.”

I’m gasping for breath as if my air ducts were suddenly swelling. “I . . . e-everywhere . . .”

“You shouldn’t suck on these—let me have a look at her,” Pete says.

I cling to Remington, and he tightens his arms around me and slowly rocks me, his entire body shaking almost like my own as he speaks into my ear. “I got you, little firecracker, I got you right here in my arms,” he whispers, and I can hear the barely unleashed fury in his voice.

“Rem, let me see her,” Pete begs him.

“No,” I moan, and I clutch Remy harder because I know that if I die, this is the way I want to go. Oh my god, am I going to die? Who’s going to take care of him? “Don’t let go, don’t let go,” I moan.

“Never,” he promises in my ear.

“According to Google, they’re Arizona bark scorpions. Venomous but not deadly.”

“Hang on to me,” Remy whispers, and then we’re in motion. My vision blurs even more. My tongue is thick. Saliva in my mouth. Can’t breathe. I’m shaking as he lifts me, and the sensation of being electrocuted from the inside increases to an alarming level.

“Where the heck are you going with her, Tate?”

Remington’s growl rumbles against my chest and somehow comforts me in my shaky, altered state. “To the fucking hospital, dipshit.”

I hear the crash of the door as he opens it with all his might, and then a creak as if he unhinged it. Then we’re in motion, going somewhere . . . his breathing hard and fast. . . .

Pete calls behinds us, “Dude, Diane just called the EMT. Let’s just take a fucking chill pill and give her some Benadryl.”

“
You.
Take a chill pill. Pete.”

We’re walking rapidly somewhere, and I can hear in his voice that he’s hanging on by threads. The thought that this could greatly affect him and make him speedy makes me panic.

“I’m awright,” I tell him; then I hear my own voice. I sound stupid. Maybe some brain cells are dying from the venom. I can’t form the letter
l
. I say it again, “I’m awright, Wemy. . . .” Ohmigod.

Remington freezes, and I can feel him look at me but my eyes are blurry; then I hear him say, “FUUUUUCK ME!”

The elevator arrives. When the rolling doors open, Riley’s voice reaches me. “All right, what’s going on? Coach is waiting at the gym, Rem. . . .” He trails off.

“Live scorpions,” Pete tells Riley. “Venomous, but fortunately not deadly.”

“I can’t bweathe,” I say out loud. I am freaking. The hell out. For the first time in my life I don’t understand what the hell is going on in my body.

“The poison spreads through the nervous system, but it doesn’t enter the bloodstream. Try to stay calm, Brooke. These bark scorpions are nasty suckers. Can you feel your legs?”

I shake my head. My tongue feels leaden, every spot where I was stung hurts so bad that my face is stuck in a permanent grimace, and I’m breathing in pants.

Pete reaches out. “Let me see that. . . .” I feel Remy wrap his hand around my arm and stretch it out and whisper, “I’m going to kill him,” while Pete studies me.

“It’ll be all right, B,” Pete says. “I’ve had the experience once. Awful, but you really don’t die from a North American scorpion.”

I nod and am clinging to that reassurance when Diane calls from the door, “There’s a note! I turned the box over and there’s a note!”

“What does it say?” Pete asks. Then I hear a crumpling sound as he reads, “ ‘You’ve kissed me. Now you’ve been kissed back by the Scorpion. How does it feel to have my venom in you?’ ”

Remington’s body engages. I can feel it suddenly, a complete change in the way he holds me. He was protective and proprietary, and suddenly . . . he wants to fight.

An image blooms inside my head: I’m standing before that embodiment of gross and kissing his disgusting tattoo of a scorpion so I could see my sister. I moan as a fresh wave of nausea roils up my throat.

“Pete, I saw his goons downstairs in the lobby. I think he’s here at the hotel,” Riley says.

“The motherfucker is probably downstairs waiting for Remington.”

“Oh, he has it coming!” Remington thunders. “He’s
already dead!
” he explodes.

I close my eyes tight as his tumultuous energy surrounds me, and I know, no matter how he might have struggled to stay blue . . .

Remy has gone black.

His lips are suddenly in my ear, and he whispers as he cups the back of my head, “I need to do something right now. I love you. I fucking love you to pieces, and I’m going to come back and put you back together again, all right?”

I nod, even though I feel like shit. Little jolts run through me. I bite my lip hard to focus on that pain instead, but it cannot compete with the stings on my body. I’m trying to be brave, but I remember the scorpions on me . . . on my body . . . the ugly bodies, the pincers . . . the three black dots on the head. . . . I shudder in his arms and feel like vomiting.

“Why is she shaking like this, goddammit?” Remington demands as we start moving again.

“It’s the nervous system being affected. She sustained several stings, so it’ll be painful. While the EMT is on his way, let’s give her some Tylenol.”

We’re walking back into the room, as far as I can tell, and Remy sets me down on something soft. From the blue blur I see, I think it’s the couch. He brushes my hair back, and I can feel his eyes on my face.

“I’m going to go crush him now.”

Then he’s gone, like some sort of hurricane out to destroy anything in its path, and my brain is so stunned by how fast he made this decision—by how calm and cold he sounded when he made that last statement—that for a moment I convince myself he really just went to get me some Tylenol.

“Damn it, he’s full speed ahead, Ri, go after him before he sees Scorpion or
any
of his goons—Diane! Get some cold compresses and wait for the EMT. We need to go get that man!”

The last time I saw Remington have an episode and go fully manic, Pete jammed a syringe containing a sedative into his jugular, and as I hear the men’s footsteps on the carpet, I immediately yell, “Pete, don’t fucking shoot anywing up his thwoat!” then I groan, turn my head down, and start vomiting.

THE EMT HAS come and gone, and we’re still waiting, over half an hour later, with the remains of the scorpions in an awful Tupperware container glaring at me from the kitchen.

I was told to take Tylenol and Benadryl, use cold compresses, and to call if it got worse, in which case they would procure an antidote for me.

Now the Tylenol and Benadryl have kicked in and I’m a bit better. I have a trash can next to the living room couch in case I puke again.

I have thrown up half my body weight, it feels like. Diane is now putting ice on me so the stings don’t swell, but still I feel shocks. I’m now groggy thanks to the Benadryl, but at least the swelling in my tongue is down some.

“I told you that man has the reddest self-destruct button I’ve ever seen,” Diane says gently as she presses a cold compress to my arm. She reminds me of my mother, and for the briefest second, I am so homesick I want to cry. But the home I really want to cry for is the man downstairs ready to beat to death the sicko who did this to me.