All hell breaks loose, and suddenly something grabs the manacles on my arms and with an easy thrust, sets me free. Then I’m yanked back and a pair of tanned, muscled arms crush me against a familiarly large bare chest. Every inch of my body recognizes him, and I sag in relief.

Until I remember Nora.

Gasping, I struggle with renewed force. “No. No! Remy, let me go, I need to follow her.” Fighting futilely to be released, I try twisting in his grip. “Let go, Remy, let go, please.”

But as the angry crowd flocks around us, he clenches me tighter to him and ducks to my ear. “Not now, little firecracker.” His voice is low and calm, but the warning instantly makes me stop squirming. Using one arm, he tucks me into his side and shoves us through the throng, his big body bulldozing us through the multitude.

A multitude that for the first time in my life, shouts insults in my face.

They claw me as we pass. “Bitch. It’s your fault, you stupid bitch!”

My eyes widen in horror as I absorb the murderous faces of Remington’s fans, and I’m so startled I curl myself into his arms and let him usher me out without a single complaint. Pete, Riley, and Coach wait for us in the car.

“Fucking shit!” Coach starts as soon as the door slams shut behind us and the limo pulls into traffic.

“You're down to third. Third. Possibly fourth,” Pete glumly informs him, handing him a t-shirt and sweatpants he usually wears after a match.

“You had this one down, Rem. You were training so fucking well you would have had his ass on a stick, man.”

“I've got it, Coach, just relax.” Remington briskly shoves himself into his casual clothes without removing his boxing shorts, then he immediately pins me down to his side as if he thinks I’m going to fling myself out of the car.

He rubs his hand down my scratched arm as he calmly faces the three angry men before us, but I’m so agitated I squirm free and slide to the window, where I stare at all the faces spilling out of the club in search of Nora.

Added to my disappointment of having completely ruined Remy’s fight is an incredible sense of guilt for my sister. How could I not see my sister was in trouble? How could I have bought the bullshit she’s been feeding us, through postcards, for an entire year?

“You’re in the worst placement you’ve been in years, man, your concentration is shit!”

“Pete, I’ve fucking got it. I’m not screwing this up.”

“I think Brooke should stay in the hotel next fight,” Riley mutters.

Remington’s laugh drips pure sarcasm. “Brooke comes with me,” he snaps back.

“Rem…” Pete tries to reason.

When we reach the hotel, we’re all in the same elevator, and I’m agitated as I watch the numbers climb slower than ever. I don’t know what I’ll do about Nora, but I know I have to do something. The doors roll open on my floor, and I hear Pete address Remington while I get out, and Remy’s annoyed voice snapping close behind me, “Pete, we’re talking about this later, just cool off your nuts, all three of you.”

“Get back here, Rem, we need to talk to you!”

“Talk to the wall!”

Desperate to get away, I storm into my suite but hear him immediately behind me. “You all right?”

He shuts the door, and the sudden visual of him in that sexy attire that he wears after a match, a pair of low-hanging sweatpants and a soft t-shirt that hugs all his muscles, and that beautiful tan face full of concern and messed-up spiky black hair, makes my heart lurch and my legs want to run to him so I can feel the strength of his arms around me again.

I desperately want those arms to hold me right now, when my mind spins in all directions, reeling from what just happened. But I know I don’t deserve these arms to hold me in the first place. It’s obvious that he fucked up because of me, as if it’s not enough that I’ve been lately feeling woefully inadequate and unworthy of him, I now have to live with the fact that he’s dropped to third or fourth on my account. God.

He looks so strong and powerful as he stands before me, all sweaty and chorded arm veins pumped with his strong, healthy blood, I desperately wish he could tell me that my sister is going to be all right. But he doesn’t even know my sister, and after getting him disqualified, he’s the last man in the world I should be begging support from.

Dragging in a breath, my hand shakes as I signal at the door past his shoulders. “Go talk to them, Remy.”

I’ve noticed that his voice sometimes sounds terser when he speaks to me more than with anyone else, but this time it’s even more thick and textured than usual. “I want to talk to you first.”

He stays, but neither us says anything. I’m busily trying to formulate an apology for fucking up his fight, and at the same time, am reluctant to accept the blame when I didn’t ask him to come after me!

He paces restlessly from the door, dragging all five fingers of his hand across his hair, down to his nape. He drops it with a sigh. “Brooke, I can't fight and keep an eye out for you.”

“Remy, I had it covered,” I insist.

“My fucking ass, you had it covered!”

His tone makes me jerk in surprise, and I can’t help but notice the fists he’s just formed at his sides and the sudden width of his alarmingly challenging stance. The cloud of fury hovering above his head only serves to bring mine out with a vengeance, and I jump into defense mode. “Why is everyone looking at me like it’s my fault? You’re supposed to be fighting Scorpion!”

His eyebrows snap over his eyes. “And you’re supposed to be in your goddamned seat on the front fucking row to my left!”

“What difference does it make? You’ve been fighting for years without having me in the audience! What does it even matter where I’m at?” Suddenly this is so not about Nora that I don’t even know where this is coming from, but it’s ripping off my chest like an open wound. “I’m not even a fling, Remington! I’m your employee. And in less than two months, I won’t even be that, I’ll be nothing to you. Nothing.”

Suddenly he looks completely vexed and aggravated, and he clenches his hands until his knuckles go white. “Who is that girl you were chasing?” he demands, his face a mask of distress.

“My sister.” I drop my voice to a whisper, suddenly loathing my own weakness and my emotional outburst.

“What’s your sister doing with Scorpion’s goonie?”

“Maybe she's wondering the same about me,” I say with a bitter laugh.

He joins in, but I have to say, his laugh is infinitely more bitter than mine. “Don't mistake me for a fuck up like him. I may be fucked up but that guy eats virgins and spits them out like snake vomit.”

Unsettled even more at that, I start pacing, remembering her face, so sad and lifeless. My stomach roils at the prospect of her being god knows what to a sick man like that. “Oh, god. She looked awful. Awful.”

There’s a silence, and then I hear the doorknob click open. Remy’s voice contains a new timbre, low and troubled, as if some powerful emotion had touched him. “You’re not nothing. To me.”

The door shuts after him, and I feel an instant squeezing hurt as his words register. I’m in so much turmoil, suddenly I want to beg him to come back and hold me. No. I want to beg him to come back and make love to me.

But I don’t, and only stare at the spot he’d just occupied in the living room of this luxurious suite he rented for the two female members of his team. I’m so shaken it takes me a moment to register his words, and their meaning, and link them to the very real possibility of him going out in search of the very man he believes has my sister, instead of going out to talk with Pete and Riley.

Spurred to action by the thought, I storm out of my room and knock rapidly on his. “Where is he?” I ask the first figure at the door.

“We were about to come ask you the same question,” Riley says, grim-eyed.

“Is he going to get in a fight?” I ask in alarm.

“Seriously, Brooke, we personally think you’re a great girl, but you’ve got the guy more wound up than—”

“Save it, Riley! I think he may have gone to look for Scorpion. Where can I find him?”

“Son of a bitch. We’re barely out of one and he’s heading directly for another. Goddammit!”

There’s no time to wait for them to formulate a plan. Instead, I run to the elevators and after him, realizing how stupid it was for me to bring Remy into this thing with my sister in the first place.

Scorpion and Remington obviously have been at each other’s throats for a while, and the last thing I need is to give cause for Remy to go fight him off ring. I'm going to have to find a way to rescue Nora from that awful insect myself.

Outside, the hotel is littered with an immense crowd of people, including photographers. Flashes burst all around me as I exit through the revolving glass doors.

“That’s her. Her fault he was disqualified tonight!”

I see something flying toward me and duck, but it’s too late. There’s a hard impact on my head, followed by another loud crack as something slaps into my stomach. A sulfur-like smell reaches me. Eggs? Great.

Just wonderful.

Ducking when another egg flies in my direction, I cover my head and give the crowd my back as I hurry to the valet. “The strong guy I just came into the hotel with! Where did he go?”

The valet is a youngish boy whose widened eyes seem to eat up his face when he looks past my head at something. “He’s about ten steps away from being right behind you.”

Another egg crashes into my shoulder as I pivot around, and Remy looks like an avenging angel storming toward me. His eyes blaze in anger as I realize that his fans are calling me a bitch and a whore, and he swiftly turns and blocks another egg which I hear crack against his back.

He grabs me and scoops me up like I weigh nothing, then he raises his voice as he swings around, angry and commanding. “It’s because of this woman I’m still fighting!”

A sudden silence falls across the crowd, and Remington’s hard, enraged voice continues telling them, “Next time I'm on the ring, I'm going to fucking win for her, and I want all of you who hurt her tonight to bring her a red rose and tell her it’s from me!”

The silence doesn’t last a second longer.

Screams erupt. Cheers. Claps. And I think what’s doing most of the commotion is my heart: a winged thing fluttering against my ribcage in complete confusion and disbelief of what he just said.

He takes me back into the hotel and carries me across the lobby, his square shoulders and arms hunched into my body, somehow guarding me. Suddenly, I’m so stunned by this evening I start to laugh. It’s a nervous kind of laughter, but it’s laughter all the same, as he presses the elevator button repeatedly.

“And they say Justin Bieber’s fans are crazy,” I say, gasping for air from the shock.

His voice is asperous as he brushes away the egg shells from my top. “I apologize on their behalf. I disappointed them today.”