“Pete!” I gasp in complete and utter horror.
“I’m sorry! But we wanted him to remember how it used to be, before you. So that he would remember that there are hundreds of women out there, not just you.” He shrugs and looks at me almost pleadingly. “But even when we tried to make him think he was doing fine without you, I guess his head is not what rules a man like him. He heard all about the women, didn’t comment on it, then started packing and said we were flying to Seattle, and that we had to arrange to get your sister back to take to you. So yeah. I—Riley and I—lied to him,” he says. “It’s been killing me. Now, once he knows the truth . . . he’ll never trust us again!”
His voice breaks, and he turns away as Riley comes into the room. Riley looks back and forth between us, sensing something’s up. Finally, Pete says, in a dreary, tired tone, “I told her, man.”
Riley meets my disbelieving stare, his face crestfallen. “B,” he says.
That’s all he says. A letter. The one letter that’s tattooed to Remy’s right bicep.
“You have to tell him,” I say and I glance at one, and then the other of them, not even able to bear the hurt I feel for Remington right now. “You can’t ever, ever, lie to him again. It’s not fair to him! I did that once too, and I understand you wanted to protect him as well . . . but it’s confusing to him. It’s confusing to forget some of the things you do. You can’t—none of us, can ever—lie to him again. Do you both hear me?”
Riley strokes a hand down his face and his voice wavers too. “He’s going to fire our f**king asses.”
I look at them both, their expressions torn, and I shake my head. “If you really believe that, then you don’t know him at all.”
HE WAKES UP on the bed soon after the guys leave. His eyes are lazy, but they settle on me and sharpen. They’re not yet blue, but I see a little life in those black pools, and I feel a little tingle inside me that becomes a huge knot of emotion.
“Look at you.” He speaks in a drug-thickened voice. I can hear the obvious praise in his words, as if I look pretty fantastic, and when I see a dimple peek out, the force of my emotions almost cripples me. He doesn’t know he was a mess without me, but now I do. He doesn’t know he was brought women to pleasure him and that he didn’t want them. He doesn’t know he is magnificent, perfect, beautiful, noble, good, and everything, everything, I have ever wanted.
And right now, it hurts like a bitch to know that his brothers, whom he takes care of and loves, also didn’t know what to do and ended up lying to him.
“Look at you,” I tenderly counter, immediately kneeling on the floor next to his bed and setting my cheek on his knuckles. I kiss every bruise on his hand once more.
“Hey, I’ve got this, I don’t want you to worry,” he says, stroking his free hand along the back of my head.
“I know.” Ducking my head, I rub my face against the sheet so he maybe won’t see the stray tears leaking from my eyes. I kiss his knuckles lovingly again. “I know you do.”
Even with the anesthesia’s thickening effect, his voice still has the same effect on me it always has. “Get up here. What are you doing down there?” he murmurs gruffly as he tugs me up. I know they gave him muscle relaxants, but even so, before I know it, he pulls me over him and stretches me like we sleep at night when he’s in my bed. My round stomach gets in the way, but it’s not enormous, so I tilt to the side and smell his neck and bury my face in his chest as we adjust.
“Your nurses will kick me out if they see this,” I say.
He grabs my ass and adjusts me a little better. “I won’t let them. You’re my medicine.”
I close my eyes and he smells like him. His arms are his. Everything is normal, except I’m wearing clothes and he’s in a hospital robe, and we’re not in a hotel room. He is still him, wearing my heart on his sleeve. Everything I want, right here, in my arms.
I slide my hand to his jaw and kiss any part of his face I can as I clutch him a little desperately. “Remy, you’re my king.” I hug him hard. “There’s no chess game for me without you.”
He shifts and works the control under the bed so that we sit up slightly. He adjusts me on his lap, his lips on my ear. “You’re the queen who will protect me,” he says in amusement, and when I nod because I can’t speak, he strokes my hair as he looks into my face, and I know—even if he doesn’t tell me—that my eyes are swollen and that he can tell I’ve been crying. I feel his lips press into my eyelids, first one, then the other, as he fists a hand in my hair and roughly pleads, “Stay strong, my little firecracker. Stay strong with me.”
I nod. “I’ll try, because you inspire me.”
“We got you what you wanted, Rem,” Riley says from the door. I’m so comfortable in his arms I don’t even turn to greet him. And then I feel something smooth against my cheek. I open my eyes and see Remy holding out a rose to me. Him. In the hospital. Giving me a rose with those dark but twinkling eyes with the blue flecks.
“Remy,” I say, a confused, puzzled laugh leaving me.
“I’d give you a whole f**king garden if I could.” He tips my chin back and holds me in that stare. “For being here, right now, with me.”
“Oh, god.” I duck my head into his chest because I can’t take it, my fingers curling into his hospital robe. “I will be here every time you need to do this. I will be here, I promise you.”
As we’re checking out of the hospital, I get a text from Melanie.
Remy is thoughtful for a long time, and the three of them exchange strange, brother-like bonding gazes. Then Remington nods and slides his arm around my waist, pulling me to him, and when he nuzzles my pulse point with a soft growl and curves his hand over the roundness of my stomach, all the tension eases from my shoulders. I melt into his arms.
A thousand fuzzy things flutter inside me when I hear him inhale again, longer and deeper this time, like he needs my scent to calm down and find his center. I duck and kiss the top of his dark head, running my hands through his hair. I swear I can’t stop kissing him. I kiss his jaw, his temple, reach for his hand, kiss the backs of his fingers.
When we get back to the suite, Diane serves dinner, her face all aglow at seeing him at the table, and when Remy looks at me across the table and pats his lap, I almost run to it. When he lifts his fork to me, I feel like a stupid starved bird that’s being fed for the first time in a century.
When he asks me, “More?” quietly, intently watching my mouth as he lifts his fork, I nod and bite it all off and then, before I even munch, I press my lips to his, because I can’t express the relief I feel after this procedure, seeing that he’s all right. And actually a little better.
He lazily hits the bed, his body still relaxed with the remains of the anesthesia and the muscle relaxants they gave him, the mattress squeaking as he falls on it, all muscular and loose. “Come here,” he calls without even lifting his head or looking to see where I am.