Outside the store, there are billboards of gaming, women, and booze. This is Las Vegas, baby! But none of us are doing anything that needs to “stay here” at all. Remington is kicking ass at the gym, and Coach has actually upped his training hours.

He’s packing on more muscle and getting more ripped, and the entire team agrees that Scorpion deserves nothing but Riptide’s finest at this season’s final. So my beast has been training nine hours while I indulge in a bit of extra sleep in the mornings and then join him at the gym before he’s done. He’s eating protein like mad, and Coach has put him on L-glutamine shakes to preserve muscle mass, so now I’m also helping Diane choose the best foods for his body and mind.

Pete says if Scorpion wants to fuck with his mind again, we must make sure Remy sleeps right, exercises right, and eats right—so that he’s as stable as possible. Most especially he needs lots of omega-3 fats.

Today, we get so many fresh goods for my T. rex, that Diane and I need two carts. We stay all along the edges of the store buying fruits, vegetables, the best cheeses, dark chocolate, sprouted grains, and nuts. Then we head to the protein part and order fresh Alaskan king salmon, king among fish and as toxin free as fish hopefully get.

While we wait for several pounds of fish to be packaged, I inspect one of the lovely heads of broccoli we’ve got in one of our carts. I used to call them “little trees” and Melanie called them “green things,” which was what she called anything green—the only reason she ate veggies was because of the color. Mel loves color.

“My grandmother taught me all I know about food. She cured my grandfather’s depression with diet,” Diane tells me.

We order some wild-caught shrimp as well, and anything else that is wild caught and fresh, and the counter guy packs it all up.

“I had depression once,” I suddenly tell her, my eye on one dead fish eye. “It’s not a fun thing to have.”

“You? Brooke, I could never tell looking at you. Did something happen to bring it on?”

“I guess my life changed before I was ready for it to.”

I shrug and smile sadly at her. “I couldn’t believe the things that went through my head in those days,” I admit. “It all seemed so pointless. So dreary. It’s hard to think anyone can get out of that alone.”

“How did you?” she presses.

“I don’t know, I think a small part of me realized I was not my brain. It’s just another organ, like our kidneys or our livers.”

She’s perfectly sober, nodding in understanding, so I add, even though it sounds crazy, “My brain wanted me to die, but in some surreal way, I could feel my soul fighting it.”

Sometimes I can’t stop thinking and comparing: While I was depressed once in my life, for about two months, Remington goes through it continually, cycling again and again, rising and falling. Anyone who goes through this is a warrior. So are their loved ones, who fight with them. I swear, Remington’s soul is so strong . . . I know that when he sinks into the dark vortex, it’s his soul that conquers it. All that simmering energy inside him is too powerful not to rise back up. Like a . . . riptide.

“How did that feel?” Diane whispers as the man finally packs us several bags of ice.

“You know how you get any visual or audible stimulus, or when you touch something, your brain dictates a response to this sensual stimuli,” I tell her. “I see you, and my brain immediately sends out a response at the sight of you, which in me is comfort and happiness. But in my depression, I saw things, normal things, and the responses my brain would fling out would not match. It was crazy.”

“It sounds crazy!” she agrees.

I smile and we take the ice the man offers, say thank you, and push our carts down the lane to the deli meat and cheeses. I add, “The way I see it is as if our brains were the doctors, and the adrenals are the pharmacies that fill up the prescriptions. You could see a commercial with laughing children, and an unbalanced mind will quickly prescribe anxiety and tears over laughing children. Even if it logically makes no sense—it doesn’t matter. That’s the prescription your body was given.”

“I’m really sorry, Brooke. I’d never really thought about what all that must be like.”

We add some organic goat cheese to our carts, some coconut milk, almond milk, and whole milk. “They put me on pills, but it worsened pretty bad. The only thing that got me out of it was my family and Melanie, exercise and sun.”

“I know our guy gets it several times a year,” Diane whispers as she inspects the label on a container of organic Greek yogurt. “I knew there was something about him; I just hadn’t known the diagnosis until the guys told me the last time he was hospitalized.”

Suddenly I’m transported, once again, to the hospital, to Remington trying to tell me something, and me running away . . . and then him, trying to cope, with a thousand women in his bed.

I swear I ache deep, so deep, right where my soul is.

Before I know it, I’ve wrapped my hand around my abdomen, as though I can feel him there. In me. In our baby.

“He’s an amazing fighter,” Diane tells me admiringly, her eyes glowing with praise. “All the effort he puts into being well. You’ve got to have noticed Remington never eats something that isn’t completely right for his body. Not ever.”

My stomach rumbles as I remember his healthy mountainous breakfast and compare it to the mineral water and crackers I had. But I can’t seem to get anything into my stomach in the morning, not even my mouth-watering seedless organic dates. But of course I’ve noticed how well Remy eats. He eats the cleanest foods, and keeps his body in the most natural state possible. I love this. I love how he is, and how he treats his body kindly with food after demanding the most from it for hours and hours of each day.

And then I look at Diane, and I really see her, see how well she gets him, this woman almost in her forties, with her big smile and kind eyes, and all the aura of comfort she emanates, and all the warmth she instills into every one of our hotel suites, and I know how well she takes care of him, how she could very well be the closest thing to a mother Remington has ever had. Impulsively, I let go of my cart and hug her, whispering, “Thank you. For taking care of him, Diane.”

“Oh, bah! How can I not, when he takes care of me so well? If you think I take good care of him, I can’t say enough about all the things he’s done for us, anytime he hears we need anything. He even went to my mother’s funeral.”

She pauses at my look of surprise, and as we start down to the cashier and start unloading, she adds, “He doesn’t even have a mother, not a real one, but he knew I cared about mine, and he flew across three states to the funeral for me. He didn’t say a word—he just hugged me in the end—but just him being there . . .”

Her voice cracks unexpectedly, and I understand so much how Remy’s quiet show of affection gets to her that my throat feels tight too.

“We’re so excited about the baby,” she blurts out, changing the subject. “All of us. Pete. Riley. Coach. We’re so excited about this little baby. We think it’s the universe giving back something good and pure to Remy, we really do.”

She comes around my cart as if she wants to make contact with the baby somehow, and then she hesitates before touching me. I reach for her hand and slowly spread it on my flat stomach. I whisper to her, “I never knew how much I wanted this baby until I knew he was coming.”

Her brows quirk up in complete intrigue. “He?”

I just have this feeling in my gut. I don’t know if it’s that sixth sense females are supposed to have. If it’s the way I instinctively envision a little Remy in my head when I think about this baby. I don’t know why, or how I think I know, but it feels so certain to me, as certain as I am right now of his father’s love, that I nod excitedly. “He.”

* * *

VEGAS IS COMPLETELY sucked in by Riptide.

Young college students cram the arena, and the girls? The girls are the noisiest, jumpiest group of young women I’ve ever encountered. They’re crushing on him so bad that all my jealousy, which I’ve come to realize is magnified to the tenth power by my pregnancy hormones, has been fully unleashed inside me. Girls scream, and I even hear them talk about him close behind, talking about how big his hands are and what that means.

Pete also seems to hear that, and he chuckles at my side and shakes his curly head.

Across the ring and to the left, a group of friends wear red shirts with each of his letters stamped on one, and they’re all practicing standing up at the same time, so that everyone can see they spell R I P T I D E!

There’s even an exclamation mark for the poor friend who didn’t get a letter.

By the time his fight approaches, I’ve already observed each and every one of these ladies with my jaw clamped, and then, suddenly, I love them because they love him too and he deserves the adoration.

What do I want? For them to cheer for an asshole like Scorpion? Hell no! So there. I think I’ve conquered my jealousy nicely for the evening.

In fact, I conquer it so nicely that I’m feeling as jumpy as the fans when they announce him. “Riiiiiptiiiiiiiide!!” the announcer yells, with all the enthusiasm I swear every announcer I’ve heard reserves for him. “The one and only, people!! The ONE and ONLY!”

He appears like a beautiful red bolt of lightning and then hops up into the ring. The man is strong as an ox but aerodynamic as hell, and as he jerks off his robe and I see it flutter in the air as he passes it to Riley, I can almost feel it on my skin. The satin on me, how I love the way it hugs me, and the way it smells of him.

“And now, Joey ‘the Spider’ MANN! Who has terrified his opponents tonight!”

Before the Spider-Mann can take the ring, Remington looks at me, his blue eyes burning hot. Desire swells between my legs. Last night flashes through my head. I know what he’s thinking of—I can feel it inside me. I don’t know what connects me to him, but something does, and as the testosterone spins through his body I can tell that he’s primed to fight and thinking of me watching him. And it turns him on. And he’s going to fight, like he does, and then fuck me right after. Like he likes to. Oh god, I can’t even wait. I can blame my pregnancy all I want, but the one who is truly to blame for setting me on fire with the merest look is him.

“That motherfucker gets high on you,” Pete says.

“He’s got this,” I answer. Remy tells me that a fight is half head, half body, and maybe he’s right, but when you see Remington fight, I’d bet all of myself on the fact that he fights with his whole heart. My heart whomps harder just now because of him as I watch him tap gloves with his opponent as they both get ready.

The fighting bell sounds with that familiar ting and the public goes quiet. It doesn’t really matter how many times I’ve seen him fight, I’m always mesmerized by the way he moves. They both go to center, warming up. I know Remington’s strategy is different with every opponent. He plays with some. He goes straight to the punch with others. Sometimes he tires them out and saves his swings for the heavy-handed opponents, but today he starts hitting fast, so fast, I hear the popping sounds go poo poo poof ! sending Spider-Mann—the man who’d been terrifying his opponents tonight—stumbling back within the first minute.

“We love you, Riptide!!” the R-I-P-T-I-D-E! girls scream. “Knock him out for us!”

“Although every time you’re here, he fights like a lunatic,” Pete adds.

“Lunatic” is not even the word. He’s a machine.

The fight is in full swing and my tummy’s twisting motions hardly let me pull in a good breath. His muscles ripple as he hooks with his left, then covers. Spider-Mann misses, and Remy counterattacks. He jabs several times with both right and left, then finishes off with a straight punch that slams into Spider-Mann like a fast-moving wall.

Spider-Mann rocks.

Remington bounces back and lets him breathe.

The other man charges.

Remington feints and his hapless opponent swings and swings, missing every time as Remy ducks and comes back up to punch him in the gut, the ribs, then the jaw. By the time he uses his most powerful punch and hooks with his right, Spider-Mann is sweaty, bloody, and dead tired. He stumbles.

I watch Remy wait for him to get back up, and I’m sure that all the females in the stadium are screaming and ogling the same thing I am. How drops of sweat slide down Remington’s muscled torso. How the vine tattoos on his arms glisten with a thin sheen of perspiration, and they look as inky black as his hair. How those sexy dimples flash as he smiles to himself every time he rocks his victim’s center.