“Prepped?”

Pete disappears down the same hall Remington did.

“Riley?”

I’m completely confused here.

Riley sighs. “He’s having a procedure to induce a brain seizure.” And as he starts to explain, I listen as if I’ve just slid to the other side of a tunnel, and am getting farther and farther away by the second. A fire burns in my eyes and all I know now is that the hospital walls are white. So blank, and plain, and white. “. . . while his brain will receive an electric current . . .”

The heart is a hollow muscle, and it will beat billions of times during our life.

I’ve learned, in my short life, that you can’t run if you tear a ligament, but your heart can be broken into a million pieces and you can still love with your whole being.

Your whole, miserable, insanely vulnerable fucking being . . .

I can feel my heart thumping hard as ever in my chest, thump thump thump. Even though I’m trying to act like it’s NO BIG DEAL, my brain reels as I try to grasp what Riley has just explained to me. That Remington is about to commit himself to electroshocks. A fucking electric current is going to be sent through his scalp to his brain to give him a fucking brain seizure.

Now he’s telling me that there could be some short-term memory loss, that he will be given short-acting anesthesia, that his blood oxygen levels and heart rate will be monitored, that other than the possible short- or long-term memory loss, there is no other known side effect. I swear that when I replay in my head the scene of Remington disappearing down the hall with the hospital staff, I hear a low, dull sound echoing in the cold, white walls—a low, dull sound coming from me.

“Oh, Riley.” His name comes out in a low, wretched moan, and I cover my face as panic and fear rise in me like a tide, drowning me.

My pulse falters when Pete appears and signals to me. I run over and follow him, half dying and half as alive as I’ve ever been from sheer panic, into a room. I see machines, become hyperaware of the unsurpassable coldness of the hospital, and in the middle of the room, I see him. He’s being strapped down with Velcro bands around his thick wrists.

His beautiful body spread out on the flat surface, he’s covered in a hospital robe as he faces the ceiling.

Remy.

My beautiful, cocky, playful, blue-eyed boy and my serious, somber man who loves me like nobody in my life has ever loved me.

The urge to protect him from whatever is coming is so overpowering, I approach with slow but determined steps, one hand curled under my cantaloupe-size tummy where our baby is. My whole arm is shaking uncontrollably as I reach out for the large, tanned hand that is strapped down to the table. Strapped. To the table. And my voice cracks like glass as I lightly rub my fingers through his, trying to sound calm and rational while I really feel crazy enough to scream. “Remy, don’t do this. Don’t hurt yourself, please don’t hurt yourself anymore.”

He squeezes my fingers and flicks his eyes away from me. “Pete . . .”

Pete seizes my elbow and tugs me away, and I freak out when I realize Remington really doesn’t want to see me here. He hasn’t looked into my eyes. Why won’t he look into my freaking eyes? I turn to Pete as he pulls me out of the room, my voice a degree below hysterical, “Pete, please don’t let him do this!”

Pete grabs my shoulders and hisses, low, so that we don’t draw attention, “Brooke, this is a common procedure used on people with BP—this is how they pull people from suicide watch! Not everyone finds the right dose of medicine, and the doctors are aware of that. He’ll be sedated through it.”

“But it’s just a fight, Pete,” I argue miserably, pointing into the room. “It’s just a stupid fight and this is him!”

“He’ll pull through. He’s done it before!”

“When?” I cry.

“When you were gone and we had to keep him from slitting his fucking wrists because of you!”

Ohmigod. My heart shatters so hard, I think I hear it, and it’s not just my heart, but my entire body is breaking down on the inside, cracking under the grief of what Pete has just told me. The hurt is so great, I curve myself protectively around my stomach and I frantically try to remember to breathe, if not for me, for this baby. His baby.

“Brooke, this is the shit he’s lived with his whole life. He’s up, he’s down, he’s all over the place. His decisions might hurt but making them gets him through it. This is how he was formed—this is why he’s who he is. He is strong because of this bullshit! You can be pitiful or you can be powerful, but you can’t be both. He is powerful. You have got to be strong with him—he’ll break if he knows this breaks you.”

Even though my fears have completely gnawed away all my confidence and my stomach is about to turn over, I somehow manage to pull myself into some semblance of a person. I manage to straighten my spine and lift my head, and take a small, ragged breath, because I will do this for him. I will do it with him and I will prove to myself, and to him, that I am going to be strong enough to love the hell out of him.

I suck in another breath and wipe the corners of my eyes. “I want to be there.”

Pete signals at the door and gives me an approving nod. “Be my guest.”

My steps are quiet and almost hesitant as I go into the room. He’s big and massive and strong, I know, even if my heart is a rag in my chest and all my blood seems to feel like ice inside me, I am going to prove to him that I am worthy of being his mate and the one who will stand when he can’t. I don’t know how I will prove this, because I am toppling, like a crushed building, as I walk inside. I look all right, but inside of me, in my very soul, I’m disintegrating, nerve by nerve, organ by organ.

He looks at me now—straight into my eyes, and I can see the worry in his dark eyes. Of course he’s afraid I’ll topple. He doesn’t want to see that in my eyes. “Okay?” he asks me in a husky whisper.

I nod and reach for his hand. My reply should be, “More than okay.” Right? But I just can’t get any more words past my closed throat. So I rub his fingers with mine, and when he squeezes me, I remember our flight out of Seattle, this hand, the one I will not let go of, and I squeeze back as hard as I can and smile shakily down at him.

“That’s my girl,” he rasps, brushing his thumb over mine.

He’s strapped and about to receive electroshocks and he asks me about me. Oh god, I love him so much, if he dies I want to die with him and this is no fucking joke. I blink back the tears and squeeze him harder.

“Can I hold his hand?” I ask one of the nurses.

“Sorry, you can’t during the procedure,” she tells me.

Remington cautiously watches me as I force myself to step back and they attach some electrodes to his forehead. A ball of fire is in my throat, in my heart, and in my stomach. I am not even breathing when a nurse asks him, “Are you ready?”

“Hit me,” he answers, his eyes briefly flicking over me to check my reaction before he faces the ceiling again.

They start the IV flow to sedate him.

They begin asking him questions. “Full name?”

“Remington Tate.”

My eyes well up.

“Date of birth?”

“April ten, nineteen eighty-eight.”

“Place of birth?”

“Austin, Texas.”

“Names of your parents.”

“Dora Finlay and Garrison Tate.”

I can barely take the fact that he is strapped, talking about his fucking parents, who made him black like this, his voice deep and strong, answering whatever they ask him.

Then she tells him, “Count from one to a hundred.” And they put a mouthpiece on him.

He starts to count, and I count in my head with him. His eyes shut. Beautiful dark lashes against his strong cheekbones.

My protective instincts rage so loud I want to scream at them to stop, now that he can’t see me and he can’t keep me from stopping this. But I stand here, because he wants to do this. Because he is strong. Stronger than me. He will whip himself into shape just like life has beaten him to it.

Then the shock goes.

His big body seizes and tightens on the table.

My body tightens and begins to implode.

The machine makes a beeping noise.

His toes curl.

I didn’t know if he’d be flailing, breaking things because he’s so strong, but his body remains relatively still as he takes the shock in his brain. Oh my god.

Oh my god.

Oh my fucking god.

I am in love with Remington Tate and he has Bipolar 1, and it crashes down on me like an avalanche.

I don’t think I’ve ever cried this way. Despite putting all my effort into not crying, the tears are literally exploding out of my eyes and my arms are shaking and my body so weak with grief, I edge back to lean against the wall and unsuccessfully try to suck back all my tears.

“Hey, Brooke, hey,” says Pete, kneeling at my side, hugging me.

“It’s so hard,” I say, covering my face and trying to pull away from him because Remy wouldn’t want it. Remy wouldn’t like it. “Don’t touch me, Pete, oh god, this is so fucking hard. So fucking hard!” He grabs me and shakes me a little, his voice comforting, his eyes showing pain.

“He’s not suffering, Brooke. He just wants to get better. Brooke, he is NOT a victim. He makes his choices based on his circumstances. He’ll worry about you. You need to condition yourself like he has—please, I beg you to be strong.”

I nod, while all I can think of is Remy’s beautiful brain, his beautiful body, my church, my sanctuary, enduring this.

“Brooke, it hurts me too. All right? It hurts me too. You can’t let him see that. He’s strong because as far as he’s concerned, this is his reality; he deals with it—he’s never had any different. He doesn’t lament it. Don’t let him see this breaks you or you’re going to break him. You don’t have to save him; just be with him while he saves himself.”

Getting a grip on myself, I nod and wipe my tears as I try to piece myself together. I squeeze the tears out of my eyes as I try to stand and the nurses and doctor say it’s all done.

Remy is still sedated, on the table, and they’ve removed his mouthpiece and somehow cleaned his air ducts. I grab his hand when they unstrap him, bring it to my lips, and kiss each of his knuckles, then wipe them dry of my tears with my lips.

The way Remy is taken care of . . .

Pete is such a good man, it breaks my heart that my sister must not have seen it.

“Pete, my sister really liked you—I don’t know what happened,” I whisper.

His eyebrows fly up to his hairline. “What? Brooke, I like her too—I still do. But I won’t leave my brother for just anyone.”

Nodding in silence, I study Remington’s large hand. Every callus, every line in this palm . . . the rise of his knuckles, the length and shape of his beautiful fingers, the short stubs of his clean, square nails.

Quietly, I stroke the lines in Remy’s palm and then lift my head and smile into Pete’s kind brown eyes. “One day you’ll find someone who makes you want to do anything for her. Pete, I’m going to take care of him. You’re going to teach me to take perfect care of him.”

He smiles and pats my shoulder. “Until then, neither of you is going to have to do this on your own.” He puts a hand on Remington’s shoulder, and I swear in heart and mind, even if not in blood, he truly is Remington’s brother, and at this moment, how I wish my sister and I were as close, and as loyal, as this.

“Brooke, I did something I’m very ashamed of, and I think I owe you an apology,” Pete blurts out. Seeing the despair in his eyes plants a cold little ice cube in the center of my belly.

“When you were gone, he got so bad. He was on suicide watch at the hospital, and they kept sedating him when he woke up, because he destroyed things and tried to go after you. They gave him antidepressants, and they didn’t work, and with rapid cyclers like Rem it’s not a good idea anyway. So we had to start him up on this.” He signals to the table. “We did it for several weeks so he could be discharged. . . .”

He looks at me, and I don’t think I’m even breathing. I’m just staring, waiting for more, confused and partly numb from the roller coaster of the day.

“After the first three treatments he got a little better, so he was discharged, and we came three times a week for ECT for a couple weeks. During that time, he was still black. We brought him fourteen women.”