We skip ahead to the next leg of their tour as they go from Miami to Denver.  …I looked ahead a bit, and their next two stops are Austin and Chicago.  Who planned this tour? Normally you go in a circle or some other sort of order, so that you’re not having to do quite so much travel.  And I “know” Remy is independently wealthy, but what about all the other fighters in this thing?  Are they on the same ridiculous schedule?

Brooke fills us in on the fact that Remy hasn’t trained in four days and has instead been holed up in his room, coming out only to make out with Brooke.  Because they’re both horny as hell and consenting adults who have, on at least one occasion, verbally expressed interest in fucking and from all accounts neither of them have changed their minds.  But all they do is make out.

During the plane ride, Brooke talks with the other guys about how Remy can’t lose a single fight or he’ll be out of first place because…?  They do mention that there’s a points system in this league, but what they don’t mention is why the fuck Remy’s points should be slipping since he’s won literally everything.  He was in first place, he won a bunch of fights, ???, danger?

Did I skip a chapter by accident?

“Rem is not every athlete, if he doesn’t train he gets speedy,” Pete tells me.

While exercise is a good aid for a number of mental illnesses, it’s just an aid, not a treatment, and also 8 to 9 hours a day will do more harm than good.  In a number of ways.

“Anything doesn’t drive him speedy?”

“Actually, yes. Peace and quiet. But he’s not turning into a monk anytime soon, is he?”

Anyone else get the feeling that Remy is just being taken advantage of?  He’s clearly got issues, being somewhere peaceful would help, getting treatment would help more, and yet he keeps being thrown into very dangerous situations, ones likely to trigger him, by this cabal of guys who are managing him in a very literal sense, working him until he’s exhausted, distracting him with questionably-procured sex, drugging him when he’s out of hand…  Plus, the way Remy talks and the lack of anything resembling agency (he rarely directs his own actions, at least not on page) makes it feel like he’s being led and manipulated by his team into fighting for money instead leading a healthier life.  He’s coming off more like a fighting dog than a person.

And why has Brooke STILL not bothered to ask what the fuck “speedy” means?  For someone who professes to care so much about the guy, she sure as shit hasn’t given a second thought to that.

So he missed a fight? Big deal.

WHEN DID HE MISS A FIGHT?

I’ve been looking back through the last chapter.  There’s nothing.  The intro to this chapter just mentions missing training.  I know it’s a continuity/editing error, but my brain is stuck on it and trying to find the missing fight.

Then we get a ridiculously long description of the makeout sessions that happened in the past, not even right now. 

He fucks my ear with slow, deep flicks of his tongue.

This whole description is pretty gross, actually.  There’s lots of talk of…fluids.  Lavish descriptions of lust that are so needlessly specific they start sounding like a list of medical symptoms.

And it’s all kissing.  Just hours-long, non-stop kissing.  It’s been a few years for me, but…wouldn’t that get uncomfortable after a while?  Or not even that long of a while? Jeeze, at least take a snuggle break and give you lips a chance to recover.

When we need to stop, sometimes we hear music

…what, like an alarm clock? 

Still no word on what put a kibash on the sex.  Like…total radio silence on the subject.  It doesn’t come up at all.

After many, many more pages of lustflailing, they finally have an actual talk about sex.  Brooke says she doesn’t want to ‘share’ him if they start having sex (to which Remy never actually agrees, instead he says “When I take you, you’ll be mine,” well that’s nice, asshole, but it’s not answering her point).  Remy says he doesn’t want to sleep with her until she sees “the real him.”  You mean, the one that throws glass all over a hotel room and pitches a screaming fit just because she was out of sight for a couple of minutes?

A flash of wild need rips through me as I realize what he’s telling me.

He won’t take me yet.

What was your first clue, all of the sex you’re not having?

Brooke declares that, since Remy isn’t getting any sleep, he has to either fuck her or stop kissing her all night.  …but wait, he’s not training or nothing, if he’s not sleeping at night and not doing anything all day, why doesn’t he sleep then?  Or why don’t they just lust all over each other during the daytime?

Damnit, book, you couldn’t even manage that much logic?

Remy decides on sleep, like any normal person would, but then again any normal person would say “hey, I’m not doing anything today, how about a nap?”

The book skips straight from that to Los Angeles.  WHO IS MAKING THESE TRAVEL ARRANGEMENTS, DOES NO ONE THINK ABOUT HOW STRESSFUL TRAVEL IS?  And after skipping to LA, Brooke thinks back on their first night in Denver to tell us all about how bummed she was not sleeping with Remy in a flashback.  Book, are you okay?  I mean, you were never that good to begin with, but at least you were linear with this adventure started.

why in the world an insanely sexy man who’s single and healthy and clearly physically responds to you does not seize the opportunity to have sex with you.

I’m sorry, I have no time for that mystery, I’m still wondering why you did the exact same thing.  And, you know, everything else in this book.

I used to feel pretty and whether or not a man agreed with me was beside the point. I liked myself and that was enough.

Now I find myself feeling a little sad during the day, when Diane seems to find me staring at a stupid wall, helplessly wondering what Remington thinks of me.

Love =/= losing your healthy sense of self confidence.

The energy in his muscles explodes like dynamite with every move he makes, and I can almost see his ATP source—the adenosine triphosphate in charge of transporting chemical energy throughout our cells—recycling so fast in his body, it’s like it doesn’t even take him usual eight seconds for turnover.

Yay, you looked something up on google, good for you, book.  You get a gold star!

Here in LA, the fighting ring is situated in the basement floor of one of the city’s most frequented nightclubs, and they’re expecting a full house of over a thousand.

…

…

……

I don’t even know anymore.  There’s…there’s just nothing about that statement that makes sense to me.

What club in LA has a ‘basement level’?  There’s barely any basements at all there.  Most clubs are relatively tiny.  Some of the nicest ones are on roofs, not basements.  And is this league fighting in legit arenas or not?  Were the other fights done in borrowed space?  Is this something hasty, or does the club have some sort of established ring in the basement that it inexplicably has?

Really, were just thinking “hey, clubs are a thing that exist in Los Angeles”? 

Well, whatever, after the requisite several pages of lusting, we finally get to the LA fight, and Brooke spots her sister, Nora, in the crowd.  Nora is supposed to be living large and happy in Australia, but she’s here instead, sporting a face tattoo and looking sick.

Brooke tries to go after her but gets stopped by a bodyguard.  Remy goes to help her, which means leaving the ring, which means he throws the fight. 

…I’m sorry, but if the fight had already started, he shouldn’t have been looking at her.  Before going out, Pete was telling her how Remy always fights better with her in the audience, but to fight better you have to pay attention to the person you’re fighting, not constantly be looking off to the side at your not-girlfriend. 

And then they…immediately go back to the hotel.  No…stopping to talk to judges or contesting the ruling or nothing.  Not even stopping to pick up their stuff.  So this league is organized, except when that would get in the way of whatever the fuck the book wants to do.

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.

Really.  Right now?  You just learned that about your sister and you think right now is a good time to stop and tell us all that Remy is still sexy?  Were you worried we might focus on something else for half a second and forget?

chorded arm veins

???

“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.”

Because of course this gets mentioned in their ensuing ‘fight’ (if you can call something that unemotional and sparse a fight) before Brooke even gets around to “shit shit shit shit my sister CAN WE GO BACK AND FIND MY SISTER???”

Probably because she doesn’t get to that part at all, she just mentions that’s who she was chasing without discussing the option of GOING TO FIND SAID SISTER.

And why does Brooke think that, anyway?  Was there anything in this set up that included “and then after this job you shall be cut off from any further contact”?  So at the end of three months you move from employee to girlfriend, no biggie.

And then they all run outside for an inane “conflict” with Remy’s legion of fans.  They blame Brooke for Remy’s loss and chuck rotten eggs at her because…these people travel to boxing matches while carrying rotten eggs around?

You know, I think out of all the downright weird shit in this book, that one takes the cake.

Anyway, the crowd is easily swayed with a clichéd “next time I fight I’m going to win for her” line from Remy.  That line has never made sense to me, and I’m sick of seeing it. \~/ Followed by Remy carrying her back into the hotel, because…why not. \~/

That was a weird and random bit of drama that came out of nowhere and got patched up disgustingly fast.

“I can’t believe your groupies called me a whore,” I say

Really?  Because it’s like the number one insult flung at women for…anything.  You don’t even have to do anything sexual to get called a whore anymore. 

I would like to live in a world where getting called a whore is a surprise…

And…Remy gives her a shower.  She got hit with an egg, I think she’s capable of washing herself.  I mean, if you just want to share a shower, that would be one thing, but this is weird.

They spend some time talking about Remy calling her “mine” and “Have you ever been anyone’s?”

The moment is intimate. Heavy with things unsaid.

Not shit.  Maybe you should say some of those unsaid things, because you two are hella vague and confusing.

They engage in heavy petting while talking about how much they want to fuck but…for some reason can’t, and Brooke gets so wound up that

at the first scrape of my nubbin

THERE IT IS!  WE FOUND IT!  I HEARD STORIES ABOUT IT, BUT I DIDN’T BELIEVE IT WAS REALLY, BUT WE FOUND THE NUBBIN!

What’s really odd is that the word ‘clit’ is in the very next paragraph, which begs the question of why the book felt the need to bring in a euphemism.

Brooke gets ticked off that she had an orgasm while basically dry-humping the guy because she feels embarrassed about it and also upset about not getting the ‘connection’ part of sex out of the deal.

If I wanted to have an orgasm all alone I could have taken care of myself without giving anyone a show.

That…seems perfectly legit to me.  You know, for as bad as this book is, every blue moon or so it’ll have a good idea.

They argue about the lack of actual sex going on, she refuses to stick around to get teased again, and storms off to her room.

Then I wonder if this is the sort of feeling that got my sister Nora in trouble in the first place.

Oh, now you want to think about her again.