The one, the only, Remingtoooon Tate, your RIPTIIIIIIIIIDE!!” into anyone who stands in his way this year. “That’s right, ladies and gentlemen! Here’s our favorite bad boy with that infamous smile and those deadly fists, ready to carve R.I.P. “One more time, ’cause I can’t hear you!” The man is fighting this season, and he’s taking no prisoners, people! Here he is, ladies and gentlemen. “After much speculation and many rumors, it’s completely official. Have no doubt about it we will,” the announcer somberly says, painfully drawing it out for the crowd. The crowd boos in memory, and my throat clogs thinking about how Remy’s broken body had been carried out of the ring. “Ladies and gentlemen, we all remember our crushed souls-our crushed spirits!-when the crowd favorite lost the championship final last year.”

The speakers crackle as the announcer turns on the microphone, and I almost jump out of my skin. So here I am, waiting, my body hyperaware and my heart pounding his name. The two previous fighters are exiting the ring now, one of them assisted by his team, and my heart pounds as I sit motionless in my seat, in the first row, at the very center, just where my man wants me. The air is charged with excitement and scented with perfume, beer, and sweat. He’d told me he’s the “draw”-that most everyone in the arena is here for him. His assistant, Pete, sits tense and alert to my right. The audience in the Washington, D.C., fighting arena consists of about a thousand people, and when the winner of the current match is announced, the crowd grows restless. He’s more ripped than ever, and I know this season he’s ready to take what’s his. The first fight of the new Underground season. It has been even longer than that since thousands of women, men, and fans across the world watched him fall. A thousand four hundred eighty-eight hours of wanting, longing, and needing him. IT’S BEEN TWO months, exactly sixty-two days, since I returned to him.

Read mine by katy evans