Surviving Raine 01 (40 page)

“I want a fucking shower,” she growled.

I let out a short bark of a laugh.  I didn’t really mean to, but as infrequently as Raine uttered a curse word, her timing choice was usually pretty fucking funny.

“I know, baby,” I said.

“Why am I so upset now?” she wailed.  “It’s better here than on the raft, and I didn’t do this then.”

“Because you didn’t have the energy then,” I told her.  “I think you usually let it build up in you until you fall apart, which drives me nuts, by the way.  I wish I could do something to make it better.”

“You do.”

“Heh – right.  I’m probably the cause of half your stress.”

“When you get upset, you just explode over and over again,” Raine said with a nod and a somewhat tearful giggle.  “It makes you feel better, and you make me feel better.”

“I never feel like I can do anything to make you feel better,” I admitted.

“You hold me,” she said softly, her fingers tightening into my skin.  “You keep me safe.”

“Anytime you want,” I said.  I had to swallow hard to get past the lump in my throat.  I didn’t know where it came from – probably just from watching her cry.

I kept my arms wrapped around her until she slowly drifted back into sleep.  It was just a little bit brighter at that point, but I didn’t move to get up.  If all I could do was hold her, I was going to fucking hold her until she told me to let go.

She couldn’t tell me to let go as long as she slept, and she slept well into the morning, so I kept holding her well into the morning.  When she finally did wake up, she still looked tired, her eyes all red-rimmed from crying, and she complained of a headache.  I tried to make her tea out of some flowers that kind of resembled chamomile, but apparently it was pretty fucking awful, so I dumped it out and tried warming coconut milk instead.  That also failed, but at least she was smiling a bit.  I managed to grill a couple of crabs, which she seemed to like more than the other seafood, which got me a more genuine smile and a kiss.

We didn’t really do much else during the day, and the early evening brought rain, so we were stuck inside.  It wasn’t a big-ass storm or anything, just enough to soak me through to the skin when I had to leave the shelter to piss.  We finally gave up on the day, lay down on the mattress, and I fucked her slowly, holding out as long as I could and feeling her come all around me three times before I gave in.  Afterwards, I held her and listened to her breathing as she came down from the last orgasm and slowly drifted off into sleep.  I held her a while longer, listened to the rain ebb and finally stop, then rolled into position with my leg draped over hers and my arms wrapped securely around her body.  I lay my head on top of hers, inhaling the scent of her and letting it take me into sleep.

* * * * *

Her hand traces down the edge of my jaw, and I lean into the sensation.  When I open my eyes, she is smiling up at me, but it’s not from happiness.  Her smile is…sad?  She shakes her head slowly.

“It’s all right” she tells me.  “I know you would rather stay here.”

She is walking away from me, down the beach to a small motorboat anchored in the water.  John Paul and Landon are there, waiting for her.  They help her on board, telling her she has to be careful in her condition…

I take a few steps down the beach, intending to go after her, but the engine has started and they’re leaving me behind…

I woke in a cold sweat.  Though I wasn’t nauseated by this dream, it left me with a feeling of dread unlike any other I had experienced.  My chest was so tight, I wasn’t sure if there was enough room for my heart to keep beating or my lungs to keep sucking in air.  I had to get out in the open before I completely freaked out.

I extracted my arms and legs from Raine and pushed myself onto my feet.  Fishing my lighter and a fist full of the homemade cigarettes out of my belt, I took off down to the beach.

“It couldn’t fucking happen,” I told myself under my breath as if hearing the words out loud was enough.  “I had the operation verified.  Twice.  There is no way for me to get her pregnant.”

It wasn’t the idea of getting Raine pregnant that had scared the shit out of me, though.  I’d be concerned because there were things that could go wrong in pregnancy and delivery, but it didn’t actually scare me.  It was that look on her face – the one she had in the dream when she got on the boat without me.  The one that said she was leaving me behind.  The look that said
goodbye.
  I wouldn’t be seeing her again.  I’d never see the baby.  Never.

“Raine wouldn’t do that to me,” I heard myself choke the words out, and I felt hot tears stinging the back of my eyes.  “She’s not like that…she wouldn’t…she wouldn’t…”

But I didn’t think Jillian was like that either.  I loved her.  I was going to fucking propose to her.  I thought she loved me.  She told me she did so many times.  Sometimes, if I allowed myself to think about her or about the…the baby…I could still feel the ache in my chest.  As much as I could feel the remnants of Jillian’s betrayal, the idea of Raine ever walking away from me like that – knowing I wouldn’t see her again – made my entire body constrict, and it felt like all my organs would burst with the pressure.  I couldn’t breathe.  I was pretty sure my heart slowed down under the pressure.  If she ever did that – if Raine left me – it would kill me.  I didn’t doubt it at all.  The pain of her being gone would definitely kill me.

I shoved one end the smoke into my mouth and lit the other end.  I took several slow, deep drags, smoking half of the thing in under a minute.  It burned in my lungs, but that was better than the feeling of compression throughout my body.  As soon as I was done with the first one, I lit up a second, then a third.  The sun was starting to come up, and I needed to get my shit together or be forced to deal with all of her questioning.  I wasn’t up for that.  Not now.  Not yet.

My feet carried me down to the edge of the water where I stripped off my shorts and went for an early morning swim.  The water was pretty cold on my skin, so I didn’t stay long.  I pulled my shorts up over my wet body, not giving a fuck about how uncomfortable it was, and sat next to the cooking fire.  I picked up a coconut shell I was trying to carve into something useful, but I wasn’t sure what the fuck I was going to make.  I took out my jackknife and started whittling away at it, just to give me something to do.

“You’re up early,” Raine noted as she came out of the shelter.

“Had enough sleep, I guess,” I said with a shrug.

“Did you eat anything?” she asked.

“Not hungry,” I responded.  I didn’t look at her but kept my focus on the task at hand.

“What are you making?”

“No fucking idea,” I snapped.  I didn’t really mean to jump down her throat, but I didn’t want her questioning me, either.

“I’m going to get cleaned up.”  I watched her look at me out of the corner of my eye, her expression showing her confusion at my behavior.  She went towards the water, and I took out another smoke.  When she came back, she tried to get me to eat something, and I told her to fuck off, like the complete and total fuck-head that I was.  I was so pissed off at myself, I decided I had to get out of there.

I took off into the jungle, making some lame excuse about looking for something different to eat, and no, I didn’t want any company.  I avoided her most of the day, feeling like a total shit for doing so, but I couldn’t help it.  Every time I looked at her, my mind replayed her walking away from me.  I didn’t end up puking, but I sure as hell felt like I wanted to.

I went to bed early that night, by myself.

* * * * *

“Are you smoking another one of those?”

“Christ, Raine,” I growled when she startled me.  I thought by hanging out behind the rocks near the tidal pools on the north side of the beach might have exonerated me from the smoke patrol, but apparently not.  I didn’t think she would walk all this way just to find me, but I was obviously wrong.  I had been a grouchy son-of-a-bitch since that dream yesterday, and it had repeated itself early this morning.  I was trying to work it out in my head, on my own, which wasn’t working.  “I’ve had like…six of these today, at most.  Shit, I used to smoke three or four packs a day!”

Completely refusing to put the damn thing out, I took a deep drag and blew the smoke out my nose.  Despite promises not to smoke around her, I wasn’t going to put this one out.  She followed me out here; she could fucking put up with it.

“Are you at least planning on being helpful out here?”

“I told you I’d find some fucking mussels, didn’t I?”

“Yes, but you said that yesterday, too.”

“Fuck it.”  I took one last large inhale and dropped the end of it in the sand.  I stomped over to the nearest rock, reached down below the water, and yanked a handful of mussels out.  I tossed them over my shoulder, where they landed at Raine’s feet.

“You are behaving like an absolute child!”

I was and I knew it.  It was part of the reason I was hiding out here smoking in the first place.  I was agitated, frustrated, and moody.  I had come out here to keep myself from taking it out on Raine, but lo and behold, here she was, fucking up my plan.  I threw another handful of seafood into the sand before sitting my ass down in the wet sand and lighting another smoke, not looking at Raine.  I didn’t want to see how pissed off she was at me.

“Bastian,” Raine sighed.  She dropped down in front of me in the sand, my T-shirt dropping a little off her shoulder and exposing her collarbone.  I wanted to lick it, but I restrained myself.  I didn’t want to fuck her, and licking would definitely lead to fucking.  Fucking could lead to…fuck, no it couldn’t, but the fucking dream had left me paranoid of fucking.  “What’s wrong?”

I took a slow, deep breath, trying to calm my heart and my nerves.

“What makes you think there’s anything wrong?” I finally said, knowing how fucking stupid it sounded.  Bastian Stark, asshole extraordinaire, decided to make an appearance and brought his shouty voice along with him.  “Why the fuck do you think I’d want to fucking talk about it, anyway?  Can’t you get the fucking idea that I want to be alone?”

Raine shifted back and away from me, and I was most appalled by the lack of shock in her expression.  She just looked…resigned.  She stood up, turned on her bare heel in the sand, and started to walk away.

The pain rippled through my body, causing me to inhale sharply.

“Raine!”

As soon as she stopped and looked back over her shoulder, I found I could breathe again.  I closed my eyes and tossed the rest of the cigarette into the water.

“I’m sorry…I’m just...
fuck
!  I want to behave like a dick and didn’t want to be around you when I was feeling like that.”

Raine regarded me cautiously and then took a few steps closer to me again, sitting herself down in the sand a few feet away.  It hurt that she didn’t want to come close to me, but I could hardly blame her.

“What’s wrong?” she asked again.

“How do you know anything’s wrong?” I responded, like it wasn’t fucking obvious.

“You want to know what my first hint was, or do you want the whole list?”

“Surprise me.”

“You have had nine of those things,” Raine pointed to the butt end of the cigarette lying in the sand, “since breakfast, not six, and I’m pretty sure you smoked a couple of them when you woke up in the middle of the night, so those count, too.  You haven’t bothered to shave for three days, which isn’t all that abnormal, but you’re usually champing at the bit to shave me at least every other day.  That brings me to the biggest clue – you haven’t made a move on me since the night before last.  You went from trying to molest me fifteen times a day to nothing in over twenty-four hours.  Now will you tell me what’s wrong?”

“Same old shit,” I mumbled.  I dropped my forehead down into my hands.  “I figured you were sick of hearing all of it.”

“Did you have a nightmare last night?” Raine asked gently.

“Yeah.”

“Which one?”

“A new one,” I admitted.  I rubbed my knuckles into my eyes and then left my eyes covered up.

“Can you tell me about it?”

“Not yet.”

“All right.”

One of the five million things I loved about Raine – she had finally figured out when not to press.  I had gotten around to telling her most everything anyway, and she seemed to know she’d get to hear it all eventually.  Sometimes it was just too hard, too raw.  I couldn’t talk about it then, and she understood when I couldn’t.  I heard her footsteps on the sand and felt her kneel down next to me.  Her hands went around my head, and she held me against her chest.

“Whatever it is,” she whispered against my cheek, “we’ll work it out together when you’re ready to tell me.”

“I don’t fucking deserve you,” I said softly.

“Yes, you do.”

I sighed, having no more energy to argue with her about it.

“Just…let me be for a while, okay?” I pleaded.  “I’ll come back in a couple hours, and I swear I’ll remember the fucking mussels.”

“If that’s what you need.”

“That’s what I need,” I assured her.

Raine kissed me softly on the cheek and stood, running her fingers through my hair briefly before she turned to go.  I closed my eyes again after she was out of sight behind the rocks and wondered what the fuck I did right in my life to have ended up in her presence.  Raine was my life, my saving angel.  I owed her something for everything she did for me, but what could I possibly do to make things better for her?  I couldn’t provide her with her friends or her home.  I couldn’t manufacture a wider variety of food, and I couldn’t take her to a hotel with a fucking Jacuzzi in the room.

I laughed out loud, and a wide smile crept over my face.  There was something I could do for her, and I knew exactly how I would do it.  I twisted around, looked up above me at the largest rock in the grouping, and immediately saw exactly what I needed.  I was so fucking pleased with myself, I collected a bunch more mussels, a couple of crabs, and even shaved before I headed back.  Shaving myself had definitely primed me for wanting to shave her, and I was certainly going to use that to make up for the last day and a half of not making her come.