Surviving Raine 01 (45 page)

“If you left me…”  I couldn’t even finish the thought, let alone the sentence.  My whole body tensed up again.

“I know you’re scared.”  Raine’s fingers traced over my jaw, and her voice softened.  “I understand that, Bastian.  I don’t know what else I can do but tell you to have faith in me – in us.  I want us to stay together.”

“I want to believe you, Raine – I really do, but…I just…”

“I know,” she said, her voice softening.  “I know how hard it is for you to accept it, but I still love you and that’s not going to change.”

“I love you, too,” I mumbled back, feeling completely chastised and a little whipped.  I didn’t mind feeling whipped, which also scared the fuck out of me.

“We’ll make this work,” Raine said, her lips trailing across my jaw.  “We’re still
together
, Bastian.  Even when we are in a crowd, we’re still together.”

I stepped back, my cock getting cold as it slipped out of her warmth.  I lowered her gently to her feet and started to yank my pants up from around my ankles.

“Take those off,” Raine said with a sigh.

“Why?”

“I need your boxers back now.”

“Oh…um…yeah, I guess you do.”  I snickered a little, dropped my pants, and watched her shimmy my boxers over her legs.  She checked herself in the dressing room mirror to make sure they weren’t showing.  I pulled my shorts back on and then realized Raine’s torn panties were still in my fist, so I shoved them into my pocket.  Raine leaned over and picked the lounge pants, a pair of shorts, and two shirts up off the floor.  She held them up for a moment and then shoved them into my hands.

“These will all fit you,” she said with a nod.

“How do you know?” I asked.

“Bastian.”  Raine looked up and smiled slyly, “there is nothing I know more about than your body.”

I guess I couldn’t argue too much about that.

“If you ever want a refresher course, you make sure to let me know, okay?”

“I just might do that.”  Raine smiled, took my hand in hers, and opened the door.

There was a decent-sized crowd when we stepped out of the dressing room, some glaring, others smirking.  Lindsay looked at me with narrowed eyes, and I met her stare.  I pulled the panties I had torn off out of my pocket and tossed them at Raine’s friend.

“She’s gonna need a replacement for these,” I said with a smile and then sauntered off towards the checkout area.

* * * * *

“Hey, Raine,” Nick gave her a big, warm smile which made me want to punch him.  He held up a large bath towel.  “Since we didn’t get you guys to a hotel or anything, I figured you might at least want to spend a little time in the shower.  It’s a tiny thing, but the water’s heated.”

Nick had rented the four-room house near the docks about a month prior, and the three of them had been using it as a base of operations while searching for us.  Lindsay had been here since she discovered John Paul hadn’t given up hope, and she and Nick had obviously hit it off pretty well.  We had been there all of about fifteen minutes, and he was asking Raine to get naked.  All right, it was obvious that he was with Lindsay, who was also standing right there, and he was only trying to be nice, but it still fucking pissed me off.

“Oh my God, that would be awesome!” she responded, clasping her hands together.  I was torn between being happy for her because she was happy and pissed off that he, instead of I, had said something that made her so happy.  Even after the dressing room fuck, I was on edge.  I was seriously fucked up.  Once Raine disappeared into the washroom, I went outside to get some air.  John Paul apparently noticed.

“Hey, you want one?” he asked quietly.  I leaned heavily against the porch railing and moved my eyes from the harbor lights to the pack of Marlboros he had in his hand.

“Fuck, yes,” I said as I took one from the pack and lit up.  I drew on it heavily and turned around, leaning my back against the railing.

“You doing all right?” he asked.

“I guess.”

“You’re kind of quiet,” he noted.  “Not sure what I expected, but this isn’t it.  Or is this just you sober?”

I chuckled.

“Nah, I’m just not sure what to think right now.”

“Been an interesting couple of months?”

“You could say that.”  I took another puff, then another.  “Fuck, I’m getting an actual nic buzz off this thing.”

John Paul laughed.

I finished the smoke and tossed the butt into the street.

“What happened to
The Oblation
?” I asked, not completely sure I wanted to know.

“Underwater earthquake,” John Paul said without missing a beat. “We were basically right on top of it.  It wasn’t a big one, but it was enough to cause the wave that knocked us over when it first hit.  There was a second one about five minutes later, which flipped us back but took the mainsail with it.  Combine that with the rainstorm, and we didn’t have much of a chance, especially not at night.  I couldn’t see a fucking thing.”

“Did everyone else get to the lifeboats?”

“Most of them,” John Paul said quietly.  He looked away for a minute before turning back to me abruptly.  “The bodies of two of the passengers were found the day after they picked us up, near the wreckage.  They looked for you for a week, figuring you’d drowned, too.  It wasn’t until divers finally found the wreckage that we realized the inflatable wasn’t there, and everyone started looking for that.”

John Paul stopped and turned to me, his eyes intense.

“I didn’t know, man.  I didn’t know you were on that piece-of-shit emergency raft.  We almost didn’t even put that thing on the ship!  If I had known, Bastian…fuck…I would have tried to find you that night.  I thought you were in one of the other lifeboats.  It was a day and a half before the coastguard picked us up, and you weren’t there.  Holy shit, I just about had a fucking heart attack.”

He looked like he was going to cry or something.

“John Paul, it’s all right,” I told him.  “You couldn’t have known.”

“I should have fucking looked.  The radio on my lifeboat wasn’t working, the fucking piece of shit.  I just assumed you were on one of the others.  I didn’t know…fuck, Bastian…I’m sorry.”

“Don’t fucking apologize,” I said, sounding more harsh than I really meant.  “I don’t blame you for any of this shit.  Besides, it’s not like it was all bad.”

”Yeah, I got that idea.”  John Paul shuffled his feet and stared at the ground for a minute, and then looked back up.  “So…you and Raine are a thing, huh?”

I stared at him for a minute, trying to figure out what he thought of the idea, but his expression wasn’t giving anything away.

“We’ve been through a lot.”

“No shit.”  John Paul eyed me for a moment.  “You told her everything, didn’t you?”

“Why the fuck would I…” I stopped, realizing he already knew.  I don’t know how he knew, but he did.

“Did you figure it would help?”

“What would help?”

“Saving the daughter of one of the victims.  Did you think it would make the nightmares go away?”

“How did you know?” I asked.

“I actually read the names of the passengers, asshole,” John Paul smirked.  “I knew before she even got on board.  Did it help the dreams?”

“I didn’t think…I mean…I never…when she told me…ah fuck!”  I gave up stammering like a fool and shoved the end of the smoke back in my mouth, inhaling hard.

“Coherent much?” John Paul snickered.

“I don’t know what I thought,” I finally said.  “Regardless, they didn’t go away.  They’re…not as bad…when I’m with her, but there are new ones, too.”

“New ones?”

“Yeah, don’t fucking ask.”

“Hrm.”  He looked over his shoulder and then lowered his voice.  “Did you kill four guys?”

“Yeah,” I said with a shrug.  “How did you know?”

“That’s what told me where to look,” John Paul informed me.  “Reports of them going missing went through the underground right after the official search was called off.  Given the location of where their boat was found drifting, I kind of had a hunch.  Someday you’ll have to tell me the whole story.  What did you do with the bodies?”

“Burned them,” I said nonchalantly.  “Buried the bones on the north side of the beach.  Who were they with?”

“No one I had heard of,” John Paul said.  “Drug dealers, a few other illicit activities.”

“I figured.”

“Not one of the big players, but still…we should make sure they aren’t found.  A connection could be made.”

“Probably.”  I didn’t really give a shit at this point though I knew I probably should.

“Did they try to take her?”  John Paul was always an intuitive guy.

“Yeah, but I think in the end they regretted it.”

“I bet,” he said with a humorless laugh.  “Want another?”

I took another cigarette out of the pack.  John Paul lit up, too.

“What about Alejandro?” I inquired.

“He’s good,” John Paul said with a nod.  “He says he’s never getting on the water again, but he’s good.  He got himself a job in a restaurant.  He says he makes pretty good money as a chef even though it’s just a small place.  Good food – Italian.  You would like it.”

“Where is it?”

“Key West,” John Paul told me.  “One of the touristy places.”

I nodded, stared at nothing across the street, and smoked for a minute.

“What now?” he asked.

“Whatever she wants, I guess.”  I turned and faced him.  “After everything that’s happened, I think she’d probably agree with Alejandro.  I kind of doubt she’ll be interested in sea-life.”

“Can’t blame her,” John Paul said.  “It was the first time she had ever been in anything other than a fishing boat on a lake with her dad.”

I felt like a shit for not even knowing that.

“Bastian?”  Raine’s voice came from behind us.

“Yeah?”  I turned to face Raine.  Her hair was pulled into a tight, wet, Medusa-looking coil all over the top of her head, and her skin glowed with the heat from her first real shower.  She was dressed in some short satin pajamas, which made me instantly hard.  It’s not that they were revealing or anything – they weren’t.  If they had been, I would have had to gouge John Paul and Nick’s eyes out.  That didn’t stop her from looking fucking gorgeous in them.  I watched her glance quickly down to the hand holding my cigarette and back again.  She didn’t even bother to roll her eyes.

“Nick helped me make up a bed.  I’m pretty tired, so I was going to go ahead and lie down.”

“I’ll be there in a sec,” I promised.  I took another drag of the smoke, and she finally rolled her eyes – which actually made me feel a little better because it seemed so normal – nodded, and went back inside.

“Who would have thought it,” John Paul snickered.

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“Someone finally tamed Sebastian Stark.”

I growled in my chest, tossed the second butt out into the street next to the first, and went back inside.  John Paul followed.

“Listen to this,” Nick said as John Paul and I walked into the small living area where Raine was fluffing up pillows on a pull-out sofa bed.  Nick placed a small radio on the coffee table and turned up the volume.  “They’re about to repeat it.”

“…could mean a lot of trouble for those on Capitol Hill.  In international news, the two missing people from this past April’s loss of the pleasure sailing vessel,
The Oblation,
have finally been found.  Ship’s Captain Sebastian Stark and passenger Raine Gayle are reported to be alive and in good health.  We have a news crew waiting in Miami now along with friends and family of the castaways.  They are expected to arrive in Miami late tomorrow evening.”

“Fuck…how’d they get my name?” I gasped.

“Right after the ship went down and you guys were reported missing,” John Paul told us.  “The media was all over it, and someone went digging for information on Daniel Greene.  When they didn’t find any, they dug deeper.  Your name’s been all over the news, even bringing up more shit about the trial.  They even talked about how a relative of...well, you know.”

“Fuck.”

“Cat’s out of the bag for now,” John Paul said.  “Nick and Lindsay both know about the murders and the trial.”

The way he said it – singling out those two details – was enough to tell me they knew nothing else.  They knew nothing about John Paul’s involvement and nothing about the tournaments.  They only knew I had witnessed murders and had testified against the killer.

“But this shit will die down,” John Paul continued.  “We can disappear again.”

He looked over at Raine quickly.

“If you want to, anyway,” he added.

I definitely wasn’t ready to deal with this shit.

“I think you guys are going to have quite a welcome,” Nick said.  “The press was all over this since it went down.  I bet you even get a call from Oprah.”

The reporter on the radio started talking about Raine’s father and about how I had been the informant who put his killer behind bars.

Definitely, definitely not ready to deal with this shit.

Raine had started to cry.  I didn’t know why exactly – talk of her father, the general stress of everything, or just her inclination to cry when all the stressful shit was over – and I was about to go over to her, but Lindsay beat me to it.  She put her arm around Raine’s shoulders, and I wanted to fucking rip it out of the socket.  I knew that was stupid, but I didn’t want her to get comfort from someone else.  I wanted it to come from me.

What an ass.

Raine sniffed and looked up at me, then at Lindsay.  She smiled at her friend, leaned against her for a moment, then walked out of her embrace and into my arms.  Raine turned her face into my chest and wrapped her arms around my neck.  John Paul was trying to suppress a smile and failing miserably.  I ran my hand up Raine’s back and extended my middle finger in his direction.

“You’re tired,” I said.  I ran my hand over her head, trying not to fuck up the little bundle full of hair on top.

“I think everyone is,” Lindsay confirmed.  I immediately liked her better.  Raine let go of me and hugged Lindsay. Everyone said their goodnights and then Nick and Lindsay went off in one direction, and John Paul went off in the other.  I didn’t know what I was supposed to do, so I just sort of stood there in the middle of the room.