Surviving Raine 02 Bastian's Storm (23 page)

Raine giggled.

“
You’re not so bad yourself,” she said, “except for the whole smooshing me afterward thing.”

“
You love that, too,” I said. “You know you’d miss it if I didn’t do it.”

“
Probably,” she admitted as she tucked her head against my shoulder.

Warm and calm in her presence, I stroked her back for a couple of minutes. When we were like this, everything was right inside the charred world of my head.

Raine turned her face to look at me.

“
I’m scared,” Raine whispered.

“
Don’t be,” I said. I tightened my grip around her. “I’ve got you.”

“
I’m more scared for you than for me,” she admitted. “You might get hurt, or…or…”

“
Shh, baby.” I pulled her against me. Seeing her so upset tore at me inside, making me wish I hadn’t told her anything at all. If I hadn’t gotten myself drunk, maybe I could have avoided putting her through this.

I’m such an asshole.

“
I’m going to be fine,” I told her. I tilted her head so she was looking at me. “I always win.”

“
You haven’t played in years,” she reminded me. “You have been exhausted after working out with John Paul. What if you can’t…”

Her voice trailed off, and tears started to form in her eyes.

“
Nothing is going to happen to me,” I told her as I stared intently into her eyes. “I’m going to be just fine. I’m going to win this tournament, and then we’re going to take Alex as far away as we can. Landon said this was it—they’d never ask anything else of me. Soon, it will all be over.”

I could still see doubt in her eyes, but she sniffed and nodded her head. Though I didn’t want to remind her of her attackers on the island, it occurred to me it might be a good idea.

“
Remember the guys on the beach?” I asked. “The ones who went after you?”

It was kind of a stupid question. It wasn’t like she was going to forget being attacked.

“
Yes.”

“
You remember what I did to them?”

She shuddered a little. I could see in her eyes that she was remembering the whole thing—how they’d come up to her on the beach, and she had mistakenly thought they were a rescue party. They’d grabbed her, and when I got to them on the beach, I’d beaten every one of them to death with my hands. She’d been terrified, and I hated making her recall the memory, but I needed her to remember what I was capable of doing.

“
I didn’t even have a weapon then,” I reminded her. “I hadn’t played in the games for years then, either. I’m in much better shape now than I was on the island, and this time I’ll be armed.”

“
With what?” she asked. “Will you have a…a gun?”

I shook my head.

“
Don’t need one,” I responded. “I like the silent weapons. Guns just tell everyone where you are.”

Raine considered this information for a moment with narrowed eyes and creased forehead. She didn’t ask for more details, and I was glad for that. Instead, she ran her fingers up my arm, squeezing a little at my bicep. I flexed, giving her a little smile in the process.

Yeah, baby—I’m that good.

I wiggled my eyebrows at her, which made her smile and shake her head. She didn’t let go of my arm, and her smile faded quickly. She didn’t want to think about some of the things I had done in the past, but it seemed more important for her to know I would be all right than to think I was going to get myself killed.

Hurt was a whole other thing. I’d get hurt, no doubt about it. It would be a rare thing to escape a tournament without some kind of injury—a broken bone, a nasty cut, or even worse. That didn’t matter though. Staying alive was the only thing that counted.

Raine was apparently thinking the same thing.

“
You could still get hurt,” she said. “You could get cut again.”

She ran her hand up my side, tracing some of the many scars on my body. Some were from knives, some from fists, and others from bullets. I’d had my skin torn open so many times there was no point in trying to count the scars.

“
I’ll be careful,” I told her. “There are only five others, and I’ve got a lot more experience than any of them. Some of them have never even competed before. No one is going to touch me.”

She didn’t seem convinced, so I sat up and reached for her wrists. I pulled her up into my lap and grasped her face with both hands.

“
I have you at stake,” I told her. “You and my kid. There is nothing out there that can stop me from doing what I need to do. You understand me? Nothing.”

Raine’s eyes widened a little as she looked at me and considered my words. For once, I must have said something right, because she ran her hands up my arms until she was gripping both biceps.

“
I believe you,” she said.

Appeased by my words, Raine placed her head on my shoulder and squeezed my arms again. She still didn’t like it, but I couldn’t blame her for that.

“
I hate this,” she said quietly against my skin.

“
I know.” I held her closer. “Just focus on Alex. If you can deal with me, you’ll be able to deal with a kid. I’m practically a child myself.”

I finally got a genuine smile out of her with that one. She relaxed against me, and I kissed the top of her head. She turned to meet my mouth, and we kissed gently as I cupped her face with my hand.

“
I love you,” I whispered as I stroked her cheek. “You’re my life. I won’t let anything happen to us. I swear.”

She accepted my words this time even if she didn’t like how her safety would be secured. We lay back down with her head on my chest. I leaned against the pillow and closed my eyes for a while longer. I was tempted to doze off again, but the sun coming through the blinds made it impossible. I couldn’t sleep during the day even if I hadn’t slept at all the night before. It didn’t matter, though—I still felt at peace with her in my arms, and that was rest enough.

As much as we both might have preferred to stay in bed, we eventually got ourselves up. Raine headed to the kitchen while I pulled on my jogging shorts and a T-shirt. I laced up my shoes, took a piss, and then went out into the main room.

Though it was Saturday and Raine usually took the day off from homework, she had her school stuff spread out in neat piles on the couch and coffee table. I had to hand it to her. In spite of her apprehension, she kept her priorities straight. She had set a goal and was sticking to it. So had I.

She looked up as I came in the room.

“
Running?”

“
Yeah,” I said. “I need to keep building up my endurance.”

She cringed a little.

Fuck me. I’d just given her another reminder of what I was going to do, which wasn’t my intent. I didn’t know how I was supposed to avoid it outside of lying to her about what I was doing, and she would see through that immediately.

Huffing a little breath through my nose, I went over to her and crouched down. I touched her face with my hand and looked closely at her for a moment. The need to reassure her kept my focus where it should be—right inside of her heart. If I could keep that in my head at all times, I’d be able to do this.

“
Love you,” I said as I brushed my lips against hers. “Everything is going to be fine.”

She nodded, resigned to accept my words even if she didn’t completely believe them.

“
Love you, too,” she said.

The power of her mental strength impressed me, as it always did. Tiny thing that she was physically, when it came to dealing with shit way out of her control, she was a beast. She took everything in stride, even when she hated every moment of it.

I was reminded of how she cared for me on the raft when I went through alcohol withdrawal. I’d been in such bad shape, she didn’t know if I was going to make it. If I had died, she would have been left alone on that raft and probably would have perished shortly afterward. She’d suffered starvation and dehydration, not to mention putting up with my obnoxious tendencies, but she’d dealt with everything that came at her. She’d persevered through it all, and usually with a smile on her face and some kind word about how I was better than I thought.

In my own fucked up way, this was how I would thank her for everything she’d done and everything she meant to me. I’d get us through this the only way I knew how—with brute force and violence. It wouldn’t be pretty, but it was a task I was uniquely qualified to do.

I gave her a brief hug and a kiss on the temple before I headed off.

If I had known then, I would have held her longer.

No, if I had known, I never would have let go.

But ignorance is bliss, so I tromped down the stairs in my running shoes and headed off to the beach even though it was late in the morning and the whole place was already filled with people. Even so, I ditched my shoes in the sand and ran barefoot.

Two little red-headed girls in pink bikinis bounced up and down in the waves, screeching like seagulls every time a whitecap splashed over them. Sunbathers worked on their already ridiculously dark tans, and numerous tourists splashed in the morning surf.

I felt odd the entire time I ran through the sand, but I couldn’t put my finger on why, just that I felt strange. I tried to shake it off as nothing, but something in the back of my head kept telling me I was being watched. I needed to keep my head focused on training and the upcoming tournament, but something kept nagging at me.

Maybe my paranoia was going to drive me right into the loony bin before I ever had a chance to fight. Then again, maybe Evan Arden was up on a rooftop somewhere with a sniper rifle aimed at my skull, deciding that he didn’t need to play by the rules after all.

His threat against Alex was still echoing through my head. I’d gone up to him with the intention of mind-fucking him, and he’d turned it around on me faster than I could process. It pissed me off, and I wasn’t sure if I was mad at him for doing it, myself for letting it happen, or Landon for making the damn suggestion I try to screw with Arden in the first place.

If he had me this much on edge before the tournament actually began, what was the fight itself going to be like?

One thing at a time.

Tomorrow we’d be leaving for whatever area Landon had picked out for training. He wouldn’t tell me where it was, only that I needed to dress for the weather. I didn’t even own any clothes suited for temperatures less than sixty degrees, so I didn’t know what the fuck he expected me to pack. It wasn’t like there was a great shop on the beach to buy a winter coat.

I finished my run with the paranoid feeling still in the back of my mind. I glanced around at the rooftops near the beach, but those buildings high enough to obscure someone on top of them were plentiful. If Arden was up there somewhere, I’d never see him.

Shaking my head at myself, I collected my shoes and walked back down the street to the condo building. I glanced at Bar Crudo, which wasn’t open so early in the day, but the lines of bottles behind the counter were still visible through the window. Every time I looked at them, my stomach lurched as I pictured Raine’s expression when she walked in on me, drunk off my ass.

I had no desire to ever go into that place again.

My confidence that I was going to beat the whole alcoholic thing made me feel a little lighter, and the nagging feeling in the back of my head disappeared as I took the steps two at a time to reach our condo. I was even whistling as I unlocked the door, stepped inside, and dropped my shoes on the nearby mat.

It was quiet inside.

The television wasn’t on. There was no sound of water running from the bathroom and no sound of Raine collecting laundry in the bedroom.

“
Raine?”

I was answered by complete silence.

The cold, debilitating fear that crept over me was like nothing I had ever experienced before. All the blood in my body felt as if it had dropped to my feet, and I couldn’t move. I couldn’t take a step forward or backward, and I couldn’t utter a sound as my eyes took in my surroundings.

Raine’s textbook on Everglades conservation was on the floor, face down, with its pages creased against the carpet. There was a highlighter on the couch, cap off, and pressed against the back cushion as if it had rolled there. There was a paper beside it with a faint yellow streak across the margin.

They weren’t exactly signs of a struggle, but they were enough. It was plenty of evidence to leave me no doubt. She had been studying on the couch. No one had buzzed the condo or knocked on the door. If they had, she would have at least set her book down right-side up, not dropped it on the floor, and she would have capped the highlighter.

Someone had surprised her. She’d dropped everything she was holding. Now she was gone. She had been taken.

Arden.

Oh fuck, fuck, fuck! Is she dead? Did he fucking kill her?