I felt my chest clench at his words. They were far too true to be ignored, and I suddenly felt like a complete moron. I had been slacking off, not just at the gym but with everything. I was so unaware of what was going on around me, I had even managed to walk into a dude on the beach. No one from Franks’ organization would be as obvious as a guy on the beach—those people would be sneaky bastards, not tournament fighters but real hit men.
We polished off the nachos. John Paul finished his beer, and we parted ways. I hopped back onto my bike and sped back down I-95 to Miami Beach. With John Paul’s words still in my head, I changed my clothes and headed up to the gym for a good workout.
He was right; it had been a while. I couldn’t do as much on the weights as I used to, and I needed to fix that shit. I finished my sets and headed back to our floor by running the stairs. I was a little out of breath and decided my endurance was also a little lacking. I’d have to hit the beach early in the morning and run again. I’d start keeping track of distance and time.
And so my fitness craze began.
I hit the beach every morning and was pretty pleased with how well I was progressing. I started going really early before there were any tourists on the beach and before Raine even headed off to her classes. My routine runs on the beach became cathartic. The pounding of my feet in the sand, the call of gulls, the scurrying of sandpipers, and the chill of the early morning waves across my shoes were relaxing. At the hour I began, the sun wouldn’t have quite risen over the horizon, and the beach would be all but empty.
One weekend morning, as the sun broke over the sea in brilliant red and purple, I reached my halfway point and turned to head back south. There were a handful of early risers looking for seashells left from the high tide, a couple other joggers, and some fishermen around. I dodged the fishing poles jutting out over the water and the tractor smoothing out the high tide line and slowed to a fast walk.
There was a guy sitting at the edge of the water, dark Ray-Bans concealing his eyes, but his head was angled in my direction. Just as I veered away from the shore, he spoke.
“Good morning for a run.”
I narrowed my eyes a little. Who wears sunglasses this early in the morning? Then again, the whole Miami fashion scene didn’t make any fucking sense to me, so for all I knew, it was normal. I looked him over, appraising the tattoos on his decently muscled arms and chest. He wasn’t my size but obviously spent more than the occasional day at the gym. Around his neck was a long chain with a pair of dog tags hanging from it. Across his chest were the words “God forgives I don’t” in scripted black ink.
“It’s South Beach,” I replied. “It’s always a good morning for a run.”
He shrugged.
“Guess so,” he said. “I’m not from around here, so I typically hit the gym. Too cold for outside running.”
He tapped his sunglasses up with one finger, and I could see a bullet tattooed on the inside of his wrist. It was one of those brothers-in-arms symbols, marking him military. There were more words on the inside of his right arm and down his left side, but I couldn’t make them out.
The guy was looking at me and appraising me as much as I was appraising him, maybe even more so. I tensed, suddenly anxious. I wasn’t sure if he was spoiling for a fight or actually checking me out in some other way, but I didn’t like it—not at all.
“Who the fuck are you?” I asked.
He smirked.
“Well,” he said slowly, “I’m not the pheasant plucker.”
I narrowed my eyes and looked him over again. I thought about his words, and determined the guy must be high or something.
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“It’s a tongue twister,” he said. “Haven’t you ever done tongue twisters?”
I glared, and he laughed.
“I’m not the pheasant plucker,” he said again and much faster, “I’m the pheasant plucker’s son. I’m only plucking pheasants ‘til the pheasant plucker comes.”
He stood up, adjusted the sunglasses again, and gave me another half smirk.
“Here’s the catch,” he added. He briefly pointed his finger at me like a gun. “You’re the pheasant.”
One more smirk flew at me before he turned and walked away. I stood there at the edge of the water with a sense of dread and just watched him walk off. By the time I had collected myself enough to run up the beach with the intention of beating an explanation out of him, he had disappeared.
A week went by, but I didn’t see him again. Thoughts of the strange encounter became a faint memory. My routine continued. I still went to Bar Crudo most days, but I didn’t feel as much of an urge to order something. I usually left feeling pretty good, and I even called John Paul to tell him his advice had helped. Raine seemed really happy I’d found something to occupy my time, and I was a little less irritable.
I’d even found a dude named Zack at the gym in the condo building who didn’t totally piss me off. He was a big guy like me and spotted me a few times for bench presses.
“Thanks, bro,” I said as he helped me rack the bar. “See ya tomorrow.”
“No problem,” Zack replied.
I took the stairs from the top floor gym down to the fourth floor. I caught my breath at the landing outside our condo and then proceeded to the door. As soon as I opened it, I paused.
The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and I held my breath. My fingers tensed reflexively, and my body went on alert.
Nothing was out of place. Everything was exactly how I had left it a couple hours ago. There wasn’t anything missing, moved to the side, or disturbed in any way. There weren’t any abnormal smells in the condo, and the balcony door was closed and locked from the inside. I still knew it, though.
Someone had been in here.
I felt my skin crawl, and I continued to hold my breath as my eyes scanned the room to find…nothing. I let the air out of my lungs and took a few steps inside. I stealthily made my way through every room, but the only evidence of an intrusion was the tingling in my spine and the raw, gut instinct that came from spending years watching my back to stay alive.
Maybe John Paul was fucking with me.
I knew he wasn’t though. Not only was it not his style, he also knew such actions could get him killed before I would realized he was the intruder. John Paul wouldn’t break into my apartment because he wouldn’t have a reason to do so. He also had no skills when it came to breaking and entering.
I shook my head to try to get the tension out of my body, but it didn’t work well. I wondered if I was just on edge because of what John Paul had said, but I dismissed the idea immediately. I would be the first person to admit I had the occasional attack of paranoia, but this didn’t feel the same—not at all. My fingers were twitching, clutching slightly, as if they’d like to wrap themselves around a shot glass about now.
Fucking fabulous.
A noise at the door caused me to startle, and God knows what Raine saw in my eyes when she opened the door, but her expression went from a smile to wide-eyed fear in a split second.
“What is it?” she asked quickly. “Bastian? What’s wrong?”
I shook my head.
“Nothing,” I lied. “Just in my head, I guess. You surprised me.”
Her eyes narrowed into a “don’t give me that shit” glare.
Unable to voice what was going on in my head, I turned without a word and headed to the bathroom. I even shut the door to pee though I didn’t usually bother. Too much time in the wild made me kind of oblivious to someone watching me take a piss.
She hammered on the door.
“I’m not buying that!” she called. “Tell me what happened!”
“Can’t hear you, babe!” I called back as I flushed and turned on the water at the sink.
“Open the door!”
“What’s that?”
“Bastian!”
“Huh? What?” I yelled. “Can’t hear ya over the water!”
This went on for a few minutes while I left the water running, shaved, and brushed my teeth. When she finally seemed to give up, I turned off the water and waited another minute before I opened the door. I could hear her in the kitchen, so I went through the bedroom to go out on the balcony to smoke.
Raine obviously wasn’t happy when I came back inside, but I had calmed down enough to put my happy face back on and deny anything was wrong. I only had to put up with a few glares and some snippy remarks about what we were having for dinner. That suited me just fine because it meant I could be just a little bit pissy in return and claim it was because she was grumpy.
Yeah, we guys can have our mind games, too.
Raine dove right into her studies while I did the dishes. I could hear her clacking away on her laptop as I placed clean silverware in the drawer as quietly as possible. When I finished, I stood behind the kitchen island for a few minutes and watched the back of her head as she worked. Her shoulders were stiff and squared, and she didn’t turn to look at me when I came to sit in the chair across from the couch.
Clearly I wasn’t getting anything but the silent treatment tonight, so I cut my losses and went to bed early. Raine continued to ignore me when she finally came into the bedroom. She changed into a set of pale blue short pajamas instead of one of my T-shirts and climbed into bed without a word.
I couldn’t tell her. It would only scare her, and I was paranoid enough for the both of us.
Even with her not speaking to me, I still reached out and wrapped an arm around her waist. Raine remained stiff and turned away from me but didn’t push my hand away. I couldn’t handle it if she did that, which she knew very well. At least I hadn’t pissed her off so much she refused to come to bed. That would have killed me.
Despite the inner turmoil, my dick immediately noticed the close proximity of the only pussy he cared about and started making himself a little more impressive. I had to shift my hips back a bit because I was certain my cock shoving into her side wasn’t going to go over well at all.
I lay my head on the edge of her pillow and watched her. I wanted to tell her I loved her, but my throat was dry, and the words wouldn’t form. Outside, a sudden storm blew up from the east and slammed drops of rain against the balcony doors. I closed my eyes and eventually dozed off, but the nightmares came immediately.
After a few hours of restlessness, I gave up.
With a cigarette in one hand and a lighter in the other, I sat at the table and looked out the glass door of the balcony toward the ocean. The flame rose up and lit the tip of the smoke, and I inhaled in a long, slow motion before blowing smoke out into the room.
Raine would be pissed—well, even more pissed—when she found out I had been smoking inside, but it was pouring outside, and I wasn’t going to get soaked. I’d light a fucking candle or something to cover up the smell though I knew it wouldn’t work.
I couldn’t get the thoughts out of my head. Someone had been here. I couldn’t explain why I knew it, but I did, and it was scaring the shit out of me. All my senses were on hyper-alert, and they sent waves of tension through my muscles until I could barely hold my cigarette.
I kept remembering the cage fight I was in, and the idea of doing that again was extremely attractive. It wasn’t something I could explain to Raine. She wouldn’t get it, and I was a hundred percent sure she wouldn’t approve one iota. I never did tell her where I had been or what I had been doing, but I had been gone a long time. I couldn’t get away with that again.
What if I wasn’t gone so long?
The bar really wasn’t that far away—I’d spent a lot of time just cruising around before I had stopped. I could easily get there in a few minutes, pound some dude, and be back within an hour. Raine would never know.
I looked up at the clock. It was only a few minutes after midnight, which meant the bar was still open and probably still running fights. I could get there in ten minutes, maybe sooner.
A plan formed in my head: I could get up quietly, scrawl out a little note saying I’d be back soon just so she wouldn’t worry if she did wake up, and silently let myself out of the apartment. I couldn’t ride the bike in the storm, but I could take Raine’s Subaru and keep to a reasonable speed all the way to the bar, walk in, beat the shit out of the guy in the cage, and make my way back home.
I’d feel good when it was done. Not completely right again, but good.
Raine would be here alone. Whoever came into the condo could come back again.
All thoughts of leaving her alone vanished. With the window barely cracked open, I chain-smoked the rest of the night. As the storm passed and the sunrise over the ocean began to light up the balcony window, I found a bottle of Febreze and sprayed it around the kitchen.
If Raine noticed, she didn’t say anything.
I was on guard the whole next day though it probably didn’t make any difference. With my paranoia still at its highest, I considered following Raine to her classes. I knew she’d be seriously pissed if she caught me hanging around the campus. Still, if whoever had been inside the condo had been looking for her, she was vulnerable whenever she was away from me.
I made a mental list of who might have been inside the condo. The most obvious answer was one of Franks’ men, maybe even one sent to kill us both. As likely an idea as it seemed, I didn’t think it was right. John Paul was still in close contact with Landon, and he would know if Franks had ordered a hit on me. Landon would have given me some kind of warning; I was sure of that.
Wasn’t I?
The only other person I could think of was Landon himself, but like John Paul, it wasn’t his style. If he wanted something from me, he’d just come out and demand it.
So who, then?
I had no idea. As I watched Raine walk out the door, I couldn’t stand the idea of her going to class alone, and I ended up following the bus on my bike. I hung out around her classrooms all day, trying to keep myself to the shadows. Thankfully, it was Wednesday, and she didn’t have any evening labs.
She almost caught me when she headed to the university cafeteria for lunch, but I managed to duck behind a tree before she could see me. It was a good thing, too—I was fairly sure that conversation wouldn’t have been a civil one. By three in the afternoon, she was back on the bus and heading home. I sped past and beat her back to the condo.
We ate and she talked about her day. I smiled a lot without saying anything. Every time she asked me what was up, I changed the subject. When we went to bed, I held her against me but couldn’t get past my own head enough to even fuck her.
“Are you going to tell me what’s bothering you?”
“I’m good,” I lied. “Maybe I’m coming down with something. It’s fucking spring break all over the damn beach. I probably caught something from a tourist.”
She wasn’t buying it, but she dropped her line of questioning.
At three in the morning, I couldn’t sleep.
Again.
The dream that had awakened me played back through my head.
We are on the beach, and the helicopter has landed just a few hundred yards away. Raine’s stomach is rounded, and she places her hands over the top of it as she looks down and smiles. She waves at me as she gets in the front seat of the helicopter, and it starts to rise up and away from me. I raise my hand to wave back, but she’s already gone.
My breath caught in my throat, and Raine stirred, opening her eyes slightly.
“What’s wrong?” she asked immediately.
I let my eyes drift to hers and shrugged one shoulder.
“Nothing,” I muttered.
“Bad dream?”
She knew me way too well.
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Are you going to tell me about it?”
I didn’t want to. Talking about it was like living it over again. I also didn’t want her to know how much being back in civilization where people could find us easily scared the shit out of me. I also knew her patience was going to w
ear out, and eventually I would have to tell her. Telling her about the dream would be far less complicated than telling her I thought someone was stalking us.
Might as well get it over with.
“We were on the island,” I said quietly. Images of the beach and our little shelter near the line of palm trees invaded my head and made my chest ache. “The helicopter was there, and you were getting on it.”
I paused for too long, and Raine pressed me for more.
“I wasn’t going with you,” I finally said.
“Why not?” Raine asked as she moved to prop herself up on one elbow and look at me.
I shrugged again.
“You didn’t want me to.”
“Bastian…”
“It’s just a fucking dream,” I snapped. “You asked.”
Raine tilted her head to get a better look at me in the dim light of the room. She reached out and ran her fingers over my jaw as she stared intently into my eyes.
“There’s more to it, isn’t there?” she said.
Too fucking intuitive.
I looked away from her, let out a long breath, and stared at the balcony door. When I didn’t answer, she poked me in the arm.
“Tell me.”
I let out a long, overdramatic sigh.
“You were pregnant,” I told her.
This time, the long pause was hers. She gripped my jaw and narrowed her eyes at me.
“I’m not her, Bastian.”
Jillian.
She was the woman who conned me into fucking her bareback so she could take my child away to be raised by some other guy. The woman I thought I loved had only used me to get what she wanted—to get what that guy couldn’t give her.
“I know that.”
“I’m not going to leave you,” Raine continued. “Besides, you can’t get me pregnant, remember?”
I’d made sure something like that could never happen to me again.