“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“Just what I said – do you like me?”
“I like the way you look up at me when your lips are wrapped around my cock,” I said with a laugh. She looked away and didn’t join in my laughter. “Shit, babe – I was just fucking with you. You know I like you.”
“What if I didn’t want to do this anymore?” Theresa waved her hand between the two of us.
“You want to stop?” I said with a scowl. “This was your idea, not mine.”
“I’m not saying that – just wondering if you would still like me then.”
“This is a fucking stupid conversation.” I sat back against the wall and played with my cigarette.
“You should stop smoking. It’s bad for you.”
“What the fuck, Theresa?”
“I just don’t want anything to happen to you.”
I brought the cigarette back up to my mouth and sucked hard before flicking ash out over the water. I watched it float off, spinning around in the wind until it hit the black water and disappeared.
“Bastian?”
I took another drag on the cigarette, not wanting any of this last little peace of mind to be wasted. I didn’t look at her.
“Are you all right?”
“Sure,” I said. My voice sounded dead, even to me. I took the final drag off the final cigarette, cringed at the taste of burning filter in my mouth, and tossed the butt into the water.
“What happened to her?”
“Who?” I asked, knowing full well who she meant. How she knew I was thinking about her, I couldn’t fathom. Women’s intuition, I guessed.
“Theresa.”
My shoulders tightened, and I closed my eyes for a second before looking back out over the water. I slowly closed the flap back up and moved myself back before lying down a couple feet away from her. I shifted, tried to find a more comfortable position on my back and stared up at the dark canopy.
“She killed herself,” I finally said.
I heard Raine scooting across the floor, moving closer to me. I turned my head to look towards her and saw her reach her hand out to me. Her fingertips met the hair near my temple, and she stroked down over my jaw and cheek, and then under my chin before she reached back up to my temple and started all over again. I flinched at first but didn’t back away, and she didn’t stop.
Raine moved a little closer to me, and I felt my breath lodge in my lungs and refuse to come out as she wrapped her arm around my head and brought me against her shoulder. Her fingers kept tracing over my cheek.
All my muscles tensed up, and I simply didn’t know what to do, so I froze. For a few minutes, I did nothing. With closed eyes, I lay there on my side next to her and just felt her fingers caress me. Of its own volition, my hand reached out and tentatively crept over her abdomen until my arm encircled her waist. I pulled her against me and opened my eyes, looking up at her.
I could only barely make out her face and her eyes in the darkness, but I could see her sad smile, and her eyes held an expression I didn’t think I had ever seen before. I didn’t know what to make of it, so I just stared at her for a while as she ran her fingers over my face. Eventually I tilted my head back down, settling against her shoulder, and letting the darkness swallow me back up.
* * * * *
The situation was becoming more desperate.
There was a day’s worth of water left, assuming I didn’t start cutting the amounts in half. I didn’t really have much choice. I decided to cut myself back more than Raine – I really didn’t think she could afford it.
I heard her waking up behind me and handed her a half cup of water without saying anything or meeting her eyes. I didn’t understand exactly what happened between us the previous night, but I was about as uncomfortable with it as I could be.
“I think I felt better after eating that fish,” Raine told me.
“I’m sure you did,” I said with a nod.
“Will you try to get another one tonight?”
“If I do, you better be in the mood for spinal fluid. You can’t eat any more fish.”
“Why not?”
“Because the water level is getting low,” I told her, trying not to sound too pissy because I was pretty sure we’d been over this shit before. “It doesn’t look like there’s going to be any rain anytime soon, so no protein. It takes too much water to digest proteins. Don’t drink any more than I give you and only one and a half of the ration bars today, too.”
“Getting bossy, aren’t you?”
I glanced over to her with narrowed eyes, but she was smiling at me. Maybe she was joking, but I wasn’t very sure, and I definitely wasn’t in the mood for it. At the rate we were going, we would be out of water too soon. There were no signs indicating land was near, and we had to be way too far south to be in the normal shipping lanes at this point. In other words, we were almost completely screwed.
I needed to think and come up with a plan. I needed to get us the hell off this raft and onto some land where finding water was more likely. I needed to be able to think with a clear head, and I just couldn’t.
Whenever I tried to focus on something I was doing, I felt her body pressed up against mine.
Whenever I lost focus on what I was doing, I could feel her torso moving slightly up and down as she breathed in her sleep.
Every time I closed my eyes, I could feel her hand running over my face.
This was completely and totally fucked up, and I didn’t know what to do about it.
I tried watching for any signs of ships, or land, or a fucking sea turtle I could strap a note to, but there was nothing. I was starting to get agitated and was actually considering going for a swim just to get some of the energy out. As it was, I drummed my fingers against the binoculars or on the side of the raft. Sometimes I pulled at the unraveling hem at the end of my shorts, or I went through the survival packs for the umpteenth time.
I was so wound up, I couldn’t even hold myself still.
“You are driving me crazy,” Raine voiced.
“Why don’t you kiss my ass?” I snarled. I closed my eyes and took a couple of deep breaths, trying to calm down. “I’m fucking bored.”
I couldn’t take it anymore and pushed myself up to the raft opening. After securing myself to the lead, I stripped down to my boxers and dived into the water. I swam against the current, knowing full well I was using up energy I should be conserving, but I wasn’t going to do myself or Raine any good if I was a complete nutcase.
The water was cool, and I thought I should probably soak my shirt and let Raine wear it to keep from getting too hot. Doing that too often was a mistake since the salt water could cause sores on skin, but at some point there was a tradeoff between the sores and heat exposure. At least the nights had been cooler.
I swam a little and then floated on my back, staring up at the sky and trying not to think about anything. Telling Raine all that shit about me brought too much of it to the forefront of my mind, and I didn’t like it. Visions of fights traipsed around in my head, but those didn’t bother me too much. When my thoughts went to a darkened, smoke- filled room and sixteen people standing against a wall…that’s when I had to flip over and start swimming again.
I wanted a fucking drink so I wouldn’t be thinking about any of this shit.
I opened my eyes and blinked against the sting of the salt. A flash of yellow skimmed near my shoulder. Then another one went by. And another.
I broke through the surface and yelled over to Raine.
“Pull the canopy back and flatten it out like I had it last night!”
Raine nodded through her confused expression and did as I told her. I dived back under, twisting my body around to get a better view of the huge school of Yellowtail Snappers – hundreds and hundreds of them. There were so many, I couldn’t miss. As they swam around me, I flexed my fingers a couple of times, resurfaced for one last gulp of air, and went to work.
Catching fish bare-handed
isn’t as tough as it seems when you know what you are doing. I came at them from the bottom and grabbed them by the gills before flinging them up into the air and onto the raft. Within about ten minutes, there were a dozen of them flopping around on the top of the canopy.
I climbed back aboard and tried to shake most of the water off of myself before getting off the edge of the ladder and back into the raft proper. Fish were flopping everywhere, so I wasted no time grabbing my knife and getting to work.
“We’re not eating any of it,” I reminded Raine. “This is just for the water, which is more important.”
She nodded, took a deep breath, and let me tip the torn open spine of the first fish into her mouth. I took the second one, and then gave her the third. They weren’t as big as the Black Jack, but there were plenty of them. We went back and forth like that until they were all gone. It took a little coercion, but I got her to suck the fluid out of the eyes as well.
“I think that saved us a good day’s worth of water,” I said as I tossed the last of the fish bits off the raft.
“How much water is left?” she asked.
“It was just enough for today,” I admitted. “Now we can lengthen that out another day.”
“You are incredible,” Raine said. She fixed her shining eyes at me, and I couldn’t help but feel it. I gave her a crooked smile back and tilted my head to the side.
“It’s true,” I told her. “I am. You should try me out sometime.”
She tilted her head up, and her eyes focused on my mouth. It seemed like I could hear her heartbeat in her chest as she raised herself up just enough to touch my lips with hers.
I tried to hold myself still because what I really wanted to do was shove my tongue down her throat, pin her down on the bottom of the raft, and tear the swimming suit right off of her. I wanted to feel her bare skin in my hands. And fuck, I really wanted to get my dick between her legs.
Instead, I remained almost motionless and let her mouth touch mine slowly, remembering how soft her mouth felt on mine the first time, and noting subtle changes in the moisture of her lips from then to now.
Raine pulled away, and I opened my eyes to look at her.
“Why did you do that?”
“I wanted to,” she answered, her eyes looking away from me.
“You know when you do that, I just want to fuck you as quickly as possible.”
“Did you ever think of moving a little slower?” Raine suggested. “Not all relationships have to have sex right away.”
“I don't do relationships,” I told her. “I try to keep things a little easier. No flowers, no commitments. Just fucking.”
Raine’s face darkened and she looked away from me again. I couldn’t tell if she was mad or just embarrassed, but I wasn’t going to let her think I could be anything other than what I was. That nasty, evil part of me who could snap a guy’s neck and fuck his girlfriend afterwards told me to fucking lie to her and get her naked, but I couldn’t do that. Not to her.
“That’s not quite what I’m used to,” she said after a few minutes of silence.
“Well, I learned my lesson,” I told her. Before she could open her mouth, I shut her down. “And no, I do not want to talk about it.”
“Do you want to start back up where you left off last night?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t want to talk,” I said. Her eyes looked downcast, and she seemed so disappointed, I got pissed at myself. “Why don’t you tell me something about you instead?”
“Okay,” Raine said, scrunching up her face a little. “What do you want to know?”
I thought about it for a minute and wondered what I did want to know about the woman next to me.
“How old are you?”
“Twenty,” she responded. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-nine,” I said, “but I’m asking the questions here.”
Raine smiled and waved her hand, indicating for me to continue.
“What are you going to study in college?”
“I don’t know yet,” Raine said with a blush. “There are a lot of things I might like to do, but I haven’t been able to pick one.”
“How did you end up on The Oblation?”
“I told you – my friend convinced me.”
“She convinced you to go on a cruise,” I clarified. “What made you pick my ship?”
“I thought it was pretty,” Raine said with a shrug. “I’m not one for big crowds, so I wanted the private charter. I loved the look of your kind of boat…”
“Ship,” I growled.
“Ship,” Raine corrected. “I thought it looked like an old pirate ship or something. It looked…exciting.”
“Have you had enough excitement yet?” I asked.
“Quite enough, thank you!” Raine smiled.
“How did you get the money?”
She looked back down at her fingers and slid her teeth over her bottom lip again.
“I got a settlement when my dad died,” she said.
“Yeah, you said that. Why did you get the settlement?”
“He died in the line of duty,” Raine said softly, “but he was sent somewhere he wasn’t supposed to be. The private investigator had some information that one of his superiors sent him there on purpose, knowing he would be in over his head. They ended up giving me the money to avoid the civil suit, but it really came down to him being sent into a situation where he shouldn’t have been. He wasn’t supposed to be there, so he shouldn’t have died.”
“Where did they send him?”
“No one would ever tell me,” Raine said with a shrug. “That was part of the lawsuit. I didn’t care about the money; I just wanted to know what happened to my dad.”
“So what happened to him?”
“Well, from what I could get out of the testimony that was made public, he was executed.”
My stomach muscles tightened up in my gut, and I felt a shiver run down my back.
“Who executed him?”
“It was a crime lord,” Raine said. “Dad was just a small-town cop – he never should have been wherever he was. He had no idea what he was walking into.”
“What did he walk into?”
“They wouldn’t tell me,” Raine said. “There was someone who was there – someone from the organization who offered up his testimony to keep from going to jail, but it was all closed courtroom. They wouldn’t even let me in, and all the transcripts were classified. They said it was all too confidential and the investigation was still going on and all these other lines. I didn’t know what to believe. I think they gave me all the money just to keep the lawyers from making it more public. My lawyer was happy with the money and told me I should just take it. No one else would touch the case, so I did. It wasn’t what I wanted, so I never spent any of the money before this trip.”
I didn’t even hear the last part of what she said. I tried to swallow but I couldn’t get anything through my throat. Various thoughts gathered around in my head like a rugby scrum, and the final conclusion made me want to vomit.
“Raine…” I said softly, finally getting my mouth to form some sort of actual, intelligible word. “Raine Gayle?”
“Yeah, how did you…?”
“Henry Gayle’s daughter,” I interrupted. It wasn’t a question; I knew it was true.
I remembered her name from the trial. One of the lawyers said the daughter of the cop was trying to get access to the courtroom. Landon used his influence to make sure that didn’t happen. I looked down at my hands, waiting for them to start shaking, but I think even my limbs were in too much shock to do anything.
“Daniel, how do you know my father’s name?”
“It’s not Daniel.” As soon as I said it, I regretted it.
“Sorry – I forgot. Bastian…” Raine paused and then repeated my name. “Bastian?”
Ah, shit. I really, really needed a drink now.
“Sebastian?”
She loo
ked up at me, blinked twice, and then looked away. Her head snapped back to me, and her eyes went wide.
“Sebastian Stark.”
My mouth wouldn’t respond to any mental commands, so I went with a nod instead.
“You were there.”
I nodded my head again.
“You’re the one who testified against the man who killed him.”
Another nod.
“You…you watched him die?” Her voice broke on the last word, making it sound like a question. I could no longer move my head.
I guess I didn’t need all that anonymity after all.
Chapter 7 – Hurt
All my muscles were tensed and ready, as if they perceived a threat similar to the beginning of a tournament. There was something different in the feeling, and when I realized my muscles were tensed for flight, not fight, I wasn’t sure what to make of it. My natural reaction had always been fight – I had never run from anything in my life. What was it about this miniscule little girl that scared the shit out of me? Once she understood everything, she was going to hate me, and the thought was extremely unnerving. I didn’t want her to hate me.
I waited in silence and watched Raine warily. I couldn’t even name all the emotions passing over her face as she put the little puzzle pieces in their proper places and realized how big a dick I really was. Her mouth kept opening up a little like she was going to say something, but then she’d stop and look away from me.
I’d been there when her father was killed. I heard him beg for the mercy of death as they tortured him. I heard him cry for his daughter. I heard him beg for his life before I watched the barrel of a gun point at his head. It didn’t matter at that point – he couldn’t have survived what they had done to him. Regardless, I just sat in my seat and didn’t move when the trigger was pulled and his brains splattered on the wall behind him. I never moved. I never protested. I just watched it happen. Three of them had died before I had managed to stand and move towards them. At that point, John Paul had grabbed one of my arms and Landon the other, keeping me from going forward. I still didn’t speak, didn’t tell them to stop. Gayle and his partner were tortured the worst because they were cops, but they all died.