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I looked into her eyes and tried to hold her gaze, hoping I wouldn’t lose my nerve and say something assholeish again.
“I love you, and I need you to love me. I want it…so, so much…I need it. Even though I think it would be better for you not to care about me, I need you too much to turn away from it. I’ll never walk away from you, Raine, I swear – I’ll be with you as long as you will have me. If any motherfucker ever tried to take you from me, I’d fucking fight to the death for you.”
I was breathing heavily, and my heart was starting to pound. I felt like I was in some kind of a panic, but I didn’t understand why.
“I’ll never give up,” I told her. “I’ll fight for you, no matter what. I don’t deserve you…I’ll never believe that…but I want you so bad…I need to be with you. I just have to be, Raine…I don’t think I could live any other way anymore.”
“Bastian,” she whispered, “I’ll always love you, and there’s nothing that can change that. Stop worrying – you have me.”
“So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.”
“I give you my life, my love, my soul,” I swore to her. “As long as I’m breathing, I’m yours. Even when I’m nothing more than a fucked up dick, I still love you.”
She wrapped her arms around my head and held me against her. I wished there was more that I could say, but my thoughts simply weren’t prepared to turn themselves into words. I loved her, but the word itself was so inadequate, I had no idea what to say after it. I had no purpose before her, no life, no reason to be – only existence in an empty, meaningless shell. I was useless, pointless, inadequate…the list goes on. I hated myself then, and I still did. The difference was that I knew she wanted me. I knew she loved me. The single, brightest point in the universe wanted and loved me.
“Do you think anyone’s ever going to find us?” Raine suddenly said out of the blue.
“Yeah, eventually,” I said automatically and then wondered if I believed it. I thought a
bout it for a minute, and decided I did believe it. Considering the fuckers who attacked her had been in a small-sized motorboat, we couldn’t really be that far from civilization. We obviously weren’t in any kind of shipping lane, or we wouldn’t still be here, but eventually someone who wasn’t an asshole would have to come close enough to see us. As long as someone came close enough, we’d eventually be picked up.
Then what?
I could get another ship, and Raine could come live on it with me, but would she even want to? I had spent years on the water, but Raine had just been taking a vacation. Considering how it turned out, she might never want to get on another ship again and I wouldn’t blame her. So what would we do? Go back to the States and set up house somewhere? Then what? She could go back to school, but what the fuck would I do?
Buy a fucking huge-ass bottle of vodka, that’s what. Nice.
That’s when it hit me.
I didn’t want to be rescued.
Here on this island with Raine was complete and total paradise. Everything we needed was within reach, and there was plenty for us to live comfortably for the rest of our lives. It wasn’t a five-star Hyatt, but who the fuck actually needed any of that shit? I didn’t need anything I couldn’t find within a half-hour’s walk. I didn’t want anything else. If we were rescued, everything would change. The fact was, I couldn’t offer Raine anything other than taking care of her physically, which she wouldn’t fucking need once we were rescued.
She wouldn’t be stuck with me. She’d have options. Better options. A shitload of them.
Fuck.
Even if we were together for a while, she’d find out pretty quick what an asshole I really was because the first fucking thing I was going to do was to get drunk off my ass. She’d go back to school and end up with a study partner who was a guy, and I’d have to fucking kill him. Just the thought of her being close to another guy was enough to get me worked up and wanting to punch something.
Raine took my hand, and we walked to the shelter together as the sun began to set. She was going on about something, but I wasn’t really listening to her. I just nodded and grunted every once in a while as I banked the fire for the night and Raine shook sand out of the mats. She said something about her friend Lindsay, the shopoholic, and her escapades at a mall in Cleveland as we settled down on the mattress to sleep. My thoughts were far too internalized to understand any of the details of her monologue.
There was no way being back in polite society with Raine would work. Here was perfect. Here I could be everything she needed because her needs weren’t complicated in this place. Back in the normal world, I was nothing but a social misfit, just like the fucking Christmas toys in the Rudolph cartoon. Raine had friends to take her shopping and people who cared about her. She had potential, she had intelligence, she had money, and she had looks. She wouldn’t need me for anything.
It was probably that thought that brought back the nightmares with a vengeance.
“You like that? Huh? You gonna scream for me again?” He holds her hair with one hand, pinning her head to the ground. The other hand twists the knife he has lodged in her side…
My jaw tightened, and it actually felt like I might bite through my own teeth for a moment. The palm-frond ceiling of the new shelter was the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes. I must have rolled off of Raine after I fell asleep because the nightmare was pretty fucking awful and I hadn’t had one like that for a while. Well, a few days, anyway. The scene was the same – they had her down on the beach and I couldn’t get to her in time – but the faces, the faces were all different.
My stomach cramped, and I wrapped my arms around my middle for a moment, swallowing hard and telling myself not to be such a pussy. It was a dream, for fuck’s sake. I forced my body to relax a little while I stared at Raine’s peaceful, sleeping form. I tried to make myself focus on her face so I wouldn’t see anything else in my mind, but it wasn’t working. I lay my fingers over the top of hers, thinking maybe the physical touch would help, but it didn’t make any difference. I kept seeing his face – that bastard motherfucker who took what shambles of a life I had and fucking destroyed it. Gunter Darke. This time, his face had replaced Dreadlocks’ in my dream. Franks held Raine down while Gunter’s body violated her and his knife tore into her flesh.
I couldn’t hold it back any longer, stumbled outside the shelter, and dropped to my hands and knees to get sick. When I was done, I thought about going down to the water to wash off my face, but I didn’t want to be that far from her – definitely not now.
“She’s safe.”
I said it out loud, though under my breath, so I wouldn’t wake Raine.
