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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.
One by one, they all died while I stood there and watched.
My memories were interrupted by a deafening roar as Raine suddenly threw herself at me. Her little fists were pounding on my chest while tears rolled down her face.
“You have to tell me what happened to him!” she screamed at me. “You have to tell me! Tell me now, Bastian Stark, you son of a bitch!”
I was still so tensed, I couldn’t even understand what she was doing at first. Once I realized she was trying to hurt me, I couldn’t figure out what I should do about it. I could let her continue, since the most damage she was going to do to me was some slight bruising. No, that wasn’t going to work because she was using up a ton of energy – energy she couldn’t afford to waste. I could cold-cock her and knock her out – she might be more sensible when she woke up. No, I couldn’t do that. Shit, I’d already hit her once. I wasn’t going to repeat that, no matter what the reason. I was going to have to find a way to subdue her…gently.
Was that even possible?
“Raine, for fuck’s sake, stop it!” I tried wrapping my hands around her arms and pulling her away, but she continued to struggle against me, screaming and crying. When I let go of her, she went back to her ineffectual poundings, which didn’t exactly hurt but were starting to be fucking annoying. Finally, I just wrapped her up in a bear hug and held her against my chest, mostly immobilized.
She fought against me for a while but eventually gave in to exhaustion. Her heavy sobs shook us both as she cried against my chest the same way she had the first night on the raft. Every few minutes she would reiterate that I had to tell her what happened to him. I didn’t answer her, though. I knew no one in their right mind really wanted to know how someone they loved died – not when it was like that.
Eventually, she calmed and I lay back, bringing her with me and keeping my arms wrapped around her. She let out one last shuddering breath and seemed to give up. Her eyes closed, but I didn’t think she was actually asleep. I ran my hand over the top of her head, intrigued by the soft texture of her hair. When she had touched my hair, it seemed to have relaxed me a little, so I thought maybe I could do the same for her.
“Are you going to tell me?” she asked after we had laid there for quite some time.
“No,” I responded.
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t want to remember it.”
“I need to know,” Raine insisted.
“You want to know,” I corrected. “The problem with that is you can’t ever un-know something. If I tell you, and you don’t like what I have to say, I can’t take it back out of your brain. Believe me, you don’t want to know this.”
“Tell me, please.” Raine raised her head from my chest and looked at me with reddened eyes framed in deep, dark lashes. I didn’t know if it was the look in her eyes, the nature of her request, or just the way she said “please” that destroyed my resolve. Whichever it may have been, I gave in. It was possible she could have asked me for anything in the world at that point and I couldn’t have denied her. I couldn’t let her know that, though.
“All right,” I said, taking a deep breath, “but not now, and I’m not telling you all of it. I just…can’t.”
Raine nodded and turned her head so her cheek rested on my chest again. I ran my fingers up and down her back in silence for several minutes.
“You were the one he was thinking about when he died,” I finally said. “The last thing he said was, ‘I have a daughter named Raine.’ Then he was shot.”
I felt her tears drop onto my chest again, and her body shuddered once before her grip tightened on me.
“Thank you, Bastian.”
“Don’t thank me for that,” I snarled at her. “Don’t thank me for any of this shit.”
