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I felt her relax into me almost instantly. I dropped down to my back, somewhat painfully, and took her with me. I tried to move my hand up and down her back since I thought that was supposed to be soothing or something, but I was still really, really tired.
“I thought you were going to die,” Raine said through the tears collecting on my chest. “I didn’t know what I would do…without you…”
“You’d be okay,” I tried to reassure her. “You’ve learned how to find water and how to fish…you’d do just fine, baby…”
Raine stopped crying for a minute and sniffed, then looked up to my face, her eyes showing her confusion.
“No, I wouldn’t be,” Raine shook her head slowly. I watched her hands come up and slide across my jaw, scratching over the several days’ worth of growth with the tips of her fingers. She held my face in her hands and leaned closer to me, her voice earnest. “I’d die without you, Bastian. Even if I lived, I’d die inside.”
My chest clenched at her words, and I tried to find some way to respond to her, but my brain offered me nothing comprehensible. I just stared into her eyes for a while until the corners of her mouth turned up ever so slightly, and then she laid her head back on my chest. With my head resting on the sand beneath me, I let unconsciousness overtake me.
* * * * *
The same dream woke me up for the third time in a row. Details were sometimes different, but the main events were the same – they’re always holding her down, laughing as she’s screaming, forcing themselves on her over and over again, and I can never get there fast enough to stop it from happening. The last couple of times I had managed to keep myself from throwing up, but that revelation pissed me off. It had been like that with other dreams – they would disturb me so much I would get physically sick, but once I got used to the dream it wouldn’t happen anymore. If I got used to it, it would never go away. The idea of seeing those images for the rest of forever was almost enough to make me puke anyway, but I managed to hold it in.
The second time I woke up, Raine opened her eyes as well and made me roll onto my stomach so she could change the dressing on my leg. I got a bit of a look at it since the moon was nearly full and bright in the clear sky. It looked pretty gross, but it also looked like it was starting to heal. She did a neat job of covering the poultice she made by pulling my folded-over boxer shorts up my leg, then wrapping a piece of rope around it so it was just tight enough to keep it from slipping while I slept.
Of course, that also meant Raine was going around completely bare. I wasn’t sure what had happened to my shirt, but she hadn’t bothered to put anything on since I came to my senses. Not that I was complaining, though I wasn’t so sure most of my body was ready for that sort of activity.
The last time I woke up from the same nightmare, the sky was starting to brighten and a cool breeze rustled the palms all around us. I looked around our little shelter and growled at myself. I hadn’t made it structurally sound enough, and it was starting to fall apart already. I needed to get working on the new one. I’d apparently lost three whole days where I could have probably gotten at least half of the new one done. Now I was going to have to get my leg in better shape before I could make much progress. Or…I could push myself until I dropped. That was probably the better option.
“You have to be hungry.” Raine’s soft voice came from under me. I had pinned her down in my sleep again. It felt better that way – knowing she was safely under me. I rolled to my side and let her up.
“Yeah,” I said. “Got any pancakes?”
Raine laughed and shook her head.
“I’ve got fish and a couple of the roots I found in a pile in the sand. They taste like sweet potatoes. I figured you found them, and since we’ve both been eating them the past few days, they must be safe. Oh – and there are some almonds left – they are almonds, right?”
“Yeah, they are.” I smiled. I didn’t even think about what she would have been eating the last few days. Apparently she was a lot better at taking care of herself than I thought she would be – and me too, apparently. “And the roots taste like sweet potatoes because they are sweet potatoes. There’s more not too far off – maybe a fifteen-minute walk from here. I’ll show you.”
“Why don’t you give yourself a few days, hmm?” Raine smiled at me. She walked to the other side of the shelter, and I watched her hands reach behind the palm-frond wall. When she brought them back, my shirt and her other pair of shorts, the ones made out of that stretchy material that had chaffed her before, were in her hands. She slipped them on, so I couldn’t watch her walk around naked anymore.
“No fucking way.” I scowled. Fuck, if I couldn’t watch her naked, I sure as hell wasn’t just going to sit around all day. “I’ve had worse than this, and I’m not going to sit around and wait for it to be all better. It’ll feel better when I get moving on it, anyway.”
“You’ll just make it worse,” Raine said. I started to hoist myself up, and she actually came closer to me to put her hand on my shoulder and try to hold me down. As if. I stood up anyway, even with her hand pushing all of her weight down on me and wobbled a little. It hurt, no doubt about that, but like I had already told her, I’ve had worse.
“See?” I said when I managed to steady myself a bit.
“I see you barely standing on a leg that really shouldn’t be holding your weight yet,” Raine argued back.
“Bullshit,” I responded. I took an unsteady step forward, and my leg buckled, but I didn’t fall. Raine’s arm went around my waist, but I pushed it away. “I don’t need any fucking help!”
“Oh, for goodness sake, Bastian!” Raine yelled. “You most certainly do!”
“I do not,” I growled back. “I don’t need it, and I certainly don’t fucking want it!”
We argued for another ten minutes before she finally gave up on my stubborn ass and went over to the fire, muttering to herself about unreasonable idiots. I hobbled around the area right outside the shelter, making sure there was something at least somewhat sturdy near me at all times so I didn’t fall over. I was fucking pissed, though I wasn’t exactly sure why. There were too many things in my head for me to sort out. There were the dreams, being out of it and useless for three days, and my failure to completely protect her. I should never have left her alone. I should have been back to the beach faster. I should have…
My mind continued to list all the points where I had fucked up.
As I walked…well…limped around on my leg, Raine shot looks of death over at me every couple of minutes, but I pretended not to notice. It really, really, fucking hurt to walk, but damn if I wasn’t going to do it anyway.
“Get up, you son-of-a-bitch! You aren’t hurt that bad! Fucking GET UP!”
I shook my head to free it of Landon’s echoing words and settled myself down on the opposite side of the fire, smiling up at Raine with a self-satisfied grin. She rolled her eyes and used two blackened sticks to pull cooked sweet potatoes from their resting places on top of hot rocks.
“Are you just going to smirk at me now?” she asked.
