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I couldn’t help it; a laugh burst out of me.
“I’m the most dangerous person around here,” I said as I looked up into her soft, brown eyes. The anger was gone from them, but the hard determination was still there. Apparently, she forgot who was living with her. “Who is going to protect you from me?”
I shoved myself away from her and out of the kitchen. My cigarettes were on the nightstand in the bedroom, so I grabbed them and opened the balcony door. I heard Raine come up behind me as I leaned on the rail and flicked ash towards the amoeba-shaped pool below.
“Are you going to tell me what’s in your head right now?” she asked softly.
I thought about it a minute.
“You don’t need me here,” I said.
“I do need you,” she insisted.
“No,” I replied, “you don’t.”
“Sebastian…” Her voice held warning.
“I know,” I said as I raised my hands in surrender, “you love me—I know that. I don’t get it, but I know it. You want me—I get that too—but you don’t need me. Not like you did there.”
“I might not need you to find me fresh water or fish, but I still need you.”
I really didn’t want to fight with her over the fucking semantics. It was obvious we weren’t going to come to terms on this one. For a moment, I stayed silent and gathered my thoughts. I didn’t want her to leave for school with an argument behind her, so I decided to just drop it. I took one last pull on my smoke, tossed the butt in the bucket, and turned to face her.
“Agree to disagree?” I suggested.
Raine sighed and pursed her lips. I gave her a lopsided grin and held out my arms. She came to me, and I wrapped myself around her, holding her as tightly as I could. She raised her hands to grip the backs of my shoulders and placed her cheek against my chest. Tucking my face into her neck, I reveled in the smell of her hair and the softness of her skin as they calmed me.
“You mean everything to me,” she said. “I don’t like to see you hurting—you know that—but I can’t go back there. I don’t ever want to go back there.”
I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to ignore the burning behind them.
“I know,” I whispered into her hair.
Lindsay was Raine’s best friend from Ohio. She relocated to the Miami area when Raine and I were missing in order to be closer to where the search was, and Nick was the helicopter pilot who eventually located us and removed us from the island. For that reason alone, I hated him, but I tried not to show it.
Lindsay came from money, which showed in her demeanor more than Raine ever wanted to admit. Her mother was a judge or something on the state supreme court, and her father was an executive at some corporation. Lindsay didn’t flaunt it exactly, but the chick bought fucking everything that caught her eye and then usually tried to get Raine to buy the same thing so they could match.
I didn’t get that shit.
“You have to see these shoes I found online!” Lindsay blathered as she dropped an insanely sized designer handbag next to the door and pulled Raine over to the couch. I wondered if there was a pair of Chihuahuas in the bag—they definitely could have fit. Both women leaned over the laptop on the coffee table and pulled up some bargain shoe site. The two of them giggled and pointed at the screen while Nick rolled his eyes.
“Women, huh?” he said with a friendly smile. He placed a large, brown paper sack on the kitchen island and reached out his hand to shake. “How are ya, Sebastian?”
Totally ignoring his hand along with his efforts, I grunted, grabbed my smokes and a lighter, and headed through the sliding glass door. I closed it with a slam behind me.
Out on the balcony, I tried to find it in myself to feel bad about blowing the guy off, but I just couldn’t. Every time I looked at him, I heard the whirling blades of the helicopter as it landed on the beach and destroyed my world. I knew Raine and Lindsay wanted us to get along, and Nick certainly tried, but I was an asshole about it all.
I fired up the grill and laid the steaks out on the attached tray. They were nice and thick, so I knew they were going to take a while to cook, which meant more time for talking with Raine’s friends.
Fucking fabulous.
I finished my smoke and slid the balcony door open.
“Seriously, Lindsay, what were you thinking?”
Lindsay and Raine were on the near side of the kitchen island with their backs to me, and Lindsay was holding a couple of wine glasses while Nick uncorked a bottle of Merlot at the counter by the sink.
“It’s just a bottle of wine,” Lindsay was saying. “It’s been months. I didn’t think it would be a big deal. I want to celebrate my promotion, dammit!”
