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“We were on the island,” I said quietly. Images of the beach and our little shelter near the line of palm trees invaded my head and made my chest ache. “The helicopter was there, and you were getting on it.”
I paused for too long, and Raine pressed me for more.
“I wasn’t going with you,” I finally said.
“Why not?” Raine asked as she moved to prop herself up on one elbow and look at me.
I shrugged again.
“You didn’t want me to.”
“Bastian…”
“It’s just a fucking dream,” I snapped. “You asked.”
Raine tilted her head to get a better look at me in the dim light of the room. She reached out and ran her fingers over my jaw as she stared intently into my eyes.
“There’s more to it, isn’t there?” she said.
Too fucking intuitive.
I looked away from her, let out a long breath, and stared at the balcony door. When I didn’t answer, she poked me in the arm.
“Tell me.”
I let out a long, overdramatic sigh.
“You were pregnant,” I told her.
This time, the long pause was hers. She gripped my jaw and narrowed her eyes at me.
“I’m not her, Bastian.”
Jillian.
She was the woman who conned me into fucking her bareback so she could take my child away to be raised by some other guy. The woman I thought I loved had only used me to get what she wanted—to get what that guy couldn’t give her.
“I know that.”
“I’m not going to leave you,” Raine continued. “Besides, you can’t get me pregnant, remember?”
I’d made sure something like that could never happen to me again.
“Vasectomies are not exactly something a guy forgets.”
I dropped back to the pillows, pulled her down against me, and closed my eyes.
The conversation was over. At least for now, I’d try to keep my paranoia to a minimum.
The next day, I got a lot of answers, but they definitely made everything worse, not better.
I’d shaken up my routine quite a bit. I’d added both morning and afternoon workouts at the gym and still spent my early mornings running on the beach. The workouts were filling up a decent amount of time when Raine wasn’t around and kept me from spending quite as much time at Bar Crudo in the late afternoons when Raine was still in class.
Sitting in a small coffee shop off the beach, I finished off my espresso and checked my watch. The bar would open soon, and I wanted to be there before there was any kind of crowd around. There were already way too many people on the beach, especially for a weekday.
I tossed a few bills down on the table and started walking through the palm trees to the street. I didn’t get far before someone called out to me.
“It’s been a while.”
