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“I missed you so much,” Raine said quietly.
“I missed you, too.”
“We’ve never been apart before,” Raine said. “I don’t like it.”
“I know. I hate it.”
I breathed in her scent again, trying to force the memory to lodge in my brain somewhere so I could keep it with me. I felt both better and worse being in her presence—better because I could touch her and be with her, but worse because she was being held prisoner in a fucking shed in the middle of Nowhere, Manitoba.
I pulled back a little and looked her over.
“Are you okay?” I asked. My chest tightened as I waited for her answer.
“Yes,” she said. “A little annoyed by all of this, but I’m all right.”
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“No one hurt you?” I braced myself for her answer. If anyone had laid a hand on her, I’d be ripping out throats before the tournament began.
“No,” she said. “Scared me a bit, but no one hurt me.”
I breathed a sigh of relief and held her closer.
“Do you have everything you need? Are they getting you plenty of food and whatever else you want?”
“Mostly.” Raine scowled.
“What is it?” I demanded. If Franks’ cohorts were holding back something she needed, they were going to have to answer to me.
“They won’t let me have internet access,” she said with a sigh. “I didn’t have my phone on me when Landon showed up at the condo, so I can’t call anyone. I can’t reach my professors, and exams are next week. I’m going to fail the whole semester.”
Raine’s schooling had been the farthest thing from my mind. If I was totally honest, I couldn’t have cared less about it. She could fucking drop out, and it wouldn’t make any difference to me. There was nothing in the foreseeable future that was going to require her to have a degree in ecology.
It was important to her though, and it was obviously stressing her out. She’d worked hard and nearly had straight A’s in her classes. Though I didn’t ultimately care, I could understand why she wouldn’t want all that work to be wasted.
Kind of like building a kick-ass shelter out of nothing and then having a helicopter haul you away from it all.
“I’ll see what I can do,” I said.
“If I could just get a hold of them and tell them I was…indisposed, maybe they would let me make up the work in the summer or something.”
There was no way in hell Landon was going to let her talk to anyone, but I didn’t want to bring that up just yet. I had a couple of ideas I thought might work.
“I’ll take care of it,” I told her. “I don’t know exactly how just yet, but I’ll figure something out.”
She nodded, and I was glad she took me at my word. Considering what I had gotten her into, she had every right not to believe a fucking thing that came out of my mouth. I wouldn’t have blamed her. Even if she had come to understand that all of this was for her own protection, it was still a shitty way to live, even temporarily.
Raine reached up and ran her fingers over my jaw.
“How about you?” she asked. “How have you been sleeping?”
I shrugged one shoulder.
“I’ve been so exhausted,” I told her, “I’ve pretty much dropped off as soon as training was done for the day.”
It wasn’t completely true, but I didn’t want her thinking I wasn’t sleeping at all. The last thing she needed was to worry about me. It didn’t work, though, and as Raine eyed me, it became clear that she wasn’t buying it.
“I wake up cold at night,” I admitted. “I reach out for you, but you’re not there. I usually can’t get to sleep again after that. I guess the plus side is there isn’t enough time for nightmares.”
