I could see Raine on the bed, lying down and breathing steadily, her shape clearly outlined by the light slipping through the blinds. A breath escaped from my lungs, and my shoulders dropped in relief. She didn’t move as I carefully and quietly slipped off my T-shirt and jeans and ditched them in a pile by the laundry hamper.
Slipping into bed as silently as I could, I shoved my legs in under the sheet. Raine didn’t stir as I maneuvered myself behind her and snaked my arm around her waist. I relaxed against her, let out a long breath, and closed my eyes. For a moment, I thought I was home free.
“You going to tell me where you’ve been?”
Ah, shit.
I opened my eyes though I couldn’t really see much in the dim light from the balcony door. My throat seized up on me, and it took me a second to find my voice. I tensed my fingers around the fabric of her shirt and gripped it tightly, like I was afraid she’d try to get away from me if I wasn’t holding on.
“Just took the bike out for a ride,” I claimed. I swallowed a couple of times and licked my lips.
“For seven hours?” Raine rolled over and looked into my eyes. Even in the dim light, I could still see the shine in her beautiful, red-rimmed brown eyes. She’d been crying, and I felt like a total asshole.
I kept my grip on her shirt as if I could keep all of this from happening just by holding on tightly enough.
“I just needed to…to get away for a bit.” I looked down her bare arm and dropped my head against her shoulder. I rubbed my forehead against her skin and felt myself relax further when she didn’t push me away. “Those people were driving me bat-shit.”
“Those people,” Raine snarled, “are my friends!”
Yeah, there I went again—making shit worse by opening my big fat mouth.
“I didn’t mean it like that…I mean…ah, fuck it!” I started to push away from her, but my arm got wrapped up in the sheet and held me back. Maybe it was because my fingers wouldn’t initially loosen from her shirt—whatever. I fought with it for a second, finally freeing myself, and sat up.
Raine sat up beside me, glaring.
“Well, what did you mean, then?” she asked.
I had meant exactly what I said, but I wasn’t about to admit that. There was no way I was going to come out and say I hated them being in the condo at all, even if they did keep their mouths shut, which of course they didn’t. She was already pissed off at me enough, and I had to figure out a way to make it better, not worse.
“I just…I don’t like people.”
Raine stared at me for a moment.
“Why?” she asked.
My mind began to race. I wasn’t really sure how to answer the question. I never considered myself a people person, but I never really thought about the reason for that. It was just the way it was.
“I just…don’t.”
Apparently, Raine wasn’t going to let me off the hook and prodded me to give her a better answer.
Tensing, I tried to come up with a decent answer that didn’t make me sound like an ass, but I couldn’t think of anything. As I struggled inside to come up with the perfect words, the turmoil inside of me increased and eventually overflowed. Closing my eyes tightly, I opened my mouth and let shit run out of it.
“Because I don’t have anything to say to them!” I blurted. I covered my face with one hand and slammed the back of my head ineffectually into the pillow. It didn’t help.
“What does that mean?” Raine’s voice was soft as she propped herself on one elbow to look down at me. A small amount of my tension ebbed.
“When people are around, they end up asking me questions,” I said as I shoved myself off the pillow and sat up. I wrapped my arms around my legs and put my chin on my knees. “I don’t have any answers for them. I don’t have anything to say.”
“Will you give me an example?” Raine asked, her tone going soft.
“What the fuck am I supposed to say?” My voice rose in pitch as my throat constricted. My gut churned as if a little tornado were forming inside of it. “What am I supposed to talk about? About how I was such a fucked up kid that my own parents dumped me? Should I tell them about how every foster home I was ever in kicked me out? How about my time in juvie? There’s a fun topic. Or the best question of all—‘what do you do for a living?’ How am I supposed to answer that? Oh, you know, I made a shit-ton of money killing people, but I’m retired now.”
Raine’s face scrunched up, and she squished her lips together. She let out a long sigh through her nose before opening her arms and pulling me back down to the pillows.
“I never thought about it that way,” she admitted. “I can see where that would be difficult. You are right—the kinds of things people usually ask would be difficult for you to answer.”
With a shudder, my body relaxed, and the whirlwind inside dissipated. I wrapped my arms around her and held her against my chest in silent appreciation of her understanding.
“But, Bastian,” Raine continued, “even though you might not be able to answer the questions people ask, that doesn’t mean you get to blow up at them and storm out, leaving me to try to explain and defend you. You can’t do that.”
Well, yeah, obviously I could. I had in the past, and I’d probably do it again in the future.
“You think I should just stick around and tell them to fuck off instead?”
“No,” Rain said with a loud sigh. “There are other options, you know.”
I took a deep breath as the anger inside me began to bubble again at the thought. There was one option I had considered but didn’t take.
“I didn’t think you’d appreciate me hitting him,” I said.
“You’re right,” Raine replied. I could hear the tension rising in her voice again.
“It’s better if I just leave,” I rationalized.
“Maybe for you,” Raine agreed, “but what kind of questions and comments do you think I get when you do something like that?”
I hadn’t thought about it. Once I left, everything that happened afterward had never really concerned me before. I wondered what Lindsay and Nick had to say after I took off and how Raine responded.
“I spend enough time trying to get them to understand you,” she said. “When you do something like that, I can’t defend your actions. It just gives them more justification when they start telling me I ought to get rid of you.”
I secured my grip on her clothing as a wave of panic crashed over me. It was just one more thing my selfish ass hadn’t considered. Of course Lindsay would be telling her to dump me, and Nick would be right behind her. They probably had another guy already picked out as a better suitor for Raine, and he probably hadn’t killed anyone lately.
“What did they say?” I growled. She had known Lindsay since they were kids. Raine was bound to listen to whatever advice Lindsay had to offer. The thought kick-started my paranoia.
“It doesn’t matter,” Raine said. “I’m not going anywhere, Bastian.”
I relaxed slightly, but the idea of Raine with someone else continued to terrify me.
“That doesn’t stop them from saying I should, though. When you behave like that, it makes it a lot harder to explain to them why I love you.”
The tension inside me began to build again, and I fought against the desire to tell her all the reasons she shouldn’t have anything to do with me. Her friends were probably right, but I felt like I was looking out over the proverbial cliff, and if I opened my mouth to say what I was thinking, I was going to fall.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered instead.
Raine moved her hand up into my hair and held my head against her shoulder. Closing my eyes, I tried to understand the shit that was going through my head, but as usual, I couldn’t make anything of it. My brain just didn’t work right, which I realized was the problem.