Not that I had anything to add to them.
“So proud of my girl,” Nick said with a wide smile. He tossed his arm over Lindsay’s shoulders and gave her a stupid-ass grin.
Every word that came out of his mouth I wanted to pound back into his face. It wasn’t the words themselves; it was the way he said them. It was the way he beamed at her like she was the center of the fucking universe. She was eating it up, too.
I kind of wanted to puke.
Raine smiled at both of them before tilting her head to look at me. Her smile faltered immediately as she watched me tear into another bite with my fingers clenching the knife so tightly, it probably looked like I was trying to brutalize the cow.
“Only two years at the store, too,” he continued.
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” I muttered, no longer able to keep it inside. “It’s a customer service job. She’s not on the board of directors.”
Half a second of silence before Nick sat up taller and glared at me.
“What the fuck is your problem?” Nick finally snapped.
I glared right back.
“Let’s see where to start.” I tapped my finger on my chin. “Oh yeah—you’re a dickhead.”
“Bastian!”
I slammed my hand down on the table and stood up.
“This is fucking pointless!” I yelled. “I can’t sit around here and pretend all this is just fine and dandy, Raine! It’s bullshit!”
I wasn’t really sure exactly what was bullshit, but I was pretty confident that there was bullshit about the room. I didn’t like it. In fact, I couldn’t fucking tolerate it another second.
“Jesus, Bastian…” Lindsay’s face crinkled up as if she’d just seen some poor girl on the beach in Wal-Mart flip-flops. “Calm down already.”
I curled my fingers into a fist, my nails digging into my palms. I wasn’t going to hit her—I wouldn’t actually do that—but the desire was certainly there. I was pretty sure if I did, Nick would come to her rescue at that point. Pummeling him was a very attractive idea, and I found myself actually considering making a move on her just to get the opportunity to hit him.
I glanced in Raine’s direction, and all those thoughts left my head. She’d never fucking forgive me if I did something like that, and the only thing that could possibly relieve some of the tension I felt was knowing once these two idiots were gone, I’d take Raine to bed and forget about this whole evening.
It occurred to me that I might have already blown that opportunity.
“Fuck this,” I muttered as I stood up and grabbed my jacket from the hook on the wall.
“Bastian, where are you going?” Raine asked.
“Getting the fuck out of here.”
Raine pushed away from the table and started to walk over to me, but Nick, who was closer to the door, beat her to it. He stepped around me and blocked me from getting from the doorway to the elevator.
“Come on, man,” he said with his hands up in some kind of stupid-ass surrender motion. “It’s all good. No reason for you to go.”
“Get the fuck out of my way!” I yelled. I shoved Nick aside and grabbed the handle of the door. I wasn’t about to wait around for the elevator, so I slammed both hands onto the metal bar on the door to the stairs and started down them, skipping two steps at a time until I reached the bottom. About halfway down, the sound of Raine yelling after me had diminished enough to be forgotten.
Every muscle in my body was painfully tight. I tried to keep my mental focus on getting the fuck out of the general area and not on going back upstairs to punch that asshole in the face. If Raine hadn’t been there, there was no doubt in my mind that I would have beaten the shit out of him, and it was only her presence that kept me from going back up there.
I needed a major distraction, and thankfully, there was something on the lower level that was good at capturing my attention.
Inside the underground parking garage were two spaces for our vehicles. One contained Raine’s Subaru, which she had driven from Ohio prior to going on the cruise that landed us both on a life raft. Next to it was the only thing I had bought since we arrived in Miami—a Honda CBR600RR.
My motorcycle.
I flipped my leg over it, started it up, and threw it into gear. A few moments later, I was doing ninety on the MacArthur Causeway, heading to I-95. I didn’t know where I was going, just that I wanted to get as far away from that condo as quickly as I could. Driving as if there were a bunch of fast-moving zombies from World War Z on my tail, I slipped between cars and trucks as I headed west, reached the interstate, and sped northward.
The wind on my face drew water from my eyes, but I reveled in the feeling, the unhindered freedom the bike gave me. It wasn’t as good as the schooner on the sea because of the traffic I had to buzz around, but it was a decent substitute. The air still smelled like salt this close to the ocean, and I could nearly taste the sea on my tongue.
I didn’t keep track of the time I spent just speeding up the highway. At some point I took an exit, turned around, and headed back toward Miami Beach. I didn’t get that far though, choosing instead to get off the interstate and head through some back streets. I zipped through some neighborhoods with unkempt lawns and boarded-up windows then past some strip malls with half the stores closed up. There weren’t a lot of people around, and those that were looked like they’d rather be somewhere else.
I finally pulled the bike over, dropped the kickstand, and put my head in my hands. I leaned over the handlebars and took several deep breaths before I sat back and looked around.
I hadn’t been to this area of town before, and it looked shady, to say the least. It definitely looked like the kind of area tourists avoided because they were more likely to get mugged than offered a drink with an umbrella in it. It immediately reminded me of living on the streets of Chicago before Landon found me and hauled me out to Seattle to start training.
Training.
I snorted to myself.
I’d learned how to kill and how to avoid being killed so I could fight and win in death-match battles to amuse the stupidly rich and powerful people of organized crime all over the world. I’d earned an insane amount of money for taking the lives of others in the most brutal ways possible. It had never bothered me in the slightest.
Why should it have? It wasn’t like those who came up against me didn’t know what they were getting into. At the level I played, all of them had been in tournaments, and none of them came out with clean fingernails. There was blood on the hands of everyone I killed.
If I hadn’t done it, one of the other fighters would have. It was only a matter of time. Very few tournament players ever actually retired—most of them just got beat. John Paul and I were two of the very few who actually gave it up and went on to something else, though the circumstances made it more of a necessity than a choice.
You didn’t testify against the mega-super crime boss for torture and murder without having to go into hiding. It wasn’t like Franks was going to offer me my job back after that. Landon had to cut his losses, give me a new identity, and send me on my way with John Paul looking out for me as I dived further and further into a perpetual bottle of vodka.
Thinking about training with Landon made me realize I wasn’t exactly following what I had been told to do—watch my surroundings and always know what dangers might be lurking. In a neighborhood like this one, I needed to pay attention. I straightened up and took a good look around me, wondering which of the idiots around here might have thought I was a good target for pickpocketing.
The idea of someone coming after me and stealing my wallet was kind of intriguing. Maybe that was exactly what I needed—a good fight in a shitty neighborhood where the police wouldn’t show up until I was long, long gone.