“Yeah?” I turned to face Raine. Her hair was pulled into a tight, wet, Medusa-looking coil all over the top of her head, and her skin glowed with the heat from her first real shower. She was dressed in some short satin pajamas, which made me instantly hard. It’s not that they were revealing or anything – they weren’t. If they had been, I would have had to gouge John Paul and Nick’s eyes out. That didn’t stop her from looking fucking gorgeous in them. I watched her glance quickly down to the hand holding my cigarette and back again. She didn’t even bother to roll her eyes.
“Nick helped me make up a bed. I’m pretty tired, so I was going to go ahead and lie down.”
“I’ll be there in a sec,” I promised. I took another drag of the smoke, and she finally rolled her eyes – which actually made me feel a little better because it seemed so normal – nodded, and went back inside.
“Who would have thought it,” John Paul snickered.
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“Someone finally tamed Sebastian Stark.”
I growled in my chest, tossed the second butt out into the street next to the first, and went back inside. John Paul followed.
“Listen to this,” Nick said as John Paul and I walked into the small living area where Raine was fluffing up pillows on a pull-out sofa bed. Nick placed a small radio on the coffee table and turned up the volume. “They’re about to repeat it.”
“…could mean a lot of trouble for those on Capitol Hill. In international news, the two missing people from this past April’s loss of the pleasure sailing vessel, The Oblation, have finally been found. Ship’s Captain Sebastian Stark and passenger Raine Gayle are reported to be alive and in good health. We have a news crew waiting in Miami now along with friends and family of the castaways. They are expected to arrive in Miami late tomorrow evening.”
“Fuck…how’d they get my name?” I gasped.
“Right after the ship went down and you guys were reported missing,” John Paul told us. “The media was all over it, and someone went digging for information on Daniel Greene. When they didn’t find any, they dug deeper. Your name’s been all over the news, even bringing up more shit about the trial. They even talked about how a relative of...well, you know.”
“Fuck.”
“Cat’s out of the bag for now,” John Paul said. “Nick and Lindsay both know about the murders and the trial.”
The way he said it – singling out those two details – was enough to tell me they knew nothing else. They knew nothing about John Paul’s involvement and nothing about the tournaments. They only knew I had witnessed murders and had testified against the killer.
“But this shit will die down,” John Paul continued. “We can disappear again.”
He looked over at Raine quickly.
“If you want to, anyway,” he added.
I definitely wasn’t ready to deal with this shit.
“I think you guys are going to have quite a welcome,” Nick said. “The press was all over this since it went down. I bet you even get a call from Oprah.”
The reporter on the radio started talking about Raine’s father and about how I had been the informant who put his killer behind bars.
Definitely, definitely not ready to deal with this shit.
Raine had started to cry. I didn’t know why exactly – talk of her father, the general stress of everything, or just her inclination to cry when all the stressful shit was over – and I was about to go over to her, but Lindsay beat me to it. She put her arm around Raine’s shoulders, and I wanted to fucking rip it out of the socket. I knew that was stupid, but I didn’t want her to get comfort from someone else. I wanted it to come from me.
What an ass.
Raine sniffed and looked up at me, then at Lindsay. She smiled at her friend, leaned against her for a moment, then walked out of her embrace and into my arms. Raine turned her face into my chest and wrapped her arms around my neck. John Paul was trying to suppress a smile and failing miserably. I ran my hand up Raine’s back and extended my middle finger in his direction.
“You’re tired,” I said. I ran my hand over her head, trying not to fuck up the little bundle full of hair on top.
“I think everyone is,” Lindsay confirmed. I immediately liked her better. Raine let go of me and hugged Lindsay. Everyone said their goodnights and then Nick and Lindsay went off in one direction, and John Paul went off in the other. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do, so I just sort of stood there in the middle of the room.
“What’s wrong, Bastian?” Raine’s voice was so quiet I could hardly hear her.
“Just thinking,” I responded, not really wanting to elaborate. If I told her what I thought, she would either be pissed off at me, which was my preference, or she’d confirm exactly what I was thinking. That was my nightmare – my constant, never-ending nightmare.
“About?” She wasn’t going to let me off easy.
“If you…if you wanted me to sleep on the floor or something, I can.”