Keep running, boy. Keep running. Think we won’t catch you? Think you can get away?
Fuck. Now where did this memory come from? Figures it wouldn’t be a good one.
Where do I go? Where can I hole up, out of the rain? It’s early morning, the shops still closed, the drizzle ice-cold, drenching my clothes and running into my boots.
I’m stumbling, exhaustion catching up with me, compounding the lingering effects of whatever it was I drank last night, not enough sleep, and then sex, and pain, and fuck that shit.
Better not to remember, dammit.
Running is leeching away the last drops of energy and warmth in my system, and I know from experience this ain’t a good thing. With a chest cough that won’t quit and darkness seeping into my vision, I urgently need to get somewhere dry and rest. My lungs hurt, laboring and not getting me enough air.
Getting more light-headed by the minute, the stitch in my side turning into a vicious blade, I scan the street ahead. A dark shop entrance catches my eye—thank you bunches, Giovanni’s Deli, Wine and Spirits—and I step under the awning to catch my breath, only to double over coughing and retching.
This damned cough. I thought I’d gotten rid of it for a while, but nope.
When I’m done, I step as far inside as possible, then slide down with my back to the door of the shop until my ass hits the concrete. A shiver goes through me, and I rub my hands up and down my arms.
What I wouldn’t give for my jacket right now… But when you’re out at night, desperate for a customer to pay your dinner, comfort is the last thing on your mind. Guys want to see flesh, want to check out your body. The merchandise. The goods.
So I’m kinda used to the cold. Except I didn’t expect the temperature to drop so damn much from one day to the next.
Cursing, I drop my head forward, rainwater dripping down my face, splattering the floor between my legs. This fucking life. My throat burns with acid, my hands are numb with cold, my bruises hurt with every breath I take.
Fuck this. These bruises, the vomit, the sourness of fear. God, I’m tired. Hungry, too, but I’m used to that. My eyes sting, and that pisses me the fuck off all over again. What is it all worth? What am I worth?
Why try anymore? Why care?
I lean back against the glass door, staring blindly at the street and the few people hurrying along with their umbrellas. If only my teeth would stop chattering, I might catch a wink here. I don’t have a room, and after last night’s fiasco, it looks like I’ll be sleeping on the street tonight again.
Sucks ass.
Despite the cold, I’m drifting off when a shadow falls over me, blocking the gray light and the spatter of rain. A whiff of a woodsy aftershave and leather follows.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” a vaguely familiar male voice says. “Jason?”
No fucking way. I lift my head, the voice and the broad-shouldered frame clicking into place. “Raine Storm.”
He glances up at the sky, then arches a dark brow. “More like a drizzle.”
Goes to show how tired I am when it takes me a moment to get his lame joke.
“You’re so funny,” I grouse, and my voice sounds like a cheese grater, broken and rough. I start lifting my hand to give him the finger.
But his blue eyes widen. “Christ, what the hell happened to you?”
What didn’t happen to me? All these years, all my life, I just… Nothing new, I wanna say, nothing happened to me, but there’s a lump in my throat that won’t let me speak.
Not that Raine Storm would care anyway.
Nobody ever has.
Chapter Three
Raine
Last person I expected to see on my way to work was Jason. The very same guy who’s been haunting my mind, the one I’ve been trying to erase from my thoughts, with no luck.
And he looks… wet. Very wet, and cold, and miserable, huddled against the door of a deli, dressed only in pants and one of those damned barely-there tops he insists on wearing. Did he miss the change of season? We’re in September, dammit.