“Sorry if I woke you up.” I wait a beat, but again he says nothing. Okay then. I step closer, pull the key from my pocket, hold it out for him. It’s so shiny on my dirty, scratched palm, and I’m suddenly all too aware of my stench of puke and sweat. “I came to give this back. Thanks, you know… for everything.” I nod to myself. “I mean it. I—”
“I had a nightmare.” His raspy voice startles me, and I clench my fingers around the key as I glance up at him.
“What?”
“I dreamed of blood and death, and it haunts me.” He stops, starts again, his eyes flicking to me and then to the darkness behind me. “I’ve had it regularly, almost every night, ever since my best friend Livvy died, many years ago. It was my fault. A car accident, and I was driving. It’s the anniversary of her death this week.”
Fuck. “I’m sorry, I’m—”
“I see her dying right beside me, again and again, but…” His voice breaks, and his face crumbles. “But lately, I dream it’s you.”
Oh God. I’m right in front of him in two steps, the key clattering to the floor, and I take his face in my hands. “Raine…”
He puts a hand over mine. His eyes are red, his skin clammy and cold under my palms. “Listen to me. Please. You need to get off the streets. Something’s going down and you need to be as far away from Simon Gomez as possible.”
He’s making no sense. I shake my head. “Don’t ask me that. Don’t get involved. I told you not to get involved in my shit.”
He swallows hard, pulls back. “I forced myself to stay away from you, but it’s killing me. It’s fucking killing me, and I don’t know what the hell you want from me. If you don’t want me to care… if you’re only here to leave this key and go, then go.”
Dammit. I should do as he says. Leave the key and go. This was the plan all along. I’d almost convinced myself of it.
But I can’t. I’m falling apart. I drag him into my arms, and he trembles against me.
“Call me Jase,” I whisper, and I don’t even know why, only that it’s important for some fucked up reason. Nobody else calls me that.
Only Raine.
We’re the same height, so his chin lands on my shoulder, and mine on his. We fit so perfectly together.
Our bodies only, I remind myself. And our nightmares. It means nothing.
But then he murmurs, “Jase,” just a breath, and I grip him more tightly, arms wrapped around his strong body, unable to let go. His back muscles shift under my hands, his strength when he hugs me back grounding me.
It’s as if my pieces are coming back together, parts of me that were missing this past week falling back into place. It feels so good, so fucking right.
Reluctantly I draw back, releasing him. “I’m fine,” I reassure him.
He gives a jerky nod, rubs a hand over his bare chest, over the inked lines of text there, and… is that a scar?
Fuck. No idea why that draws me back closer. It’s as if that one scar on his perfect body echoes all the many scars on mine.
“How did you get this?” I gently shift his hand away and trace the raised scar, perfectly hidden under the ink surrounding the line of text tattooed into his skin. As he turns toward the light slanting out from the apartment door, I make out a few words.
Livvy.
Never.
Forgive.
“The accident,” he says, his voice raw. “I got this scratch. She died. My fault.”
Jesus fuck. He’s shaking, and I doubt it’s the cold. He’s not looking at me, not asking, but I can’t walk away, not now.
Not like this.
I glance at the key, gleaming on the floor a few feet away, then into his haunted eyes, and I remember all the times he brought me in from the cold, fed me and held me and made me feel human, right when I’d thought the last sliver of my soul had fallen away.
Besides, he was afraid for me. Had nightmares about failing me. He told me about his scar, and suddenly all my scars ache, on my body and in my mind.