Surviving Raine (Surviving Raine 1)

I couldn’t finish, but I didn’t need to. I felt her fingers glide over the backs of my hands and up my arms before running through my hair.

“It’s getting late, and I’m tired. Lie down with me, please?” Raine asked. She started to lean back right where we were. Then one hand was on my face, the other in my hair, and my arms were around her. Raine tugged at me until we were both lying down on the raft with Raine on her back and my head buried against her shoulder. I stopped shaking, but I still felt the panic building up inside of me. I shouldn’t want this. This was going to lead to pain and not the easy kind.

“I’m not going to hurt you, Bastian.”

I tilted my head up from her shoulder, feeling her cheek brush against mine. I looked at her, confused by her words, her tone, her actions – her everything.

“How do you know what to do?” I asked her.

“I don’t understand,” Raine said. “How do I know what to do about what?”

“You make me calm,” I said quietly, “or at least calmer. How do you know how to do that? The way you touch me, the way you look at me…I don’t know what it means.”

For a moment, we stared at each other until I saw a tear drop from her eyelashes. I reached up and placed my hand on her face, wiping the moisture away.

“Don’t cry.”

“No one’s ever done this for you before, have they?” Raine’s tone was sad, but there was anger there as well.

“Done what?”

“Shown you any kind of affection.”

“Affection?” I thought about the word’s definition and what it meant to me, quickly determining it meant nothing. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“No one’s ever cared for you,” Raine expounded. “Or taken care of you.”

“Landon…”

“He did not take care of you,” Raine practically growled. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, then began running her fingers through the hair on my face again. “Not the way I mean.”

“He got me off the street,” I said, wondering what exactly I was trying to convey. Was I defending him? He gave me purpose at least, though the purpose itself was a little unconventional. “It’s not like I was going to be useful to anyone else. I was a violent, fucked up asshole. I still am. Why would anyone treat me like something I’m not?”

“You deserved affection, Bastian,” Raine’s voice was firm. “You deserved it as a child, and you deserve it now.”

“None of them wanted me,” I heard myself say. I looked up at her, and words just poured from my mouth without any conscious thought behind them. “There was something wrong with me, and none of them ever wanted me to stay. They’d keep the other kids.”

Another tear fell down her cheek.

“Don’t cry, Raine. Not for me.”

“Someone should,” she said. Part of me wanted to contradict her, and part of me just wanted to join her. For a while we looked at each other, and I tried to understand what any of this meant. I didn’t know how long it was before I spoke again.

“I want to, Raine,” I said quietly. “I want to let you in. I just don’t know if I can.”

I pushed more tears away from her cheekbones before dropping my head back to her shoulder and pulling her body a little closer to me with the arm I had around her waist. I closed my eyes and gave into the exhaustion.

…I have both a blanket, ragged though it is, and my bear, Snuffy. I move some of the boxes out of the back of the closet and crawl behind them with the blanket over my head, obstructing my view of the closed closet door. I am sure this time he won’t find me since I am completely covered. I hear his footsteps, his loud voice. The door is opened – I can see light through the blanket – and then there is brighter light as the blanket is torn from me, my arm wrenching painfully as he hauls me out. I try to throw Snuffy back into the corner where he’d be safe, but he grabbed the bear from my hand…

I jerked awake, panting and sweating.

Raine was still in my arms…or I was in hers. Whatever. I had my arm wrapped around her midsection with my head still on her shoulder and her hand slowly tracing patterns through my hair.

“Shh…” I heard Raine’s quiet hush. I turned my head to look up at her and found her staring down at me. I just looked at her for a minute while her hand moved from my hair to my jaw, slowly caressing it. Her lips turned up in the very slightest of smiles.

“I’ve got you now.”

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