“Landon…” I growled in warning.
He just chuckled under his breath.
“You were always so impatient,” he said quietly. “You still need to get some control over that. She’s safe; I told you that much. It’s enough for now.”
It wasn’t. It wasn’t anywhere near enough. I needed to be able to tell her myself that she would be all right because she wasn’t going to believe anyone else.
She might not believe you either, asshole.
“Just give me two minutes on the phone with her,” I said.
Landon tossed into my lap the in-flight magazine full of great shopping deals I could get without having to pay duty. I scowled at him.
“Get your mind on something else,” he instructed. “Don’t dwell on the things you can’t control.”
“Asshole,” I muttered. He obviously wasn’t going to budge at this point. I opened the magazine and stared at some strange contraption that was guaranteed to teach cats to shit in the toilet.
The plane began to taxi. At least for now, I would take Landon’s advice.
“When are you going to let me talk to her?” I asked.
It was freaking freezing, and we’d been hard at training for three days straight outside a tiny, nearly deserted old mining town called Leaf Rapids. Landon had said it was near Thompson, but that was a load of shit. It had taken us more than three hours to get here. It was just about as uninhabitable a place I had ever seen, and the location of the tournament was supposed to be far more remote.
Landon let out a sigh. I grabbed a canteen of nearly frozen water and tried to recover from my latest jaunt across the icy land. I dropped my ass down on a tree stump near the lake and pulled a cigarette out of my pocket. It was slightly crushed, but serviceable. I had to take my hand out of my glove to light it, though.
I’d asked the same question at least a dozen times since we began training. I’d been met with silence or some comment about patience being a fucking virtue.
Landon looked up at me, glared at the cigarette, and then looked toward the setting sun.
“You make that your last cigarette today,” he said, “and you can call her tonight.”
I felt like a kid at fucking Christmas time. A kid with a real family and real parents who gave a shit and made sure there were presents wrapped up in red and green paper and a plate of cookies and milk for the elf dude. It was the kind of thing I’d never experienced, but I wanted to make sure I knew what it was supposed to be like so I could give all that to Alex.
I wanted to give him everything.
Knowing Raine was with him, even if it was against her will, made me feel like there was some actual hope for the future. It made me believe when this was all over, we could make it work.
That night, as I shoveled logs into a wood burning stove, Landon came up behind me and handed me his cell phone.
“Five minutes,” he said.
I took the phone from his hand and placed it up to my ear.
“Raine?”
“Bastian? Oh my God, Bastian!”
“It’s me, baby,” I said. I could hear her crying. “Are you all right?”
“I’m okay,” she sniffed.
“Where are you?” I asked.
“Somewhere in Canada.”
“Thompson?”
“That might be it.”