Surviving Raine (Surviving Raine 1)

Oh shit.

Oh shit shit shit shit shit.

I tore my eyes away from hers, unable to look her in the face anymore. I didn’t remember doing that, but the way she put it…I knew it wasn’t just my hand accidentally connecting with her face during a seizure. I must have really hit her. I must not have hit her very hard because her cheek was lightly bruised. If I had hit her hard, her jaw would be broken, or worse. I’d killed with a single punch to the face before. When I closed my eyes and thought about the shape and angle of the bruise, it was pretty obvious – I must have backhanded her like some sort of abusive fucking boyfriend.

“Shit...I didn’t… Fuck!”

What could I really say? Nothing adequate. So I dug my fingers into my hair and said nothing. Regardless of how light a touch it may have been, I did hit her, which I counted as one of the worst things I had ever done in my life. The people who had died at my hands didn’t count because they knew what they were getting into. Hitting some chick because she probably said the wrong thing at the wrong time – that was just fucking…wrong.

“It will heal,” she said with a shrug.

We sat in silence for a few minutes.

“I don’t remember doing that,” I finally told her.

“Well, I won’t forget it,” she responded. “So I guess that makes up for you not remembering.”

“I really should have made sure there was something to drink on here,” I said, half thinking out loud. “If I just had something…”

“Seriously, Daniel?” Raine looked up at me and shook her head. “After all of that, all you can think about is how you still want a drink?”

I chuckled, though I knew she wasn’t trying to be funny at all.

“You ever been around an alcoholic before, Raine? We’re kind of a fucked up bunch.”

“I have not,” she admitted, “but I am getting the idea. I guess I always thought people who were alcoholics didn’t know they were. Once they realized it, I thought they’d get help or something.”

“Hmm, maybe,” I said with a shrug. My stomach was starting to feel a little better with a bit of food in it, so I went for a third cup of water. After four, I’d have to lay off for a while, or I was going to be sick again. I poured the cup and looked back at her. “But when you know exactly what you are and don’t give a shit, that’s kind of different.”

“But that part is over now, right?” she asked. “I mean, now that you’ve gone through that, you don’t have to drink anymore.”

“But I will.”

“Daniel – you had seizures three times. I thought I wasn’t going to be able to help you for a couple minutes. You were shaking so hard – I couldn’t hold you down on your side, and you were having trouble breathing. You could have died.”

“Yeah, I know,” I responded. “It doesn’t change anything. If we happened to land on a beach in the Virgin Islands right now, the first place I’d go is the nearest bar.”

“That’s insane.”

“Maybe. As long as I don’t ever get this far away from a bottle again, it won’t matter.”

“But…why?”

I shook my head and narrowed my eyes.

“Is it because your parents abandoned you?”

“No,” I said, glaring at her. I must have said something about them when I was out of it.

“Is it because of Jillian then?”

“Don’t ever say that name again,” I snarled. I had to look away from her. Obviously I had talked way too much. I wondered what else I said. “I told you, I don’t talk about my past.”

“All right,” she said, tilting her head and looking at me sideways. She raised herself up on her hands and knees and crawled over to the opening of the raft and pulled back the flap a little. I couldn’t help but watch her backside as she moved away from me. I hadn’t really looked at her from that angle before, and there were very sudden, graphic images going on in my head that involved her ass and my hands. “Do you mind?”

“Not at all,” I said, and then looked up to her face. “What?”

“I need to use the en suite bath,” she said with a wry smile. “A little pretend privacy, please?”