Surviving Raine (Surviving Raine 1)

“You are like the pit bulls.”

I glared at her. I wasn’t a fucking trained dog. I knew what I was doing, and I loved every minute of it. My head was starting to pound again, and I didn’t feel like arguing with her about it.

“Maybe,” I said with a shrug. “Not really, though. I had a choice.”

“No,” Raine said with conviction, “you didn’t.”

“Of course I did.”

She let it go.

“And this was a…game?”

“That’s how we saw it, yeah.”

“You did it for money?”

“Millions,” I confirmed. “In my first fight, I made enough to take me from the streets to a penthouse apartment. I went from going to sleep hungry every night to five star restaurants. Instead of stealing bus fare, I was driving a fucking Ferrari. My hand got replaced by ten women a night begging me to fuck them. They’d actually line up outside my hotel room and just wait their turn.”

“I made a name for myself pretty quickly because I was faster, and smarter, and more brutal than any other tournament player Landon had ever seen. In one night, I went from nothing to something. I fought and won three to five games a month for almost seven years. I got stabbed in the back – you saw the scar – beat up, shot, burned, you name it, but I never lost a game.”

* * * * *

The light was out, but I knew Raine was still sitting in the darkness and trying to wrap her head around everything I told her. I was kind of surprised she asked me to stop before I just couldn’t go on anymore. Now that I was no longer going forward with the story, I found myself backing up to the parts I skipped over – mainly, Theresa.

In my mind I could still see her clearly – blonde hair, long legs, and blank, expressionless eyes that screamed “I’ve seen too much.” I remembered the way she’d always sit hunched over, like she was trying to make herself invisible. Whenever any other guys came near, she’d immediately move over and stand in front of me so I could put my hands on her hips and show whoever it was that she was claimed.

I remembered how, for the first couple of months, she’d suck my cock every night, but I wasn’t allowed to touch her while she did it. I just leaned back on my elbows and let her go at it. Once she trusted me more, I could put my hands on her shoulders but never her head. She hated that.

I knew she’d had some fucked up shit done to her before, but she never told me what or who.

Raine shifted around, and I could hear her fold up the towel and lay down on it. After a few minutes, I heard her take a deep breath before dropping off to sleep. I spent about an hour watching for lights of any kind on the horizon but saw nothing, so I lay down to sleep as well. I should have known better because the kind of dre

ams I hadn’t had since I went to bed drunk every night started coming back.

Theresa walked slowly away from me, waving her hand and looking at me with her half closed, dead blue eyes. An owl flew across my line of sight, and I watched it as it flew up into the air and landed on the branch of the big tree in the yard of the group home. When I looked back, Theresa was gone. The new counselor was gone, too. I knew he was going to hurt her, but I just kept standing there, watching the owl up on its perch. Then I was in a bathroom, looking down a line of showers. I hadn’t been in here before, but I knew where I was. I took a couple of steps forward and slipped in a bright red pool on the ground.

I sat straight up and covered my mouth to stop any sound from coming out. Sweat dripped into my eyes until I wiped my brow with the back of my hand. I tried holding my breath to stop it from coming out so fast, but I couldn’t. I had to allow myself to pant until my body calmed down a little.

I pulled back the flap to let in some fresh air, allowing the light from the full moon to pour in around me. With shaking hands, I pulled the last cigarette out of the pouch on my belt and lit it. At least the regular deep breathing that goes along with smoking helped me to relax a little. The visions were still in my head though. The nicotine didn’t do anything to help with that shit.

I smoked and tried to think about doing shots in the bar the night before The Oblation capsized. I thought about the hooker who left me her business card and how good it was getting off in her.

It didn’t make any difference. All I could see was a pool of blood on the floor of a little walk-in shower stall, and all I could hear was the last conversation I had with her as it played through my head.

“Can I ask you a question, Bastian?” Theresa asked. She used the back of her hand to wipe off the corner of her mouth.

“Sure,” I said, pulling my jeans back up and lighting a smoke.

“Do you like me?”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“Just what I said – do you like me?”

“I like the way you look up at me when your lips are wrapped around my cock,” I said with a laugh. She looked away and didn’t join in my laughter. “Shit, babe – I was just fucking with you. You know I like you.”

“What if I didn’t want to do this anymore?” Theresa waved her hand between the two of us.