“Why are you doing this?” Raine asked, her voice dropping down in volume. There were tears in her eyes, but I wasn’t going to let that sway me on this one.
“I told you.” I glared at her. “It’s fucking dangerous.”
“What difference does it make to you if I survive?”
I felt the anger welling up inside of me, but there was something else there as well. I’d watched people die – lots of people. Some of them asked for it. Some of them deserved it. Most of them were just playing the game for the money, just like I did, but there were some I watched that didn’t have to die. Some shouldn’t have died, and I wasn’t going to let that happen to her. Determination I probably hadn’t felt in years slipped down and coated my insides like that pink shit Alejandro used to try to give me for hangovers. It completely engulfed me, my reasoning became crystal clear, and I knew exactly what I was going to do.
I reached over and grabbed her face between my palms. I brought her up close to me so I could stare right into her eyes. I was almost touching her forehead with my own, and I could feel her breath coming out of her barely opened mouth and brushing over my lower lip and chin. I didn’t want there to be any kind of miscommunication on this one, so I spoke slowly and carefully.
“Raine, I couldn’t save your father, but no matter what we run into, no matter how long we’re out here, no matter what God or Satan or whoever the fuck else throws at us, I’m going to save you.”
I guess I didn’t need all that apathy after all.
Chapter 8 – Kiss
It had been a day and a half since the water ran out.
The gutter system caught a bit of dew from the air, and I gave it all to Raine. It wasn’t enough, though. It wasn’t near enough to keep her going. Every time I glanced over at her, I wondered what her eyes were going to look like when she was so dehydrated she couldn’t lift her head anymore. She had lost weight, and she had already been too small. She had to roll the hem of my boxers and tuck them in some elaborate, almost-in-a-knot way to get them to stay on her hips. The shirt nearly dropped to her knees, covering the boxers anyway.
It had gotten to the point where she wasn’t even completely coherent any longer. She talked about her dad sometimes as well as her friend Lindsay and other people she knew in school. She also had started asking the same questions more than once, which frustrated the hell out of me. I wasn’t a lot better off, though I was still with it enough to know how much she had deteriorated over the past few hours. I was used to extreme circumstances – I’d lived and killed in them. I was also a hell of a lot bigger and stronger than she was to begin with, so there was simply more water inside my body. I still felt like shit, and my head was starting to get dizzy when I moved around too fast. My arms and legs itched like a motherfucker, too.
Mostly, she slept, which was good. She talked when she dreamed, but most of it didn’t make any sense to me. Once she said my name. I didn’t know what to think of that and tried to ignore the little flutter of…something inside of me when she said it.
I reached over and ran my hand down Raine’s forearm, careful not to wake her as I pulled lightly at her skin. Normally, skin elasticity would have caused it to jump right back, but hers didn’t anymore. It stayed in a little upright, wrinkled pucker for a few moments before smoothing out again. I thought her heartbeat was a little faster as well.
Your body can survive in amazing situations; you just have to convince your mind to do what you tell it to do.
“Bastian?”
“Yeah?”
“Is it time for more water?”
I sighed and tried to keep myself from jumping down her throat. She had asked the same question an hour ago, and there wasn’t any water then, either.
“I have to find some first, babe.”
“There isn’t any, is there?” she asked after a moment.
“No, Raine,” I said. I moved backwards a little until I was in a good position to lie down on my back next to her. “It’s all gone.”
“Are you going to look for fish again?”
“I just did,” I said. “No signs. Now quit talking and rest.”
“Will you talk to me?”
“What do you want me to say?” I asked. I knew what her answer would be. She always said the same thing.
“Tell me something else about you.”
“Aren’t you tired of hearing about my fucked up life?”
“No,” Raine said. Her voice cracked,
and I could tell it was taking too much effort for her to even talk. “I want to…understand you.”
“You be quiet and I’ll talk, okay?”