Surviving Raine (Surviving Raine 1)

I nodded and tried to do what Raine told me.

“What did she do, Bastian?”

“It’s not what she did,” I clarified. “It’s what she asked me to…well, or let me…fuck.”

I stopped talking again and sat up. Raine’s hands fell away from me, and I watched her sit up as well. It took me several deep breaths before I could convince myself to go on with this shit.

“I’d always been really, really careful when it came to sex,” I told her. “I’d never fucked without a condom. Ever. Not once. Not even when I was with Theresa as a teenager and certainly not when I was with different women all the time. I got checked out every six months – everything you’re supposed to do.”

“Jillian said she’d prove how much we meant to each other by letting me…” I grimaced, remembering her words and how they made me feel like she meant everything she said. I remembered how much I wanted it even though I hadn’t even considered it before. I remembered how fucking stupid I was. “She said she’d let me…come in her. She said doing that would prove how much she wanted us to be together – how much we should trust each other. She was on the pill…she said she was on the pill. Fuck, I wish I had a drink…or at least a fucking cigarette.”

I ran my hands through my hair, reached over for a cup of water, and downed it quickly as if it were a shot of vodka.

“Looking back…well…I was just a fucking moron, I guess.” I had to keep going, or there was no way I would be able to finish. “I should have realized what she really wanted. I don’t know how I would have, but I definitely should have.”

“We were together for two more months after we…um…changed our habits. I was on cloud nine, and I had decided to officially retire and ask Jillian to marry me. I even bought a ring that cost me a whole fucking tournament’s winnings, but I wanted her to have the best. I hadn’t even met her parents, but I wanted them to know I had just about as much money as they did, so they would know I could take care of her. Shit, I gave her fucking everything she wanted – the money that woman could spend on shoes alone…”

I stopped and collected myself again so I could speak a little slower.

“I was going to surprise her,” I said. “I had the ring, and I was going to pick her up at her place and take her out to dinner, maybe walk along the Sound or something to propose. I was supposed to be training that night, but I blew it off. Landon was pissed when he found out. Anyway, I went to her place and she was, again, with another guy.”

“The two times before when I caught her, she immediately began crying and begging me to forgive her. She had told me how much we were meant to be and how weak she was and all this other bullshit. This time was different. When I walked in, they were on the couch and she was riding him – she loved being on top. She looked over her shoulder when she heard me and just let out this big, exasperated sigh. She looked back at the guy and told him she’d be back in a minute, got up off of him, and shoved me into the kitchen. She barely even paused to put a robe on herself.”

“Is this him?”

“Yeah,” Jillian grumbled. “Give me a minute. This needs to be done anyway.”

“No problem, babe.”

“I couldn’t even say anything while she stood in front of me and told me we were done, that she was marrying the guy in the other room. She said what a great fuck I was and how she got what she needed from me. She rubbed her stomach at that point, but I didn’t get it – not until later. I was just trying to comprehend the half-million dollar diamond in my pocket and how it was supposed to look on her finger. I think I must have told her I wanted to marry her because she laughed and said there was no way Daddy would let her marry someone with my background. She said I wasn’t even close to being what she would consider marrying and that I needed to wise up and realize my place in her society. She pointed down at her feet when she said that.”

“I ended up just walking out,” I continued. “I guess I was in shock or something. I walked back to my apartment, which was a good two hours by foot, trying to understand what had just happened. I kept replaying the whole thing in my head until I remembered exactly what she had said – that she got what she needed. At the time, I must have thought she was just talking about the sex, but the image of her rubbing her stomach kept flickering around in my head. I had just gotten home when I realized exactly what she meant – she was pregnant, and the baby was mine.”

She didn’t make a sound, but Raine moved over so she was sitting very close to me and placed her hand against the small of my back before moving it slowly up to my neck and into my hair. She leaned against me lightly.

“I went kind of ballistic at that point, I guess,” I went on. Moving through the rest of this fucked

up story had to be quick, or I would never get through it. “I trashed my apartment before jumping in my car and going about ninety back to her place. It was too late – they were already gone. I got on her computer and found out they had bought two tickets to Italy and were leaving that night.”

“That’s when John Paul called,” I said. “She had called him and I guess told him some of what happened. He told me to stay right where I was, and he’d come to get me.”

“I didn’t realize you knew John Paul then,” Raine said.

“Yeah, I knew him,” I answered. “John Paul was Landon’s other fighter, but that’s a whole different story.”

“I’m sorry,” Raine said. Her fingers began to massage the back of my neck. “Go on.”

“I wasn’t about to listen to him and stick around. I wanted to stop her from getting on the plane. I thought if I could just talk to her and tell her how much I needed her and how I was going to retire and that I had a plan for us…I thought if she would just listen…just for a minute. I didn’t get the chance because John Paul must have been pretty damn close to her place when he called. I was backing out of her driveway, and he slammed into the back of my Ferrari, the bastard. We ended up in a fist fight, and it’s probably a miracle one of us didn’t kill the other. Maybe we would have, but Landon pulled up, got out of his car, hit me in the side with a Taser, and drove off again. John Paul knocked me unconscious and hauled me back home.”

“Over the next week, I talked to a few people and figured it all out. Ian, the guy she was going to marry – he couldn’t have kids, and Jillian’s daddy wouldn’t let her marry someone without the ability to give him an heir. She’d lose her trust fund if she didn’t have a baby. She wanted me to father it because I was pretty, according to one of her girlfriends, and she heard I was strong and smart. I must not have been too smart since I was obviously stupid enough to eat what she was feeding me.”

I was silent for a while, thinking about all the people who seemed to know what was going on, all those who left me in the dark as I fell for her lies. I had been relieved to find out John Paul hadn’t known anything about it – they had been keeping him in the dark as well. I didn’t find out until much later, but Franks had known from the beginning and had actually arranged for her to be in Colombia to get started on her plan.

"What happened to them?" Raine asked.

"I have no idea," I told her. "Once I had it figured out, I decided to track her down, but Franks forbid me from doing so.”

“Who is Franks?”