Bastian's Storm (Surviving Raine 2)

I looked to Landon, and he nodded once.

“I’m just a few hours away from there,” I told her. “Everything is okay, baby.”

“That man,” Raine said with a shushed voice, “that Landon man—he came to the condo. He grabbed me and…and…”

“I know, Raine,” I said as I glared up at him. “I know what he did. I didn’t know he was going to do it, but he did it to protect you.”

“Protect me?” Raine practically yelled. “He hauled me out of the building with a gun in my back!”

I placed my hand over the mouthpiece of the phone.

“You took her at gunpoint?” I hissed.

“I couldn’t haul her out kicking and screaming, could I?” Landon said with a shrug.

I growled and went back to Raine.

“I’m sorry,” I said, though I didn’t know what the fuck made me apologize for him. “He never should have done that. Maybe if he had just talked to me”—I raised my voice and looked over at him pointedly—“we could have worked it out a little better.”

Landon rolled his eyes. I knew he hated it when I used logic against him.

“You’re safe now,” I told Raine. “No one there is going to hurt you, I promise. They’re just making sure you’re not in the line of fire or anything like that.”

“Like you are,” she said quietly.

“I’m fine,” I reassured her. “I’m just freezing my ass off while training. I’m going to make sure Landon takes me to see you soon.”

“You’re with him?”

“Yeah, I am.”

“Well, tell him I said he was a fucking bastard.”

If I had been drinking, I would have spewed whatever it was all over myself.

“I’ll relay the message,” I replied through my grin.

“You do that!” she spat back.

Landon made a little motion across his neck to let me know my time was up.

“I have to go,

” I told her. “I just wanted you to know it was all okay. Alex is with you, right?”

“He is,” Raine said, “but it’s not all okay, Bastian.”

“It will be, baby,” I said. “I promise.”

As Landon reclaimed the phone, I wondered if my promises still meant anything to her.

Snow, ice, and training; trying to scale rocks with my fingers so cold, they could barely move, let alone grip a thin ledge through the gloves; running mile upon mile with the frozen air coating my lungs and my legs so tired I couldn’t even feel them anymore. This was apparently Landon’s idea of fun.

“You should have been with me when I was training in the Navy,” he said. “We’d go from areas like this to the Caribbean in the same week. I thought I was going to die from the change in temperature.”

He laughed.

“I’m pretty sure you aren’t right in the head,” I mumbled.