Bastian's Storm (Surviving Raine 2)

I gave her a half smile, hoping she’d see the joke in it, but she didn’t return the gesture.

“I can’t sleep, either,” Raine said with a nod. “I keep thinking of all the times I woke up with you practically on top of me, and how annoyed I would get because you were sweaty. Now I wouldn’t mind that at all.”

“I like making you sweaty,” I said with a raised eyebrow.

Raine leaned her body against mine and wrapped her arms around my neck. I held her around the waist as she placed her cheek on my chest and just stood there for a minute.

I looked over her head and around the room. It wasn’t too bad, really. It was spacious enough, but I had to wonder if the television actually got any reception out here in the middle of nowhere. I couldn’t imagine anyone had gone through the trouble of connecting cable for her.

Next to the couch, there was a small pile of Legos.

“Bastian,” Raine said softly as she looked up at my face, “there’s someone you need to meet.”

“Alex?” I swallowed hard as I kept looking at the plastic bricks.

“He’s in the other room,” she said, indicating one of the doors down the hallway.

I nodded and relaxed my grip on her. I took a deep breath and started to step away, but Raine grasped my arm.

“Bastian?”

“Yeah?”

“He’s amazing.” The way her eyes lit up told me everything. She loved him already, and loved him deeply.

I didn’t ask for any more information but took a few steps to the bedroom door. Inside were a twin-sized bed and a small dresser in dark wood. There was a mismatched nightstand with a small light in the shape of a turtle. A bookshelf lined with Doctor Seuss and Captain Underpants books stood in the corner near the closet. There were a dozen or so books on the floor in front of the bookshelf with a few Star Wars action figures poised on top of them.

In the center of the chaotic room, a tow-headed boy sat at a small plastic table. The table was cluttered with crayons, markers, and colored pencils, and the boy was bent over a piece of paper scribbling madly. He didn’t look up. He was completely focused on his task.

For a few minutes, I just watched him as he worked, observing everything I could about him. He was right handed, and even with the way he was bent over, I could tell that his eyes matched mine exactly. There was something about how he leaned into his work and the intense expression on his face that was also very familiar.

I didn’t have any pictures of myself from when I was a child. Apparently none of my foster parents ever took any, or if they did, they didn’t give them to me. I never really considered what I had looked like back then, but now I knew. I could see myself as a six-year-old, sitting there at that table in a room just like this one.

I couldn’t quite see the drawing Alex was making, and when I took a little step forward to get a better angle, he looked up at me. For a moment, we stared at each other without speaking. He tilted his head to one side to study me, and I realized I was making the same motion as I watched him. He dropped his gaze down to my feet and then raised it back up to my face.

“You’re tall,” he said.

I grinned. I started to open my mouth, but I realized the sentence that had formed in my head included an F-bomb, which probably wouldn’t be a good idea. I quickly thought of something else.

“Maybe you’re short,” I suggested.

Alex looked up at me and let out a long, exaggerated sigh as he tossed his hands in the air.

“I’m only six,” he replied. “Someday I’ll be bigger.”

“I bet you’ll be as big as me when you’re older.”

He tilted his head to one side and looked at me intently.

“Maybe,” he said. He turned back to his drawing.

“What are you making?” I asked as I took a second step into the room.

“A picture.”

“Of what?”

“You.”