“You are a little insatiable,” Raine agreed.
“Are you complaining?” I asked and then immediately realized I did not want to know the answer. Fuck, I never should have asked the question.
“Not at all.”
Thank God. If she had said anything else, I would have toned it down for her sake. It would have been okay, but she was so fucking beautiful, and I couldn’t help but want her all the time. I loved being here where I could take her whenever I wanted, and was thrilled she didn’t seem to mind. I hoped she enjoyed it, too, but I had gotten lucky with the answer to my last question. I didn’t want to push my luck by asking another.
“Are you getting hungry?” Raine finally asked.
“A little,” I said.
“Why don’t you get the fire built up, and I’ll see what’s for breakfast?”
“I guess.”
I reluctantly removed myself from lying on her and winced as my leg cramped up on me. I pushed through the pain and flexed my thigh a few times. It really wasn’t bad at all once I got moving on it. Raine went back into the shelter, and I started tossing wood on the smoldering fire. I pushed a bunch of the shit out of my head by focusing on the task at hand, but other thoughts came in to take its place.
I found myself thinking about John Paul a lot lately – where he was and what he was doing, assuming he had survived at all. I honestly didn’t care if I ever saw him again, but it would be good to know if he was alive or not. Since I had taken care of Raine’s needs, I had more time to think about what had happened that night. I had certainly heard John Paul’s voice and assumed he got onto one of the lifeboats with the other passengers, but I didn’t know what had happened to cause the ship to roll in the first place. I had theories ranging from the plausible to the extremely improbable, starting with the storm being worse than I thought and going all the way to wondering if Franks had decided to kill me off. I doubted the latter. If he wanted me dead, he would have found me long ago and taken care of it. Why would he bother, anyway? Gunter died in prison within six months, and Franks was completely exonerated. Nephew or not, if Franks had cared about Gunter in the least, Gunter never would have been convicted.
After a half hour or so, the flames had burned down to embers and Raine started cooking a kind of stew she had come up with that included a mixture of the edible plants and fish. It was pretty good, considering what she had to work with. It had me wondering what her cooking would be like if she had a whole fucking kitchen to exploit. I would have bet it was fucking awesome.
“Bastian?”
“Yeah, babe?” I responded while tipping a seashell bowl full of Raine’s stew into my mouth.
“I still miss my dad.”
Placing the shell on the sand next to the fire, I looked up at her and saw tears in her eyes again. Reflexively, I wanted to both comfort her and beat the shit out of whatever had upset her. Since she was obviously upset about her dad, I didn’t know what to do other than pull her into my lap and hold her.
“I’m sorry, baby,” I said when she finally took a deep breath and seemed to have calmed down. “I should have done something…”
“Hush,” Raine reached up and placed her fingers over my lips. She was getting to be far too fond of that particular act. “You know, when I think about everything that has happened since I lost him, I have to admit that I’m pretty confused about my feelings.”
“How so?”
“I miss my dad,” she said again, “but if he wasn’t gone, I wouldn’t have you now. I lost my dad, but through an extremely roundabout way, he brought me to you. I…I don’t know how to feel about it now.”
My muscles tightened up. She was right, of course. If I hadn’t watched her father die, we wouldn’t be here right now. If whatever events caused him to show up that night hadn’t occurred, Raine would still have her father but we would never have met. For a brief moment, it all made sense. Everything – from my parents ditching me, to juvenile detention, to the reason sixteen people had to be slaughtered – it all suddenly made sense to me. Everything had to happen exactly the way it did to bring her to me. Otherwise, there would have been no way for us to have ever met. Henry Gayle had to die so I could be with his daughter, and I was abruptly glad it had happened.
I guess I was a selfish prick after all.
Chapter 16 – Gift