“I don’t even know where you live!” I yelled at her. I wasn’t sure exactly what point that was supposed to make, but I made it anyway. “What the fuck is supposed to happen now? You go home, that’s what happens. You go home and I…I…fuck, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”
Raine’s eyes widened, and she tried to take a step back, but she was already up against the door of the dressing room. Her mouth opened and then closed again. Her eyes danced around my face, probably trying to figure out what the hell she thought she saw in me in the first place. I waited for her to tell me I could get lost because she didn’t have any more use for me and no one ever wanted me to hang around too long. The walls around me solidified.
“You get to go home, too,” Raine said under her breath.
“I just left home.” I didn’t mean to say it. I never meant to tell her that. I tore my eyes away from her, focusing on the pile of fabric that had slipped off the bench and fallen to the floor.
“You didn’t want to leave,” she said suddenly. When I glanced back to her face, her eyes brightened with understanding. “You wanted to stay there.”
I stared at her for a moment and then looked down to my hands, which seemed to be entertaining themselves by twiddling my fingers around. It didn’t matter. Staying there would have been pointless, if for no other reason than the lack of booze, smokes, and whores.
“Bastian…why?”
“You were mine there,” I said quietly. “Making that work – I could do that. Not now. Now you are…everyone’s.”
“What do you mean, ‘I’m everyone’s’?”
“John Paul, Nick, Lindsay – you belong to all of them.”
“Bastian, that doesn’t even make any sense.”
“Well, you fucking asked.”
Raine sighed and closed her eyes. I knew I didn’t make any sense – I couldn’t justify that shit to myself, let alone anyone else. I couldn’t deny her a real life just because I was too fucked up to function around people.
“Bastian…are you jealous?”
“Jealous?” I snorted. I wasn’t fucking jealous…was I?
“You are, aren’t you?”
“I’m not, I’m just…I just…I…I don’t want to share you!”
“Oh, Bastian!” Raine let out another long, exasperated sigh. “Going home is going to be really hard for you, isn’t it?”
“You’re my home,” I said quietly. A big fucking knot crawled up my throat and lodged itself there. I tried to take a deep breath, but it hurt.
“Then you know where your home is,” Raine said. Her hand reached up and touched my cheek, and my hardened walls crumbled instantly with her touch. She took another step closer. “I know you’ve lost your home. I know you’ve lost every home you’ve ever had, Bastian, but you aren’t going to lose me just because we’re in a different place. I can still be your home.”
With her fingers tracing circular patterns over my cheek, I gazed at her and tried to understand. She was telling me it wasn’t over. I could still be with her. She wasn’t telling me to go away – she was letting me stay.
“But…where would we…um…live? I mean…would you want me to? Live with you, I mean?”
“Yes,” Raine said definitively. “You can stay in my house, at least for now. We have time, Bastian. We have time to figure out exactly what comes next. I don’t have all the answers right now either, but I know whatever happens, I want you there with me.”
“You do?”
“Of course I do!” Raine shook her head and laughed once, though there was no humor in the sound. She reached up, taking my face in her hands. “You adorable, wonderful, overreacting man. I always want you with me. If you don’t want to come to Ohio…well, I’ll go where you want to go, then.”
“You would?”
“Anywhere.” Raine leaned forward and raised herself up while she pulled me down to her. Her lips brushed mine, and all the words she had just spoken marched around in my head, creating little military formations and eventually firing a twenty-one-gun clue into my brain.
My hands found her hips, pulled her to me, and held her tight. I opened my mouth, my tongue seeking hers. She opened to me, kissing me harder and running her hands up into my hair. In a complete storm of an indescribable group of feelings, I grabbed her hips, pulled her up and slammed her against the wall of the dressing room. I didn’t stop kissing her – I just kept going while my hands found their way under the sheer skirt she had tried on. My lips moved across her face, down her throat, then back up again.
“I like skirts,” I growled into her ear as my hand gripped her bare thigh. Trailing up a little farther, I met with silken panties. I gripped one side of them tightly in my fist before ripping them off.
“Bastian! I haven’t even bought those yet!”