“Of course not,” I growled. “Why the fuck would I do that?”
“How would I know?” She shrugged and rolled the empty cup back over towards me and the kits. Obviously, she didn’t even want to move closer to me, but I couldn’t really blame her for that. “Why do you do anything you do?”
“Because I’m a selfish bastard, usually,” I said, “but killing you off wouldn’t really benefit me. Besides, I’d never kill someone when they were sleeping. That’s just against the rules.”
“What rules?”
“Rules of combat.”
“Were you a soldier?”
“No.”
“What kind of combat?” she asked.
“Do we really need to go over this again?” I retorted.
“You’ve already told me a lot,” she said, tilting her head and raising her eyebrows at me.
Shit. I was afraid of that.
“What did I say?”
She looked away and then finally moved her eyes back to me. I just looked right back at her, waiting.
“You kept talking about all the people that died,” she finally said. “You said you killed a lot of people.”
I tensed. If I had told her too much or if she figured out what I did, she could be in a lot of danger. If she ever talked about it to anyone else and someone believed her, she could get herself killed. I turned my gaze on her and spoke slowly.
“Tell me exactly what I told you.”
She shifted her eyes away from mine and bit down into her lower lip nervously.
“I didn’t understand a lot of it,” she said. “You said something about tournaments and about people dying in them. You said you always won.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“And what else did I say?”
“Nothing else about fighting.”
Good, but not necessarily great. I also felt a little bit of…remorse? Like it would have been better if she did know.
“What else did I say that wasn’t about fighting?”
“You talked about…a woman,” she said. I didn’t miss how carefully she avoided saying the name, which was a good move on her part. I didn’t want to know what I said about her.
“What else?”
“You just kind of…mumbled stuff.” She looked down at her hands in her lap and started twisting her fingers around each other.
“Bullshit. What else did I say?”
Her eyes darted back to mine and then away from me, confirming she was holding something back.
“You kept asking me why no one wanted you,” she finally said.
I laughed.
“Well, it’s good to know there’s some part of me that isn’t a conceited dick.”
“You just want people to think that,” Raine said.
“I don’t give a fuck if people think that or not,” I shot back.
“I held you,” she said, her voice was tense and gaining in volume. “I held you, and you cried, and you asked me why no one had ever wanted you. You asked me why your own mother didn’t want you. You asked me why it hurt so much and if I could make it stop hurting. I may not know a lot about you, but I know you aren’t as much of a badass as you want people to think you are.”
“You know that, do you?” I sneered, tired of this psychoanalytical game she was playing. A string of curses formed in the back of my throat and were on their way out when I stopped and let out a long, deep breath. I was suddenly very, very tired, and I dropped my head into my hands.
“Look, Raine,” I started with a sigh, “I know you are just…trying to help – or whatever – but I really don’t want to be helped. I like being drunk, and the first opportunity I get, I’m going to get drunk again.”
“I want to know why,” she said simply.
“Why what?”
“Why you became an alcoholic,” she said. “I just watched you go through hell and just about drag me through it with you. I want to know why.”
“We’ve been through this,” I reminded her. “I don’t talk about my past.”
“Well, that was before I kept you from choking to death,” she launched at me. “It was before I cleaned blood off your face when you tried to bite through your cheek. It was before you called me every name in the book. It was before I held you while you cried for four hours straight, and it was before you fucking hit me for trying to help you!”
Wow, I didn’t think I had heard her curse before.
My first reaction was to yell back at her, and I came very, very close to doing so. My second reaction was to say fuck it all and throw her off the raft, but it was just a fleeting fantasy, not something I really considered. I thought about tossing myself off the raft, too, figuring that was probably the best thing for all concerned. Then I considered just turning away and giving her the silent treatment indefinitely. As much as she liked to talk, it would probably kill her.
The decision I finally made probably shocked me more than it did her.
“Fine. I’ll tell you.”
“You will?”
“Yeah, but not until night. I need an actual fucking meal before I get into any of that shit.”
“Meal?” she asked. I could hear the glimmer of hope in her tone. “How are you going to manage that?”