“Bastian, I don’t think I understand.” Raine rose up a hand and stopped me from going on. “How did they fight? What happened to the other people in it?”
I had hoped she would get it right away, so I wouldn’t have to be so blunt. I also kind of hoped she wouldn’t get it at all. Obviously, she was going to make me spell all this shit out to her. I drummed my fingers on my knee for a minute, trying to think of a way to explain.
“It’s like a live video game, you know? We’d all be put in an area, and there are cameras everywhere, so the people who are watching and betting on us can see everything from every angle, even as the players see it. In most games you went in with nothing but whatever you were wearing – no weapons or anything. If you looked around, you could find something – pieces of pipe, knives, ropes, wrenches, candlesticks – you know, the whole ‘Clue’ complement. There were special tournaments with firearms and all kinds of shit like that, but those were really exclusive. I was only ever in three of them. You fought the other players, and the last man standing won.”
“What do you mean, exactly – ‘last man standing?’”
I took another deep breath.
“Whoever was still alive.”
“You mean you…just killed…?”
“I won because I killed everyone else there.”
I just blurted the last bit out, and watched a modicum of understanding flare up in her eyes as they went wide and she comprehended exactly what I was saying. For a while she just sat, taking it all in and looking up at me like I was going to tell her I was only joking or something.
“You are like the pit bulls.”
I glared at her. I wasn’t a fucking trained dog. I knew what I was doing, and I loved every minute of it. My head was starting to pound again, and I didn’t feel like arguing with her about it.
“Maybe,” I said with a shrug. “Not really, though. I had a choice.”
“No,” Raine said with conviction, “you didn’t.”
“Of course I did.”
She let it go.
“And this was a…game?”
“That’s how we saw it, yeah.”
“You did it for money?”
“Millions,” I confirmed. “In my first fight, I made enough to take me from the streets to a penthouse apartment. I went from going to sleep hungry every night to five star restaurants. Instead of stealing bus fare, I was driving a fucking Ferrari. My hand got replaced by ten women a night begging me to fuck them. They’d actually line up outside my hotel room and just wait their turn.”
“I made a name for myself pretty quickly because I was faster, and smarter, and more brutal than any other tournament player Landon had ever seen. In one night, I went from nothing to something. I fought and won three to five games a month for almost seven years. I got stabbed in the back – you saw the scar – beat up, shot, burned, you name it, but I never lost a game.”
*
The light was out, but I knew Raine was still sitting in the darkness and trying to wrap her head around everything I told her. I was kind of surprised she asked me to stop before I just couldn’t go on anymore. Now that I was no longer going forward with the story, I found myself backing up to the parts I skipped over – mainly, Theresa.
In my mind I could still see her clearly – blonde hair, long legs, and blank, expressionless eyes that screamed “I’ve seen too much.” I remembered the way she’d always sit hunched over, like she was trying to make herself invisible. Whenever any other guys came near, she’d immediately move over and stand in front of me so I could put my hands on her hips and show whoever it was that she was claimed.
I remembered how, for the first couple of months, she’d suck my cock every night, but I wasn’t allowed to touch her while she did it. I just leaned back on my elbows and let her go at it. Once she trusted me more, I could put my hands on her shoulders but never her head. She hated that.
I knew she’d had some fucked up shit done to her before, but she never told me what or who.
Raine shifted around, and I could hear her fold up the towel and lay down on it. After a few minutes, I heard her take a deep breath before dropping off to sleep. I spent about an hour watching for lights of any kind on the horizon but saw nothing, so I lay down to sleep as well. I should have known better because the kind of dreams I hadn’t had since I went to bed drunk every night started coming back.