“You have to tell me what happened to him!” she screamed at me. “You have to tell me! Tell me now, Bastian Stark, you son of a bitch!”
I was still so tensed, I couldn’t even understand what she was doing at first. Once I realized she was trying to hurt me, I couldn’t figure out what I should do about it. I could let her continue, since the most damage she was going to do to me was some slight bruising. No, that wasn’t going to work because she was using up a ton of energy – energy she couldn’t afford to waste. I could cold-cock her and knock her out – she might be more sensible when she woke up. No, I couldn’t do that. Shit, I’d already hit her once. I wasn’t going to repeat that, no matter what the reason. I was going to have to find a way to subdue her…gently.
Was that even possible?
“Raine, for fuck’s sake, stop it!” I tried wrapping my hands around her arms and pulling her away, but she continued to struggle against me, screaming and crying. When I let go of her, she went back to her ineffectual poundings, which didn’t exactly hurt but were starting to be fucking annoying. Finally, I just wrapped her up in a bear hug and held her against my chest, mostly immobilized.
She fought against me for a while but eventually gave in to exhaustion. Her heavy sobs shook us both as she cried against my chest the same way she had the first night on the raft. Every few minutes she would reiterate that I had to tell her what happened to him. I didn’t answer her, though. I knew no one in their right mind really wanted to know how someone they loved died – not when it was like that.
Eventually, she calmed and I lay back, bringing her with me and keeping my arms wrapped around her. She let out one last shuddering breath and seemed to give up. Her eyes closed, but I didn’t think she was actually asleep. I ran my hand over the top of her head, intrigued by the soft texture of her hair. When she had touched my hair, it seemed to have relaxed me a little, so I thought maybe I could do the same for her.
“Are you going to tell me?” she asked after we had laid there for quite some time.
“No,” I responded.
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t want to remember it.”
“I need to know,” Raine insisted.
“You want to know,” I corrected. “The problem with that is you can’t ever un-know something. If I tell you, and you don’t like what I have to say, I can’t take it back out of your brain. Believe me, you don’t want to know this.”
“Tell me, please.” Raine raised her head from my chest and looked at me with reddened eyes framed in deep, dark lashes. I didn’t know if it was the look in her eyes, the nature of her request, or just the way she said “please” that destroyed my resolve. Whichever it may have been, I gave in. It was possible she could have asked me for anything in the world at that point and I couldn’t have denied her. I couldn’t let her know that, though.
“All right,” I said, taking a deep breath, “but not now, and I’m not telling you all of it. I just…can’t.”
Raine nodded and turned her head so her cheek rested on my chest again. I ran my fingers up and down her back in silence for several minutes.
“You were the one he was thinking about when he died,” I finally said. “The last thing he said was, ‘I have a daughter named Raine.’ Then he was shot.”
I felt her tears drop onto my chest again, and her body shuddered once before her grip tightened on me.
“Thank you, Bastian.”
“Don’t thank me for that,” I snarled at her. “Don’t thank me for any of this shit.”
“Tell me something else,” she pressed.
“Not about that,” I said. I’d beg her if I had to.
“Will you talk to me about something else?”
I felt my body start to relax immediately. I’d be willing to talk to her about most anything else at this point. I’d tell her about Theresa or Jillian or any other part of my fucked-up life if she would just stay away from that one particular subject.
“Like what?” I asked.
“I don’t know – tell me something else about you.”
“You’re a glutton for sob stories, huh?”
“I want to know more about you.”
“You’re not right in the head,” I scoffed. I took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. “What do you want to know?”
“Tell me how you got that scar on your back.”
“I told you already,” I said. “I got stabbed.”
“Tell me the whole story,” Raine clarified.
“I’ll tell you,” I said, “but then you have to tell me something about you.”