“Fuck off,” I growled. There was something inside of me that wanted to apologize to her, but I shoved it down. Apologies were pointless, and I wasn’t sorry. Shields at full strength. Engage! “Your analogy is not only insulting but fucking stupid, and I’m pretty fucking tired of hearing it.”
I could feel the tremors in my hands again, signifying either the ineffectiveness of the swim or a reaction to the knot forming just below my sternum. I tried to swallow and couldn’t. I was going to hurt her but only because it was for her own good. If I didn’t do it now, I would certainly do it later. It was better to do it quick – rip that Band-Aid off.
“I wasn’t trying to insult you,” she whispered. “Please stop shutting me out.”
“I never let you in, baby,” I sneered. I managed to swallow this time though it hurt my throat. Maybe I swallowed some salt water or something. “You’d have to get in before I could kick you out.”
“You’re doing this on purpose,” Raine surmised.
“Look, the truth is, I’ve just had it with your shit!” I exploded, pushing myself back up to a sitting position and glaring at her. I grabbed my calves with my hands, hoping it would help with the tremors. I was so fucking sick of my legs shaking, and I wanted a fucking drink fucking now. “I’m not your pet dog, and I’m not your fucking pet project, either!”
“Bastian, I never said…”
“Just shut the fuck up!”
Stop it, stop it, stop it…
I didn’t know how to stop. Everything in my body was so tight – so tense and hard – I couldn’t even stop if I wanted to – I was on complete, reactionary autopilot. I managed to wrap my arms around my knees and lean forward a little, but that was it. I couldn’t look at her because if I did my reaction would be – undoubtedly – violent. I would either lash out more with verbal abuse or I would grab her and violently…beg her to hold me. Fuck.
She was moving closer to me. Why would she do that?
“Don’t fucking touch me!” I jumped back and out of her reach before she could lay a finger on me. I didn’t want her to touch me even if my brain was screaming for it. She shouldn’t want to have her hands on me. I was fucking toxic – ask any woman who knew me. Well, ask the one who ever knew me.
On the other hand, don’t ask her.
My brain spun into old memories, out of control and unbidden by my conscious mind.
“You know what your problem is, Bastian?” Landon placed one foot over the other on top of my cherry wood coffee table and sipped his scotch.
“I thought you said I was a dickhead,” I responded.
“That’s a symptom,” Landon corrected. “Your actual problem is that you have no idea what kind of potential you have. You have no idea what you could do, and your self-pitying nature means you’ll probably never actualize any of it beyond staying alive in the tournaments.”
“I don’t have any pity for myself,” I growled back at him.
“Don’t fucking contradict me,” Landon said, his voice soft and murderously cold. I sat still and tried to steady my breathing. “‘If you call forth what is in you, it will save you. If you do not call forth what is in you, it will destroy you.’”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“It means if you don’t ever allow yourself to be what you can be, you’re dead,” Landon said. “Maybe you’ll still be walking around and the same shit will still spew out of your mouth, but you’ll be dead to everyone you know. You can sit there and puff on your cigar, but you might as well be a picture in a fucking frame. No life. No spirit. No soul. You don’t have to live like that, Bastian, but if anything’s ever going to change, you’re going to have to let someone inside again someday.”
“Fuck that,” I responded. I glared down at the black satin box on the table next to Landon’s feet, resenting the fact that he had gone through my room to retrieve it just to call me out on my brooding. I reached out and my fingers tightened around the box, which I threw into the fire before storming out of the room.
“That was an expensive tantrum, you self-pitying dickhead.”
“Don’t…” I whispered, not even knowing it was my own voice that called out in a nearly silent plea until it had happened. Part of me was still inside my own head, listening to Landon berate me with the Gospel of Saint Thomas while my body was rocking back and forth uncontrollably. I didn’t know what I was trying to say to her.
“Don’t what, Bastian?”
“Don’t listen to me.” I could barely hear my own voice as I looked into her eyes, and then I knew exactly what I wanted. I wanted her to touch me. I needed her to touch me as badly as I had ever needed a drink in my life. I felt like I might actually die right here in the raft if I didn’t feel her touch. True to her intuitive nature, I watched her hand reach out to me, my eyes fixated on her movement. I tried to hold my body still, but it just wouldn’t listen.