“Fuck, Raine,” I growled. “Don’t I always?”
She sat back on her heels and graced me with an incredible smile.
“I can’t believe I would ever consider an f-bomb to be the most beautiful word in the world.”
“Are you out of your fucking mind?”
“No, but you have been,” Raine said with another smile. “You had a fever – a really high one, I’m pretty sure. Do you remember any of it? You told me what plants to find.”
“Yeah, I remember that,” I said. I brought my arm up and bent it at the elbow so I could lay my head on it. I closed my eyes and sighed.
“How do you feel?”
“Like shit,” I answered.
Raine’s eyes closed for a moment, and I watched her take a deep breath. When her eyes opened again, all the pain and stress were evident in her irises even amongst the obvious relief. I reached out with my hand and touched her knee.
“It’s okay, baby,” I said softly. I didn’t know if it was or not, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to tell her that. If I had such a bad infection I was out of it with fever, I was lucky to have my eyes open. My eyes being open made me think I’d be all right. If I was going to die, I would have already. “I’m a tough motherfucker. No infection will get me.”
Raine let out a sharp laugh, which quickly turned into sobs. I rolled onto my side and held my arms out. Raine immediately came to me, her head against my chest and her arms wrapped around my neck, just like the very first night in the raft. I held her as tight as I could even though my arms were really fucking sore.
“I was so scared,” she cried against my skin. I just held her and kissed the top of her head, trying not to pass out while she was still crying, though my body and mind were begging me to do just that. After a few minutes, I felt her relax a little and take a few deep, sniffling breaths.
“How long?” I asked.
“Three days,” Raine said, immediately understanding my question. “I didn’t realize it at first – you were really hot and sweating, but I thought it was because…well, because it’s hot here. I figured you were exhausted after…after…the day before, so I didn’t even think to try and wake you for a while. But then you wouldn’t wake up, and I saw the back of your leg…Oh, Bastian, it looked just awful.”
“Shh,” I whispered to the top of her head, “I got you.”
I felt her relax into me almost instantly. I dropped down to my back, somewhat painfully, and took her with me. I tried to move my hand up and down her back since I thought that was supposed to be soothing or something, but I was still really, really tired.
“I thought you were going to die,” Raine said through the tears collecting on my chest. “I didn’t know what I would do…without you…”
“You’d be okay,” I tried to reassure her. “You’ve learned how to find water and how to fish…you’d do just fine, baby…”
Raine stopped crying for a minute and sniffed, then looked up to my face, her eyes showing her confusion.
“No, I wouldn’t be,” Raine shook her head slowly. I watched her hands come up and slide across my jaw, scratching over the several days’ worth of growth with the tips of her fingers. She held my face in her hands and leaned closer to me, her voice earnest. “I’d die without you, Bastian. Even if I lived, I’d die inside.”
My chest clenched at her words, and I tried to find some way to respond to her, but my brain offered me nothing comprehensible. I just stared into her eyes for a while until the corners of her mouth turned up ever so slightly, and then she laid her head back on my chest. With my head resting on the sand beneath me, I let unconsciousness overtake me.
*
The same dream woke me up for the third time in a row. Details were sometimes different, but the main events were the same – they’re always holding her down, laughing as she’s screaming, forcing themselves on her over and over again, and I can never get there fast enough to stop it from happening. The last couple of times I had managed to keep myself from throwing up, but that revelation pissed me off. It had been like that with other dreams – they would disturb me so much I would get physically sick, but once I got used to the dream it wouldn’t happen anymore. If I got used to it, it would never go away. The idea of seeing those images for the rest of forever was almost enough to make me puke anyway, but I managed to hold it in.