Shay Savage - Bastian’s Storm

“I’m really tired,” she said. “Are you going to come with me or let the good congressman walk me to the suite he has arranged?”

I narrowed my eyes and growled.

“So, you’re coming then?”

I growled again, tossed the end of my smoke on the ground, and smashed it under my heel.

“Let’s go.”

Raine smiled and took my arm.

The suite was actually pretty nice. There was a big living area and a separate bedroom with a king-sized bed. Raine collapsed into it without even taking off her clothes, and I crawled in after her. As Landon’s little visit resonated in my brain like a bad pop song, I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her into my chest. I looked to the door of the bedroom and listened closely for any sounds outside, but there weren’t any. Still, I pulled her closer and tossed one leg over both of hers.

Raine tucked her head into my shoulder and sighed, content.

“I can’t believe how good this bed feels,” she said sleepily.

“Hot shower in the morning, too,” I replied. I couldn’t have cared less, but it was one of the things Raine had missed the most when we were stranded on the island. Remembering one of her other complaints, I knocked my head against the pillow a couple of times. “Nice soft pillow, too.”

“Hmmm…”

Hearing her so obviously happy filled me with both joy and dread. Closing my eyes, I thought about our nights in the shelter I had built for her, the sound of the waves as they crashed against the shore, and the steady ocean breeze.

I wanted to go back.

“Sorry I was such a jerk tonight,” I told her.

“I know you are,” she replied simply.

“That guy is an asshole.”

“Who?”

“The politician.”

“He didn’t do anything wrong.”

“If he did, I’d fucking rip his arms off,” I promised.

“Bastian!” Raine snapped as she looked up at me. “You can’t say things like that!”

I rolled my eyes in the most obvious way possible. I could kill him, and she knew it. She’d seen first-hand what I could do when she was threatened.

“We’re back in the real world now,” she reminded me.

As if I needed the fucking reminder. I knew exactly where we were, and I was pretty sure I hated it. As stupid as it was, I missed the barely-comfortable-enough-to-doze-off floor of the palm frond shelter at the end of the beach.

I tightened my arms, pulling Raine securely against me.

“Bastian?”

A shudder ran through me.

“I don’t know how to do this,” I whispered against Raine’s hair. “I don’t know how to be us here.”

She wrapped an arm around my chest and held me as tightly as I was holding her.

“I love you,” I said as my lips pressed to her neck. The sound of my voice echoed everything inside my body—full of fear and dread.

“I love you, too,” Raine replied. She moved her hand up to stroke my hair.

“I don’t know how to do this,” I said again.

“We’ll figure it out,” Raine assured me. “It’s going to take some getting used to—some trial and error—but we’re going to be okay.”

I wished I could believe her, but Landon’s words continued to echo through my head.

Sometimes it just boiled inside of me.

The fucking anger.

It was directed at nothing and everything. It focused on the sights and the people around me because they were the constant reminder of what I had lost. Sometimes it was even directed at the one person who understood and accepted me for the asshole I was.

It made me hate everything and everyone around me even though I knew it didn’t really have anything to do with shit on the outside. It was like a hurricane, churning around in my gut, swirling around and around until I needed to slam my fist into something to keep myself from vomiting. The tension would creep up on me; my entire body would tighten and even begin to shake, and there didn’t seem to be anything I could do about it except…

Just one fucking drink.

On the other side of the varnished bar top, at least a hundred bottles were lined up in front of me, just barely out of reach. Every one of them seemed to be singing to me, but the ones up on the top shelf on the right called to me the most—Kettle One, Grey Goose, Skye. I wasn't sure why I tortured myself, but I did.

Every fucking day.

“You sure I can't get you something, buddy?” The bartender leaned over and tilted his head to look at me, asking me the same thing he asked me every day. He was a young guy—probably working here to put himself through school or whatever—and had that bright-eyed smile that probably drove the ladies to up the tip percentages on their bar tabs. I didn’t meet his gaze; my focus remained behind him.

With a slight shudder, I pushed away from the bar and stood up.

“I'm good,” I lied.

Turning quickly on my heel before I changed my mind, I stomped out of the bar and into the Miami evening heat. Raine would be back from class before too long, and I didn't want to risk having her recovering-alcoholic boyfriend smell like a drinking establishment, even if I had managed to make it through another day without actually ordering a drink. If she knew I was hanging out in a bar during the late afternoons, she’d be pissed, and that was a conversation best avoided. Being close to the shit made my palms itch, and I knew if I opened my mouth and ordered one, the strength it would take to stop it from passing my lips would be more than I possessed. I’d give in.

I’d fail.

I still had a little time before Raine returned, so I headed through Pier Park and down to the beach. There weren’t a lot of people around, and I was glad of that. I’d had too many confrontations with locals and tourists alike on this particular beach. Though Raine and I had developed something resembling celebrity status after we returned from being lost at sea, I didn’t think that was going to keep me out of jail if I attacked another Bermuda-shorts-wearing fuckhead on the beach.

Removing my shoes, I walked barefoot at the edge of the waves. The tide was coming in, and bits of seaweed sloshed against my toes. There were a few dead jellyfish scattered along the tide line, and bits of broken coral sloshed in and out of the waves. If I closed my eyes and ignored the noise of civilization, I could pretend I was back there again.

The island.

Alone with Raine.

My paradise.

Mine, but not hers.

The tension returned. The tsunami inside of me was not unlike the one that capsized my schooner last year—the one that led me to being alone with Raine on a raft in the middle of the Caribbean Sea with no hope in sight. She had no one but me to make sure she had water, food, and eventually shelter on an uninhabited island. She only had me to protect and provide for her.

Like a fucking caveman.

I loved it.

On the other hand, Raine liked hot showers, diet variety, and hanging out with her friend Lindsay and Lindsay’s boyfriend, Nick. She liked living in a high-rise apartment with air-conditioning and an elevator. She liked shopping at the mall and being able to cook food on an actual stove. She liked being able to go to school to learn about ecology and the conservation of the Everglades. She liked being around people.

I hated it all.

The beach was the only place I felt even remotely comfortable outdoors and then only when it was nearly deserted. It reminded me of being shipwrecked and alone with my Raine, who didn’t even want to remain anywhere near the ocean. It took some convincing to get her to agree to stay in Miami—Raine wanted to return to Ohio when we were rescued—but she ultimately let me have my way. She got into the ecology program at the nearby university and discovered her love of the Everglades. I would have preferred a tiny house right up next to the water but settled for a condo in Miami Beach instead.

Raine never went near the beach. She did at first, but she’d end up having nightmares afterward, so she stopped coming down here. She said seeing it from the condo’s balcony was plenty for her, and she didn’t even go out on the balcony much. She said it was because I was always smoking out there, but I knew it was because she didn’t like seeing the ocean waves and listening to the surf.

Everything she loved, I hated. Everything that frightened her, I loved.

How’s that for fucked up?

For the most part, we were making it work. Despite the major difference in opinion about the island where we lived alone for weeks, everything was just fine when we were together. Raine was definitely enjoying her studies at the University of Miami, and my nasty moods usually evaporated around her. I couldn’t help but kind of wish she would change her mind about living in a remote area next to the water, but I wasn’t going to push the issue even if living around all these people wasn’t my preference.

I loved her, and loving her was the only thing that kept me sane.

Well, reasonably sane.

I closed my eyes for a second and took a deep breath. The ocean wind brought the scent of brine and sea life to me. When I opened my eyes again, I nearly walked right into a couple on the beach but managed to just brush up against the guy’s shoulder as he went by.

“Hey, asshole! Watch where you’re going!”

My hands clenched involuntarily as I turned and stared into the eyes of the motherfucker who had just passed me. Dressed in bright blue swim trunks with fucking starfish on them, the guy was maybe in his mid-thirties with light brown hair and bushy eyebrows. The chick in the purple bikini with him couldn’t have been more than twenty-five. I wasn’t sure if he was trying to impress her or what, and I didn’t really care. The slight amount of calm graced to me by the ocean waves was gone, and in its place was the storm of fury I had been trying to dodge all afternoon.

Without a word or a thought, I hauled back and punched him in the chest.

Though I hadn’t hit him all that hard, it felt good to have my knuckles connecting to someone’s body. Really good. He went down like a fucking ton of bricks despite the pulled punch, and the corners of my mouth turned up.

“Oh my God!” the girl screamed. “What the hell is the matter with you?”

She dropped down on the sand and helped the guy back up to a sitting position as I turned away from the water and headed back up to the street. I could hear both of them yelling for someone to call the cops, but I didn’t pay any attention to them, and the few other souls on the beach seemed to just stand in shock and stare as I passed. I made my way quickly to the pavement, yanked on my shoes over my sandy feet, and headed home. It was later than I thought, and I had to jog to the apartment steps to make sure I was home before Raine. I checked over my shoulder a couple of times, but no one seemed to be chasing after me.

Our one-bedroom condo wasn’t too big, but it was in a posh area of town and cost as much as my schooner had. It had one bedroom, two balconies, and a decent-sized living area that combined the kitchen, living, and dining area into one big room. It was on the fourth floor of the building, so it didn’t take a lot of effort to use the stairs. I hated being on the elevator with other people. They always tried to strike up a conversation, and I was never in the mood for it. After living here for a month, most of them knew exactly who I was, and all those who thought asking me about being lost at sea was a good idea had been proven wrong.

Raine didn’t know about most of my encounters with the neighbors, and I was happy to keep her in the dark.

Deceptive?

Yeah, probably, but it could be worse.

The short run from the beach reminded me that I needed to get back into a regular exercise routine. John Paul would be pissed if he knew I wasn’t keeping myself in shape, and Landon had made it clear to me the first night we were back that I was losing strength. Maybe some trips to the gym would help me to stop thinking about all the other shit in my life. The condo’s fitness center was open twenty-four hours a day, so I could go in the middle of the night to avoid the people. I could do a few miles on a treadmill, hit the dumbbells, and maybe indulge in some squats. I was pretty sure they even had a whirlpool or something I could soak in afterwards.

The only exercise that actually sounded good would be hauling some rocks around to fortify a shelter or foraging the beach for some mussels or crabs, but I was trying hard to convince myself otherwise.