Page 67 of Raine
“We can’t… I can’t do this, Acheron, please.”
“Raine, we didn’t do anything wrong,” he says, his eyes softening, and I’m taken back by his demeanor.
“We did! We fucking did…” I trail off. “It shouldn’t have happened, Ach. For fuck’s sake, why do I always do this shit?”
“You’re right, it shouldn’t have,” he pauses, surprising me.
My face drops, the unpleasant feelings whirling and festering within me.
“Don’t do that. Fucking hell, Raine, let me finish. It shouldn’t have happened, but it did. Will it happen again? No, it won’t. Not because I find you unattractive or whatever is breaking out in a ruckus inside of your skull,” he demands, tapping my head.
“You know as well as I do that if we weren’t inebriated, it would have never eventuated to the point it did. We are friends, Raine,” he says, smirking. “More like fucked-up siblings. We’re at each other’s throats more than we’re not, and I think we gravitated toward each other lately because we sensed the same darkness within each other.”
A small smile breaches my face, and I soften, closing my eyes for the briefest moment and then opening them.
“Maybe if you weren’t such an asshole, you’d get a round two,” I retort playfully, but my smile fades when the library door slams against the walls, rattling the bookshelves.
“You fucked him!” Arrow shouts, pain blazing in his eyes like an amber wildfire, and I go on the defensive.
“No, no, it’s not what you think, Arrow,” I argue.
“Like fuck. I know what I heard, Raine!” he booms, and the first tear slides down my face, my defenses piling at my feet like discarded debris.
“And you! You knew how I felt about her, always have, and now I hear you are fucking screwing her behind our backs.”
“Stand down, Arrow. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Arrow bursts into laughter, and it sounds crazed, like he’s borderlining on a manic episode. “The fuck I don’t,brother.”
He stalks across the room toward us, and Acheron pushes me aside as if anticipating Arrow’s next move. He manages to block the punch coming for his face, but Arrow follows up and punches him in the gut.
Tears flow freely down my cheeks, and my hands wrap around my middle as they start fighting each other.
“Stop!” I yell. “Please!”
“What the fuck is going on in here?” Justyce demands, his eyes flaring wide when he sees the boys on the floor wrestling and punching the shit out of each other.
He races over and starts pulling them apart, and like the coward I am, I take the opening and run for the exit as quickly as I can.
Tears turn to ice on my face as I race down the street. Slipping through my front gate and into the house, I head straight for the sitting room, throwing myself on the couch and sobbing into the pillow.
I don’t know how long I lay there crying, but when I hear the door open and click closed, I draw my weapon, readying for a fight.
But when Arrow comes into view, his face is bloodied and bruised, his lips split, and I drop the gun, a hiccup leaving my throat.
He walks into the room slowly, his eyes on me. They hold no light or mischief, like normal. They look like pools of dirty mud instead of the beautiful cognac I’ve loved all these years.
I swipe at my eyes and put my gun in the holster, standing up quickly to meet him halfway. He stops in front of me, and I find myself wanting to console him, placate him, and explain what happened between me and Acheron, but he shakes his head, brokering no argument.
I stay quiet, the world falling away around us as tears cling to the corners of my eyes at the pain I’m feeling and what’s reflecting back at me in his eyes.
“I…I’m sorry…”
“Don’t, Raine, just fucking don’t.”
He pulls at one of my wild orchid strands, twirling it around his finger and looking at it thoughtfully before finding my eyes.
“You know I’ve loved you since… Hell, I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t in love with you, Raine.”
