Raine's Haven

by Shari J. Ryan

  Staring out into the water, I think I recall Bennett saying something about cold water cauterizing blood. It would at least clean me up well enough that I don't walk out of the woods looking like I was attacked by something. Since the sun is just rising and it's October, the water should be somewhat cold, hopefully cold enough to stop some of the blood. I slip my dress up and over my head, dropping it carelessly onto the wooden planks. After removing my shoes, I kick everything to the side and amble back down the tiny hill and into the, yes, freezing water. My heart pounds in my chest as the cold shocks me into stiffness.

  I look down into the knee-level, clear water, watching my blood cloud around my leg. The feeling of faintness hits me again, and with the combination of the icy sensation encompassing the lower half of my body, I know I'm in trouble.

  I attempt to wade back the six feet to the shore, but a force pulls me down harder than expected as everything goes black.

  21

  Raine

  Who the hell would be in here at this hour? Probably stupid teenagers hooking up where they think no one will find them. Idiots.

  For the last seven years, I have thought about this damn lake as if it were my last living family member. However, Granddad's ashes were spread around the area, making this place my last dying relative. He's here, and I feel him—that's all that matters.

  The days I spent on that dock fishing with Granddad were memories I would pay to relive. Then, of course, Haven, and our time at the dock only added to that. Regardless of those few moments being tarnished by a lie, this place is mine, and I will keep coming here until the day I die.

  The silence contained between the trees gives me a straight shot up to where I think Granddad is watching me from, and right now I have a lot of explaining to do. I feel like the only thing I've managed to accomplish since he died is to let him down, time after time. I could tell anyone who would listen that none of those times were my fault, but I don't have anyone who would listen.

  I jog down the hill to the dock, finding the damage left behind by the drought I heard so much about. I can't believe it. After fifty years, this damn lake has started to recede. Granddad thought it should have happened years ago, and because it didn't, he called this the Lake of Luck. It's not an official name—the lake has no real name, but I can agree with him on that. It’s been lucky for me. As I reach the dock, I see a pile of shit at the end. What the hell is that? Walking the dozen or so feet toward the edge, I see a crumpled dress and a pair of shoes, alerting me to look out into the water where I see a body floating face down in less than two feet of water.

  After what feels like an eternity, the shock wears off, and my intuition kicks in, telling me to react. I don't bother with my shoes or clothes; I hop down from the wooden boards and race across the rocks until I reach the water. It's so fucking cold, it's no wonder whoever was dumb enough to go swimming in this shit got themselves into trouble. Even though the body is just a few feet from the shore, it feels like it takes a year for me to power through the frigid, shallow water to see that the person is a young chick, dressed only in her underwear. What the hell? I grab the woman and throw her over my shoulder while slowly pushing my way back through the ice-cold water.

  As I reach the rocks, I lay the woman down on her back, immediately feeling choked. "Haven!" I shout, shaking her wildly. "What the hell were you trying to do? Are you out of your mind?" She's unconscious, and I’m yelling, which is not helping. Freaking the fuck out, I begin compressions on her chest, something Granddad forced me to learn before we started going on camping trips every weekend of the summer. If we were out in the woods alone, I needed to be prepared for anything, but I'm not prepared for this.

  Her body is ice cold, and blood is spilling down the side of her leg. Did someone fucking do this to you? Thoughts of pissing off her fiancé last night when I came to the door in my boxers is the only thing passing through my mind.

  This is my fault.

  Maybe she couldn't forgive herself for what she did to me.

  Because I couldn't forgive her.

  This is my fault.

  I lower my body on top of hers, forcing warmth into her bare skin as I press my ear up against her chest, listening for her heartbeat. All I hear is the water in her lungs, which is much louder than what I would expect her heartbeat to sound like. I hope that I just can’t hear her heart over the sound of her lungs right now. I press back up to my knees and restart the compressions, counting, and forcing air into her mouth as I tilt her head back. Again. And again. She's not moving.

  A seize of shudders quakes through my body and my nerves ignite. I couldn't forgive her. She wanted to be with me bad enough that she lied about a two-year age difference. But why? If she didn't know what the goddamn law was, why would she lie? How many times can I ask this same question and still not have a good enough answer or understanding? She had to have known it was against the law. She had to have known her dad would ruin my life if he had the chance. Why wouldn't she think that? Only I know the real reason he would do something like that to me.

  Again I repeat the compressions, using more force than I did before, this time without concern for causing her further injury. She needs to wake the hell up. "Haven, you have to wake up. I can't live with this on my conscience." It's all about me. When did I become a person who was all about myself? She’s dying, and all I’m worried about is having to live with the guilt of making her kill herself? How much hate do I have for others that I have completely forgotten the values Granddad branded me with. What have I become?

  How long can a person go without oxygen? Thank God, I don't know the answer to that. Frustrated and out of ideas, I flip her over my arm and wail my hand against her back several times. Water chokes from her throat, spraying everywhere around us as her lungs finally struggle for air. I lift her up, keeping her neck arched back to help her pull in more oxygen. Her eyes still don't open, and the breaths stop again, so I repeat the pounding on her back at least ten more times before more water spews out of her mouth. Her breaths sound less constricted now. As she struggles to breathe, the whistling in her lungs grows louder, but I think that's a good thing. "Haven," I say sternly. "Dammit. Look at me." Her eyelashes flutter against her ghostly white skin, and the hazel glow in her eyes burns right through me. "You're okay." I wrap my arms around her tighter than I should but not nearly as tightly as I need. "It's okay."

  Haven continues to cough as she begins to cry, and her body trembles against mine. "I thought I was going to die," she chokes out.

  "What the hell happened?" I don't know if she has enough oxygen to say more than she has but I have to find out what caused this.

  She doesn't answer right away, but I feel the speed of her inhales slow down. "I came here—I…I wanted to get away from him.” She leans forward, clutching at her stomach while coughing up more water. It takes her a minute to catch her breath again, but as she does, she glances back over at me. “I fell down a hill here—I was bleeding a lot, so I went to rinse it off and—I can't deal with blood too well, that and the cold.” She sounds as if she just ran a marathon while taking in a few more shuddered breaths. “I must have blacked out."

  "What were you thinking?" I question her.

  "I wasn’t," she says, sniffling.

  I exhale the breath I had been holding in for the last few minutes and lift her up, bringing her back to the dock where her clothes are. I sit her down but continue to stand, keeping a boundary I feel is necessary. "I thought your—almost fiancé, whatever he is, did this to you," I tell her.

  "Bennett?" she questions.

  "Yeah, whatever his name is."

  "No, he didn't do this," she says, twisting a wet strand of hair behind her shoulder. "How did you know I was here?"

  "I didn't," I tell her honestly. "I didn't know that was your car."

  We both look at each other for a long moment, realizing what would have happened if I didn't find her here in this secluded area no one knows about.

&nb
sp; Still shivering, she shakily slips her dress on over her head and slides her arms through the sleeves of her sweater. "We should get you to a hospital," I tell her, looking at the wound on her leg. "That's going to need stitches."

  "Probably. I'll take myself, though."

  "Knock it off. I can bring you to the hospital," I argue. "You just passed out from the sight of blood then nearly drowned. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that driving isn't the smartest idea."

  "But,” she says between wheezes, “you made it clear you didn't want to see me. I don’t want to put you through more.”

  Haven wraps her arms around her shoulders, hugging herself tightly as she shivers through the wetness encasing her body. I’m sure she has hypothermia and needs warmth. It’s cold enough out here as it is. I pull my soaked shirt off and sit down beside her, knowing the only way to warm her up is from my body heat. “Don’t go thinking I’m trying to be a dirtbag,” I warn, while wrapping my arms around her small body.

  She doesn’t say a word or budge as I tighten my grip around her, holding her in a way I tried not to dream about throughout so many of those long nights. Being this close now, I’m still fighting not to feel anything, with hope of blocking out the residual anger and the lingering feelings I have always had for her.

  After a couple of minutes, her shivers subside, and she peers up at me from beneath her dark, wet lashes. The look on her face makes me feel things I’ve refused to let myself feel—a type of grief that comes along with an understanding of her decisions.

  "I've been angry at you, Haven. I'm not going to deny that. I'm mad at a sixteen-year-old kid, though, not a twenty-three-year-old who almost has her head on her shoulders." I release a sigh in response to the kind words coming out of my mouth. I promised myself I wouldn’t cave like this—not after seven years of torture and prison beatings due to being labeled a “child molester”. Yet, here I am, falling right back into the place I was in before I got taken away.

  Feeling warmth fill her arms and torso, I release my embrace, placing a little space between us. I’m not sure anything I say right now will make much sense to her, but I have these built-up things in my head, and I never thought I’d either get the chance to tell her or have it in me to look her in the eyes again. "Do you know what attracted me to you when we were younger?"

  She shrugs her shoulders and pins me with her questioning gaze like she’s wanted this answer for a long time. "I have been wondering."

  "Besides your beauty," I say, tugging at a wet strand of her sun-kissed hair. Quit touching her. "You wear your heart on your sleeve. I understood your resentment and appreciated your hostility toward your parents because they were behaving in a way you disagreed with, doing things you knew were wrong. That quality in any teenage girl isn't something you find every day." She doesn't deserve these words.

  "I'm afraid I'm not as strong willed as I was once," she tells me. "I gave up on a lot of battles after what happened with you. I told my dad I was the one who lied, and again, he threatened me against opening my mouth. " She pinches the bridge of her nose, shaking her head with shame. "At the time I feared his threats, but I'm no longer afraid of him. I’m ready to stand in the middle of the street and scream out the truth. Maybe that's what I should do."

  As much as I'd love to see that, it wouldn't make a difference. When people have an image of someone burned into their minds, there's no undoing it. This town made up its mind about me long ago. "That wouldn't fix anything," I tell her. She rests her head on top of her arched knees and stares up at me as if I have more of an explanation. But, I don’t. Instead, the blood dripping down her leg has caught my attention, and I realize I need to get her to the hospital right now. “We need to get going. That wound is starting to bleed pretty well again.”

  She looks down at her leg, and the color that had just begun to refill her cheeks falters back to pale.

  I grab my shirt and help her up as I gently lead her up the hill toward the unmarked path. "What will people think if they see us together?" she asks.

  "I couldn't care less about that right now," I tell her.

  “Okay,” she agrees, though there is definite hesitation in her one word.

  Haven silently struggles and limps along the path as her skin color continues changing by the second since she keeps looking down at the blood dripping toward her feet. Trying to think of a way to distract her so she doesn’t glance at the wound again, I spit out the first thing that comes to mind. "How are your parents doing?" That question may have been more of a distraction for me than her, but from the moment I ran into her yesterday, it’s been one of two things I’ve wanted the answers to.

  "They're uh—good, I guess," she says, keeping it short.

  "They still living in the same house?"

  "Of course," she said. "Hasn't that always been the house the mayor of this town lives in?"

  Her father probably told her that so he could cover more of his dirty tracks. "No, not always." But that answers my question of whether that man is still the prick mayor. "The mayor's salary isn't high enough to afford a plantation house like that one."

  "That's true," she says.

  "I take it your dad hasn't returned all the money he stole yet?"

  "No,” she says, her words almost inaudible. “I don't think he ever will."

  Yeah, we'll see about that. "You never know when the truth might catch up to him, I suppose."

  "True. Actually, I'm surprised it hasn't happened yet." The conversation comes to an end as we approach her car, which is probably a good thing since the filter I once had on my mouth is no longer intact, and God knows, I have nothing good to say about the mayor.

  "Do you want me to drive?" I ask just to be courteous, but I have no intention of letting her drive anywhere right now.

  She doesn't answer; instead, she walks over to the passenger side and slips inside. I guess that answers my question. I duck into the driver’s seat, adjusting the chair so my head can fit beneath the ceiling of this little coupe. "Sorry," she laughs softly.

  "It's all good." The second I get behind the wheel, I come to my senses, realizing I haven't driven a vehicle in seven years. Nor should I be driving without my meds, but I don’t know of another good option at the moment. “You didn’t want to call someone to come get you or anything, do you?”

  “Please, no. There’s no one I’d want to call for help,” Haven pleads with her wide-eyed focus frozen on the windshield.

  “Just making sure.” I take it slow, using the back roads to get to the small medical practice on the outskirts of town. "You sure you're okay if someone sees us together?"

  "I'll tell them the truth. I told you that." She makes it sound so simple.

  I pull the key from the ignition and jog around to the passenger side to open Haven's door. She's looking a little pale again, and it makes me nervous. I palm my hands against the roof of the car and duck inside. "What's going on with you? Is this still about the blood?"

  "I've only had stitches once, and it was with that glue stuff, not a needle," she says.

  I don't mean to laugh, but considering I've had them ten times in the last seven years, I've come to enjoy stitches more than getting tattooed. "They're no big deal."

  "You've had stitches?" she asks innocently.

  I pull my shirt down off my shoulder, showing off my most recent scar from when the asshole in the cafeteria stabbed me with a goddamn fork and dragged it about three inches before I could stop him. "Prison isn't a friendly place, we'll leave it at that."

  She shudders at my words as the look of an apology floats through her glassy eyes.

  "You have a lot of tattoos now too," she says.

  "Gotta look the part to play the part," is all I say while helping her out of the car. “Come on, you’ll be just fine.”

  We walk from the parking lot into the reception area of the clinic and sign in. "There's about a forty-minute wait," says the dark-haired woman who looks like she got left behind in the eight
ies with her bangle bracelets and hot pink, fluorescent lipstick that’s partially covering her front teeth. She gives us both a long hard stare before taking the sign-in sheet back from Haven. "They'll call your name when they're ready for you." She smiles faintly as we turn toward the waiting room, and almost the second we’re more than a few feet away, the whispers grow. Of course. Maybe this place wasn’t the best idea, but the hospital in Baton Rouge is almost an hour away, and that drive wouldn’t bode well for either of us right now.

  While in the waiting room, we’re still in sight of the front desk, and the whispers are slowly turning into loud chatter, speculation I can almost make out. I know what they’re all thinking. They know who I am. They know who Haven is. We're together, and she's bleeding, while soaking wet from head to toe.

  "I think you should leave," Haven whispers to me as she gets wind of what the women at the front desk are saying.

  "Is it because of what I look like or the fact that everyone knows who we both are?" I ask calmly.

  "Neither. I'm worried the staff here will accuse you of doing this to me," Haven says.

  So, “both” was the correct answer to my question. I expected this, but it’s still pissing me off. “Did I do this to you?" I ask her.

  "No," she snaps back. "Of course not."

  "Well, if that's your only answer, no one can make a different assumption without proof." I should listen to her and be more careful, considering I've been out of prison for less than forty-eight hours, but I can't live in fear of being blamed for anything that may go wrong with Haven today or ten years from now.

  "Then stay with me," she says. "I want you to stay. Please."

  I don't ask another question. Instead, I grab a bridal magazine from the table in front of us. Flipping through the pages, it takes less than a few seconds for her to notice what I'm reading.

  "What are you doing?" she asks, curling the magazine over to see the cover. "You read bridal magazines now?"