“Do you still have family in Chicago?”

“No.” I clenched my teeth and hoped he wouldn’t go there.

“So where does your family live now?”

Of course he did.

Fucker.

“I don’t have any family,” I said.

“Oh, shit…sorry.” He scratched at his head and took another drink. “What happened to them?”

“Don’t know; don’t care,” I snapped. I jammed the tongs underneath one of the steaks and tossed it on its other side. “Change the fucking topic.”

After a little silence, I hoped he’d go back inside, but my luck just didn’t run that way.

“Are you going to get another boat?”

“I never had a boat,” I said.

“Oh, uh, I thought that sailboat was yours.”

“It was a three-masted schooner,” I said, “a ship, not a boat.”

“Sorry, I don’t know much about boats.”

Fuck me.

“So, are you going to get another one?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

I let out a long breath and turned to glare at him.

“Because I fucking live here now!” I snarled before I focused my attention on the sizzling meat.

I guess I knew he was only trying to be nice and make conversation or whatever, but I wasn’t interested. I didn’t have anything to say to him, and I sure as hell wasn’t planning to open up and give the fucker my life story. It would only get him killed.

Now there’s an idea.

I shook my head a little to clear the violent thoughts parading around in it. With my attention on the food, I made it all the way through Nick’s attempts at conversation while I flipped steaks. When we went back inside, I made it all the way through Lindsay’s incessant babbling about shoes and Raine’s sideways glances at me every time someone took a sip of wine.

Raine had completely ignored the glass Lindsay had poured for her and drank water.

That just pissed me off more. I didn’t want her to deny herself just because I had a fucking drinking problem. It was my issue, not hers.

“How about a toast to the new customer service manager?” Nick said as he held up his glass.

Lindsay squealed a bit. She grabbed the glass Raine was avoiding and placed it her hand. Raine looked at me sideways again, and I rolled my eyes dramatically.

“Just drink the fucking drink, will you?” I snarled. “I really don’t give a shit.”

Raine cringed a bit and nodded at Lindsay. Nick held up his glass and said something about how proud he was of little Lindsay hitting the big-time of middle management. I sat on one of the stools in the kitchen and fiddled with my lighter.

“Come on, Bastian,” Lindsay said, “you have to hold up your glass!”

“It’s tea, for fuck’s sake,” I reminded her.

“You can still toast,” Lindsay argued.

I stared at her blankly for a moment, trying to keep all the nasty shit I wanted to say from flying out of my mouth like a swarm of bees from a disturbed hive. All the tension was moving up my legs and into my gut, and I had to swallow to keep the words inside.

“Drop it, baby,” Nick said quietly.

“But he can!” Lindsay insisted as she turned toward her boyfriend.

“Please,” Raine said as I felt her hand grip my knee as she stepped closer to me, “let’s go ahead and eat, okay?”

Awkward silence ensued.

It was better than what happened afterwards.

We all sat around the kitchen island with plates of steak, baked potatoes with little broccoli florets on top of them, and one of those salads with green stuff in it you couldn’t actually identify. My fingers tapped repeatedly against my leg as I tried to keep my mouth too full to join in any discussions.

Not that I had anything to add to them.

“So proud of my girl,” Nick said with a wide smile. He tossed his arm over Lindsay’s shoulders and gave her a stupid-ass grin.

Every word that came out of his mouth I wanted to pound back into his face. It wasn’t the words themselves; it was the way he said them. It was the way he beamed at her like she was the center of the fucking universe. She was eating it up, too.

I kind of wanted to puke.

Raine smiled at both of them before tilting her head to look at me. Her smile faltered immediately as she watched me tear into another bite with my fingers clenching the knife so tightly, it probably looked like I was trying to brutalize the cow.

“Only two years at the store, too,” he continued.

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” I muttered, no longer able to keep it inside. “It’s a customer service job. She’s not on the board of directors.”

Half a second of silence before Nick sat up taller and glared at me.

“What the fuck is your problem?” Nick finally snapped.

I glared right back.

“Let’s see where to start.” I tapped my finger on my chin. “Oh yeah—you’re a dickhead.”

“Bastian!”

I slammed my hand down on the table and stood up.

“This is fucking pointless!” I yelled. “I can’t sit around here and pretend all this is just fine and dandy, Raine! It’s bullshit!”

I wasn’t really sure exactly what was bullshit, but I was pretty confident that there was bullshit about the room. I didn’t like it. In fact, I couldn’t fucking tolerate it another second.

“Jesus, Bastian…” Lindsay’s face crinkled up as if she’d just seen some poor girl on the beach in Wal-Mart flip-flops. “Calm down already.”

I curled my fingers into a fist, my nails digging into my palms. I wasn’t going to hit her—I wouldn’t actually do that—but the desire was certainly there. I was pretty sure if I did, Nick would come to her rescue at that point. Pummeling him was a very attractive idea, and I found myself actually considering making a move on her just to get the opportunity to hit him.

I glanced in Raine’s direction, and all those thoughts left my head. She’d never fucking forgive me if I did something like that, and the only thing that could possibly relieve some of the tension I felt was knowing once these two idiots were gone, I’d take Raine to bed and forget about this whole evening.

It occurred to me that I might have already blown that opportunity.

“Fuck this,” I muttered as I stood up and grabbed my jacket from the hook on the wall.

“Bastian, where are you going?” Raine asked.

“Getting the fuck out of here.”

Raine pushed away from the table and started to walk over to me, but Nick, who was closer to the door, beat her to it. He stepped around me and blocked me from getting from the doorway to the elevator.

“Come on, man,” he said with his hands up in some kind of stupid-ass surrender motion. “It’s all good. No reason for you to go.”

“Get the fuck out of my way!” I yelled. I shoved Nick aside and grabbed the handle of the door. I wasn’t about to wait around for the elevator, so I slammed both hands onto the metal bar on the door to the stairs and started down them, skipping two steps at a time until I reached the bottom. About halfway down, the sound of Raine yelling after me had diminished enough to be forgotten.

Every muscle in my body was painfully tight. I tried to keep my mental focus on getting the fuck out of the general area and not on going back upstairs to punch that asshole in the face. If Raine hadn’t been there, there was no doubt in my mind that I would have beaten the shit out of him, and it was only her presence that kept me from going back up there.

I needed a major distraction, and thankfully, there was something on the lower level that was good at capturing my attention.

Inside the underground parking garage were two spaces for our vehicles. One contained Raine’s Subaru, which she had driven from Ohio prior to going on the cruise that landed us both on a life raft. Next to it was the only thing I had bought since we arrived in Miami—a Honda CBR600RR.

My motorcycle.

I flipped my leg over it, started it up, and threw it into gear. A few moments later, I was doing ninety on the MacArthur Causeway, heading to I-95. I didn’t know where I was going, just that I wanted to get as far away from that condo as quickly as I could. Driving as if there were a bunch of fast-moving zombies from World War Z on my tail, I slipped between cars and trucks as I headed west, reached the interstate, and sped northward.

The wind on my face drew water from my eyes, but I reveled in the feeling, the unhindered freedom the bike gave me. It wasn’t as good as the schooner on the sea because of the traffic I had to buzz around, but it was a decent substitute. The air still smelled like salt this close to the ocean, and I could nearly taste the sea on my tongue.

I didn’t keep track of the time I spent just speeding up the highway. At some point I took an exit, turned around, and headed back toward Miami Beach. I didn’t get that far though, choosing instead to get off the interstate and head through some back streets. I zipped through some neighborhoods with unkempt lawns and boarded-up windows then past some strip malls with half the stores closed up. There weren’t a lot of people around, and those that were looked like they’d rather be somewhere else.

I finally pulled the bike over, dropped the kickstand, and put my head in my hands. I leaned over the handlebars and took several deep breaths before I sat back and looked around.

I hadn’t been to this area of town before, and it looked shady, to say the least. It definitely looked like the kind of area tourists avoided because they were more likely to get mugged than offered a drink with an umbrella in it. It immediately reminded me of living on the streets of Chicago before Landon found me and hauled me out to Seattle to start training.