Rogue Wave (The Water Keepers, Book 2) (16 page)

“Your eyes look much better now,” I said. “I guess that means you were able to get more Healing Water?”

He pulled a small silver bottle from his pocket. “Yep. I’ve got you covered.”

I stood from the couch, wanting to rush the conversation so I could get home to the diary and tell him what was really going on. “So, was that all you wanted to talk to me about?”

“No,” Rayne said, jumping up to grab my hand. My eyes widened, taken off-guard. He laughed nervously. “No, sorry. Just sit with me for a minute. I have some good news to tell you. Well, at least I hope you’ll think it’s good.”

I glanced at him, mildly suspicious, and sat back down. “What kind of news?”

He turned his body towards me and took my hand. “This may come as a bit of a shock, so please just take a minute to hear me out.”

I squinted. “O…kay…”

I was suddenly having Déjà vu. With Rayne, this was never a good way to begin a conversation. I knew this from way too many past experiences.

“You know how I told you the bonding effect creates forced emotions between a person treated with Healing Water and their Keeper?” he began. “Well, I sort of, found out that the bond may not be completely forced.”

I stared at him, confused.

“Bonding is still a real thing,” he assured me. “But I was told from a very reliable source that I was misled at the Academy. The bonding can only…
intensify
the good feelings people already have inside them. It doesn’t create emotions out of thin air. It just makes
real
emotions feel a lot stronger, sooner.”

Rayne paused, a goofy look on his face as he nodded knowingly and waited for me to internalize his intentions.

I couldn’t speak. I stared at him, replaying his words in my head.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute,” I finally said. “Am I hearing you right? What are you saying?”

His brow lifted hopefully. “I was wrong, Sadie. The feelings are real. You and me…we’re real.”

“But—so, they’ve been lying to you all this time? I don’t understand why they would do that. I mean, are you sure? Who told you this? Are you sure you can trust them? What if someone’s just lying to you again?”

Rayne tried to calm me, placing both hands around my cheeks. “Believe me; I’m sure. I’ve had a lot of time to think about this and I know it’s the truth.”

I pulled my head back. “A lot of time? Less than a day is not a lot of time to think about something like this.”

His gaze broke from mine, voice quiet. “Oh, actually…I found out about this several months ago.”

I couldn’t believe my ears. He knew, and he didn’t tell me? Suddenly I was on my feet, heading toward the door.

“Sadie, wait,” he called, following after me. He cut me off in the entryway, preventing my stunned body from moving forward. He rubbed his hands soothingly across my shoulders and down my arms. “Please don’t run away,” he said. “I’m trying to tell you that I want to be with you, Sadie; that we don’t need to pretend anymore. I’m sorry this came as such a shock, but please just talk to me. Tell me what you’re feeling.”

He was right. I always ran away from things, and I had to learn to face them. But Rayne was always throwing crazy-hard, unimaginable things at me that were too hard to deal with. It wasn’t fair. I just spent the last five months of my life denying myself, torturing myself, and now I was finally to the point where I felt strong enough to move on, and he was changing everything.

Anger and frustration whirled around me. “How I’m feeling?” I blurted. “You want to know how I’m feeling? Fine. I’ll tell you how I’m feeling… annoyed, tired, frustrated, overwhelmed… You always talk about keeping me safe and protected. Well, you may do a great job protecting me physically, but when it comes to my happiness and well-being, you’ve completely failed.”

I pushed Rayne and his bewildered face out of my way to stomp across the room, and turned back toward him. “I mean, you knew all this time and you didn’t tell me? You’ve basically been lying right to my face for months. And you say that you want us to be together? How can I do that when I have no idea who you even
are
? Who knows what else you’ve been keeping from me.”

Rayne rushed to my side. “I know, and I’m so sorry. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. I don’t want to keep secrets anymore. I want to make this right.”

“Okay,” I said, crossing my arms. “I had an interesting talk with my mother earlier. She said that I used to come home with all sorts of stories about my little imaginary friend, Diamond-eyes, for several years. So, I want to know if you really just talked to me that one time when I was seven years old, like you told me you did, or were you lying about that, too?”

Rayne sucked the air in through his teeth, guilt obvious on his face. “I may have talked to you a little more as a child than I let on.”

“Why? Why would you lie about something so stupid? Who cares how many times you talked to me? If anything, it makes me feel better knowing that you were there; knowing that I actually knew you and trusted you for years before we even met on the beach. At first, I thought I was
crazy
before you told me about the bonding effect. Did you know that? It didn’t make sense to feel such a strong connection with a total stranger. So why lie about it, Rayne? Please, explain it to me before I explode from anxiety.”

He threw a hand in the air. “I don’t know, okay? I mean, it sounds ridiculous when you say it like that, but I just…I wasn’t supposed to talk to you—at all. From the minute I set foot in this house, I was supposed to be a ghost to you. And I wasn’t supposed to care about you as much as I do. I care about you so much, Sadie. But I was breaking all the rules, all the time. It was eating me up inside. Sometimes I didn’t even have a choice about it. I had to do it because I was told to do it. I guess I was just in denial about a lot of things, and it was like, if I said it out loud, to you or anyone else, then that made it real. Does any of this make sense?”

My tone softened. “Yeah, I guess. But you still lied.”

“I know,” he said. “And I’ll spend my whole life trying to make it up you, if you’ll let me.” He reached for my hand and cradled it to his chest, kissing the back of my knuckle. “Just tell me what to do.”

“Sure,” I said, suddenly quiet. “You can make it up to me.” I gazed up at him with sincere, earnest eyes. “I want to know about my father.”

Rayne’s face collapsed as he stared at the floor. “Please. Anything but that.”

“I have to know,” I said. “Can’t you understand?”

“Yes, but I can’t do it… It isn’t my secret to tell.”

“I knew it. I knew you wouldn’t tell me.” I ripped my hand from his grasp. “This conversation is over.” I ran toward the door, tears pooling in my eyes.

I turned around when I grabbed the door knob and spoke through tight lips. “Just leave the Healing Water in your mailbox after school. I don’t want to see you.”

14. RAYNE GOES TO INVESTIGATE

Rayne stared at the door as Sadie slammed it in his face. He thought she would be happy to hear his news. He was dead wrong. Apparently, he was also an idiot. Somehow he had managed to completely screw up everything and make things worse. Maybe he didn’t deserve her.

But that didn’t change the fact that it was his job to keep her safe. Rayne cracked open the front door and watched Sadie’s hair bob around under the streetlights as she ran from his house and slipped safely through her front door. Even if it wasn’t his job anymore, even if Hamlin or the Council tried to reassign him somewhere else, he wouldn’t listen to them. He would stay and protect her.

His relationship with Sadie wasn’t the only relationship he had managed to ruin. His best friend, Ash, hadn’t spoken to him in months. Rayne knew there would be no point in trying to sleep tonight. Not with so much on his mind. The conversation he had with Hamlin earlier played through his head. Could Ash really be behind the theft of his Healing Water? Would Ash ever forgive Rayne for sending his father off a cliff?

There was only one way to find out. Rayne grabbed one of his guns from the back of the coat closet, but then put it back in its place. He wasn’t going there to make threats; he just wanted to talk. For all he knew, it was possible Ash was doing nothing more than wallowing in self-pity.

The main roads had little traffic at such an early hour, before the sun began to rise, and it took Rayne only fifteen minutes to drive to the Hastings’ family beach house in Laguna Beach, a place Ash and his family had kept a secret from everyone, even Rayne, up until five months ago.

There was a good chance the security settings on the house would be changed since the last time Ash had given Rayne instructions how to enter, but when Rayne lifted the football-sized rock in the yard near the door, the twelve digit code he entered on the keypad underneath worked without a problem. Just like that, a small compartment slid out from the back of the rock, revealing a standard issue key to the deadbolt on the front door. It seemed a little too simple for a home owned by the notorious, Voss Hastings. But, then again, Voss had been taught, just like the rest of them, that simply blending in was often the best way to hide.

Plus, it wasn’t the home itself that needed tight security from the outside world. Only the hidden entrance in the family room which led to the underground elevator and bunker had to be secured like a fortress. It was the place where Voss had kept his secrets…and his hostages.

Rayne crept quietly through the dark home, beginning with the bedrooms. Deep down, he hoped to find Ash sleeping soundly in his bed next to a pile of dirty laundry and empty pizza boxes, just like the days when they were roommates at the Academy, but he knew that wasn’t likely.

As he made his way back to the main level, he paused briefly in each room to snoop around and search for clues that might lead him to Ash’s whereabouts. But all the rooms were completely empty and tidy, as if no one had ever lived in them at all. The desks were cleared of any paperwork. The closets were bare except for a few hangers. The fridge was empty aside from a single box of rancid smelling take-out. The entire place looked abandoned.

Rayne paused in the family room, pondering what to do next, and stared out through the glass walls over the view of the ocean, where the smallest hint of light was emerging from the sun along the horizon. Rayne thought for a moment. If he were Ash, where would he go? Did he even know his friend as well as he thought he did?

A blue glow flickered from behind, causing Rayne to turn. Suddenly, the TV seemed to have a mind of its own, flipping aimlessly through various channels. Rayne rushed to the side table and reached for the remote when a voice broke through the television chatter.

“Did you find what you were looking for?”

Rayne twisted around to find Ash’s face, bigger than life on the large screen, surrounded by nothing but a beige wall in the background.

“Ash,” Rayne said, surprised. “What are you doing? Where are you?”

“I think I could ask you the same thing. Only, I know exactly where you are. You’re standing in the middle of my house, uninvited.”

“I was worried about you,” Rayne said. “I haven’t heard back from you for months.”

Ash rolled his eyes. “Oh, you were worried about me…how sweet. You know, I was wondering when you would finally get the guts to show your face around here…the scene of your crime.  Let me guess, Hamlin sent you to find me? You didn’t really think I would lounge around here like a sitting duck, just waiting for you to show up and drag me into custody, did you?”

Rayne moved a step forward. “That’s not why I’m here. Look, I’m unarmed. I just wanted to make sure that you were okay.”

“Right,” Ash replied with a scoff. “So, breaking into my home is your way of showing me how much you care?” Ash laughed once. “You’re such a putz, Rayne. Do you think I would be stupid enough to leave the security code to my house the same, on accident? You’re here because I wanted you here. Because I knew that one day you would come pointing your nose around where it didn’t belong, and then I would have the opportunity to tell you what I really think of you, right to your face.”

Rayne felt sick as he took in his old friend’s cold, hate-filled glare. “I came here to ask your forgiveness,” Rayne said hesitantly.

“You think you can just waltz in here one day, say you’re sorry, and poof…everything will go back to the way it was? I don’t think so.”

“Fine, I understand. You’re not ready to hold hands and skip to the candy shop together like twelve-year-old girls. But at least let me talk some sense into that thick head of yours. No matter what you think, I do care what happens to you. Ash, listen to me. You have to go back. Sooner or later you’re going to run out of Healing Water. If you go back now and explain everything, they’re going to be lenient on you. But the longer you play this game, the harder the consequences are going to be.”

“It’s too late for that,” Ash said. “The damage is already done. I can’t go back there. There’s nothing there for me worth living for anyway. Don’t you get it? I have nothing left.”

Rayne winced. “That’s not true. I know it’s hard on you to lose another parent. I’m so sorry that you’ve had to suffer so much loss. I really am. I don’t know what I could possibly do to make you understand that. And I know better than anyone that Banya’s not all they make it out to be, but there are still a lot of great things you could accomplish if you gave yourself a chance. And…you still have me. You know I’m always here for you if you need me.”

“You’re here for me? You’re joking, right? You’re really going to claim to be some kind of rock-solid friend? I was lucky to hear from you twice a year after you started your assignment as the Ambassador’s personal puppet. And, last I checked, friends don’t try to kill each other’s fathers.”

Rayne’s expression dropped. “I had to protect Sadie. I was just doing my job.”

“I don’t care about the stupid girl. Killing your best friend’s family is never anyone’s job.” Ash’s eyes narrowed. “You have no right to call yourself my friend. You
never
…were my friend. I want you off my property in the next thirty seconds or I’m blowing the self-destruct trigger on the entire building.”