Total pages in book: 130
Estimated words: 126003 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 630(@200wpm)___ 504(@250wpm)___ 420(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 126003 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 630(@200wpm)___ 504(@250wpm)___ 420(@300wpm)
I’m surprised to find that the friends are gone and Eason is busy in the kitchen. Cooking.
He nods at me when I appear. “Did ya fall asleep?”
“Yeah.” I pull out a bar stool in front of the island that separates the kitchen from the main living area. It’s a nice modern kitchen. Sleek white enamel cabinets, a smooth gray concrete backsplash, and stone counters. Not granite. Something less fancy and more masculine. Also gray. All the appliances look commercial, like they belong in a restaurant and not a home. “This is nice.”
“It is. Did I wipe you out with that run?”
He’s chopping up a cucumber and there’s a very tasty-looking green salad in a stainless-steel bowl next to the cutting board. Just looking at it is making my stomach rumble. “Wipe me out?”
“It means—”
“I know what it means. You think I’m stupid, don’t you?”
“I don’t. You’re just not from here.”
“Neither are you.”
“Yeah, but I grew up in the civilized world. You grew up in…”
I think he’s waiting for me to fill in the blank, but I’m not going to. I might owe him obedience in diet and training, but I do not owe him a personal history.
He answers his own question. “The jungle?”
“Among other places.”
“Rio and the Rock.”
“Among other places.”
“Right. The ship. Did you see many port cities then?”
“Did you?”
He smiles at me when I turn the question around, then tucks his head down trying to hide it.
“I’ve been all over, Eason. I’ve been to many port cities.”
“Europe.”
“No.”
“Australia.”
“No.”
“Los—”
“No. Many port cities in Central and South America.”
“Like I said. The jungle.”
“It’s not the jungle,” I say. He raises an eyebrow at me. “Not all of it.”
He goes back to cutting. A tomato now. “I’m just fuckin’ with ya, Irina.”
I sigh and look around. “What happened to the friends?”
“They’re going to LA for a month.”
“A month? Why?”
“Expanding the business? To get away from me? One of the two.”
“Why would they want to get away from you?”
“Because I’m so fuckin’ charming they can’t stand it.”
“You’re dumb.”
He dumps the cut-up vegetables into the salad bowl. “And you’re very easy to fuck with.” He gets two bowls out, dishes out two servings of salad, and then points to a jar of honey vinaigrette dressing. “Do ya like this?”
“I’ve never had it.”
“I love it. So you’re gonna eat it.” He dribbles dressing on both of the bowls and grabs two forks. “Get the beer and come out on the terrace.”
“Beer? In training?”
“Relax, Irina, training starts tomorrow.”
I blow out a breath as I slip off the stool and walk around the counter to grab the beers.
One month. Alone with him.
I’m having doubts now. Why am I even here? Do I really want to kill people that bad? I look down at the beers in my hands and get stuck on the label. Mula IPA. It’s a Brazilian beer, one of Rainer’s favorites, and the label has a picture of a rearing horse with a head made of fire.
And as soon as I see it, I have a flash of memory of all of us kids in Lençóis Maranhenses National Park, building little rock towers next to the hundreds of freshwater pools to pay tribute to all the kids who died along the way.
We drank this beer that night as Anya—the girl who didn’t talk—talked for hours in front of a little rock tower with her sister’s name on it. All of us, even the little kids like Jafari and Zoya, got to share a beer because everything was so sad.
It hits me hard for a moment. Remembering all the faces that came and went.
I do my best not to think about them, I do. But they are a part of me whether I like it or not. And that day at Lençóis Maranhenses was a day just for them.
It was Anya’s idea to build the rock monuments. We collected rocks from every place we stopped with the supply ship. They were mostly small, about the size of a palm, and they were all smooth, like they had tumbled all over the world through the power of the ocean.
It took us a few weeks to collect them all. We painted the rocks and put names on them. One for each kid who died from our camp. We remembered each and every one of them. Rainer had a list in his head. He knew all of them. He didn’t let us forget a single one.
And Bexxie, of course. Anya’s little sister who was killed because Cort won that last fight and decided to save Anya on his way out.
That day, surrounded by those freshwater pools and towers of painted rocks, I let myself remember all the kids who came and went, and I cried. I cried for hours. And when I was done, I slept for a whole day.
It was the most beautiful and most heartbreaking day of my entire life.