CEM Book Five: DARK WATERS

After The Darkness

They stood and watched Avi and Rayne as they wrapped themselves around each other. He held her carefully in a loose yet tight embrace. She wrapped her arms around his waist and repeatedly balled his shirt in her hands. She held on to him like there would be no tomorrow. They didn't know what to do with themselves any more than Avi did. They just stood, their feet rooted in place, looking around the trashed hotel room and watching the love that Avi and Rayne already had for each other unfold. Avi held Rayne, she held Avi and though they could not see their faces, not a one of them doubted that there were any less tears running down them. They stood like that for long silent moments lost in their need for one another and talking to each other in a language that began at the dawn of time and never needed words.

***

When they first entered the room, the boy ran past them. He had jerked the door away from Avi's hand before he could grasp the handle and come staggering out of it past them with blood gushing from his nose and mouth. He nearly knocked Mitch from his feet. His face was a bloodied mess. His left arm was in a heavy cast with blood smeared all over it. He was whimpering and muttering to himself as he stumbled and ran.

"Fucking Darkman. Always messin' shit up. I want to kill him. I hate the fucking Darkman."

Kevin heard him clearly and filed it away. He had heard 'darkman' before, but he didn't have time to be concerned about that, and so he wasn't. That boy should not have been able to walk, he staggered and stumbled as much as he ran. What right did that boy have to be in Rayne's room? Why was his face all buggered-up? He had no right to be near Rayne. No right to do whatever it was that he did do.

Avi's heart had to be racing. He rushed into the room. They had never seen him move so fast or stop just as quickly. She was standing there. In the middle of a room that had been trashed. Both bedside lamps had been knocked over the bed wasn't straight on its frame and there was blood all over the middle of it contrasting brightly with the stark white comforter that was a twisted mess covering it. Thankfully Avi saw none of it.

He saw only Rayne, standing there with her back to the door. Her shirt was askew and torn, her pants quite a bit lower on her hips then they should have been. He could see the angry red scratches on her hips from the boy's fingernails. He wished they weren't there. His heart sank to an all-time low. She had been attacked. He left her alone for just a short while and that stupid fucking asshole, the one from the night they had met, had attacked her. He had hurt her and hurt her badly. Her hair was a matted mess on the back of her head. He didn't think his heart could have sunk any lower. Then she turned around.

They let him go when it was clear that she was aware of who was with her. If Scott and Kevin hadn't restrained him when they did, he would have run to her. That would have been disastrous. They saw what she did to that boy. He left her room with his face covered in blood. It looked like his nose had exploded all over his face. She must have broken it with her knee. Her jeans were splattered with blood. If she broke Avi's nose It would take weeks for him to recover from the tissue damage and he would not be able to sing while he recovered. It would break more than his heart.

***

"I. He." Rayne sobbed into Avi's chest as he held her. Her tears flowed freely down her face. His tears wet his beard. He didn't know what to say or do. He didn't know what had happened in that room in the five to seven minutes it took him to realize she needed him. Did that boy, -- he couldn't bring himself to even think it. He didn't want her to have to have gone through that in her life too. He started to get caught up in the pain he felt, the selfishness of it and quickly realized that it would serve her no good. He opened his heart and his soul to her and poured all his love and every positive happy interaction he'd ever had in his life, into her. He felt her love wrap him, enfold him in a blanket soft and warm and swaddle his stupid ego. This was not about him at all, not in the least of bits. It was about Rayne and helping her to heal. That was all that mattered.