Praying for Rain (Praying for Rain Trilogy, #1)(19)

Wes


I don’t care how heavy that backpack is; after the dream I had this morning, Rain’s ass is wearing it, and she’s sitting on the back.

I shove my helmet on over my towel-dried hair but pause before kick-starting the bike. I’m afraid the sound of the engine will cause Rain’s shithead of a father to come running out, guns blazing, but maybe she was telling the truth about him being deaf after all.

Maybe she was telling the truth about her mom, too.

I look around for her mom’s fabled motorcycle—the “black one”—but there’s no sight of it. I guess she could have parked in the garage, but from the looks of this place, that door probably doesn’t even work anymore.

I pull my helmet off and turn to Rain, who is struggling to climb on behind me with that big-ass pack on. “What did your mom say about the dirt bike in the driveway?”

“Huh?” she asks, swinging her leg over the seat with a grunt.

“Your mom? Did she ask about my bike? She would have had to drive around it to get into the garage.”

“Oh. Right.” Rain wraps her arms around my ribs as tight as she can to keep from falling backward. “I told her I was letting a friend stay in the tree house.”

I can’t tell if she’s lying or not. She sounds convincing, but her eyes look a little extra crazy. Maybe it’s just all that mascara. I fucking hate it. I don’t need Rain to get hotter. I need her to get uglier so that I can fucking focus on surviving the next two days.

“Don’t you need to go inside and tell her bye?”

“No. She’s sleeping.”

“And your dad?”

“Passed out in his chair.”

“Well, shouldn’t you, like, leave a note telling her where you’re going or something?”

Rain cocks her head to the side and raises her eyebrows. “Wes, I’m nineteen years old.”

I shrug. “I don’t know how this family shit works, okay?”

She sighs and drops the attitude. It only lasts a second, but in that moment, I see the real Rain. Underneath all those fake smiles and that sassy attitude is a black ocean of sadness crashing against a crumbling lighthouse of hope.

“Neither do I,” she admits. Then, she presses her cheek to my shoulder.

Fuck me.

I stomp down on the kick-start and head through the backyard, realizing that my dream this morning wasn’t just a nightmare; it was a premonition.

The way Rain’s body feels wrapped around mine, the way she looks, all dolled up like we’re going on a fucking date, the way she wants to help me even though nobody’s fucking helping her, I’m distracted by it. All of it. This bitch is going to get into my head, make me veer off course, and get us both killed. I know it like I know my own name, yet here we go anyway, into the woods.





Rain


We’ve been out here for hours. The morning chill is long gone. Now, it’s just hot and humid and hazy as hell, thanks to the pollen bomb that seems to have gone off somewhere nearby. Maybe that’s why these people built a bomb shelter. It wasn’t to protect them from nuclear fallout. It was to protect them from breathing all this crap in the air.

Wes is so serious about finding this place. So serious. Last night and this morning, he actually joked around with me a little bit, but ever since we left the house, he’s been all business. I feel like I can’t get a good read on him. Sometimes, he’s relaxed and funny and … I don’t know … kind of flirty? Then, other times, he looks at me like he hates me. Like I’m his annoying little sister, and he’s sick of me tagging along.

Maybe it’s because I’m not being very helpful right now. He’s nicer when I’m helping him.

All I’m doing is walking around, poking the ground with a big stick.

Wes said the bomb shelter was underground, and the only entrance was a metal door, like a big, square manhole on the ground. It must have been built in the ’60s, back when family fallout shelters were all the rage, but by the time Wes found it, the only thing left of the house it belonged to was a crumbling stone chimney.

We’ve been looking for that damn chimney all morning. I don’t have the heart to tell Wes that I’ve spent my whole life in these woods and have never seen an old stone chimney, but I guess it’s possible that it fell over after he left. A lot can happen in thirteen years.

Hell, here lately, a lot can happen in thirteen minutes.

“Are you sure it was behind Burger Palace?” I ask in a teensy, tiny voice.

We’ve poked every square foot of earth back here, and that door is either buried so deep in pine needles that a stick isn’t gonna do the trick or we’re in the wrong place.

“Yes, I’m fucking sure. I lived right down there,” Wes growls, shoving his finger in the opposite direction of the highway. “I used to walk by that goddamn chimney every day on my way to …” His voice trails off and he shakes his head, trying to get rid of the memory. “Ugh!” Wes drops the backpack on the ground and sits next to it on a fallen tree trunk, pressing his fingertips into his forehead. His freshly washed hair falls over his face, curling at the ends where it was tucked behind his ear.

I take a seat a few feet down from him on the log and unzip the pack, pretending to look for a bottle of water or something. “Sorry we haven’t found it yet. I’m sure we’re close. Some stupid kid probably knocked the chimney down or something.”