Praying for Rain (Praying for Rain Trilogy, #1)(23)

Shit.

“Hey … look. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to …”

“That’s his house.”

Huh?

I follow the direction of her gaze until I’m turned around, staring at a yellow farmhouse with white trim, set back about a hundred feet from the road. It’s nicer than her parents’ place, bigger, too, but the yard is just as overgrown.

“The boy next door, huh?” I try to keep the malice out of my voice, but knowing that the piece of shit who upset Rain is somewhere inside that house makes me see red.

When Rain doesn’t answer, I turn around and find her standing with her back to me. I stomp my kickstand down, prepared to chase her ass if she decides to bolt again, but the rattle of pills against plastic tells me that Rain isn’t going anywhere.

She’s found a different form of escape.

Rain pops a painkiller into her mouth and shoves the bottle back inside her bra. The whole time, I can practically hear the blood rushing to my extremities.

Whoever this kid is, he’s gonna die.

“Rain, I need you to give me one good reason why I shouldn’t storm up those steps, drag this punk out by the throat, and force him to eat his own fingers after I cut them off with my pocketknife.”

Rain lets out a sad laugh and turns to face me again. “Because he’s gone.”

I blow out a breath. Thank fuck.

“He left with his family a few weeks ago. They wanted to spend April 23 in Tennessee, where his parents are from,” Rain scoffs and rolls her eyes.

April 23. That’s what people call it when they don’t want to say the apocalypse. Like it’s a fucking holiday or something.

Rain looks back at me with a mixture of heartbreak and hate in her narrowed eyes, and fuck, do I know that feeling. The hate makes the heartbreak easier to take. Or, at least, it did for me.

Now, I don’t feel it at all.

Reaching across my bike, I wrap an arm around her shoulders and pull her toward me. Rain leans across the pleather seat to hug me back, and both my heart and cock swell in response. All I want to do is kiss the shit out of her until she forgets that this idiot farm boy ever existed, but I don’t. Not because she’s too vulnerable. But because I don’t trust myself to stop.

“Hey. Look at me,” I say, trying my hardest not to smell her fucking hair again.

Two big blue irises peek up at me from under two black-smudged eyelids, and the need I see in them makes my soul ache.

“Take it from somebody who’s a professional at getting left …” I force a grin. “All you gotta do is say fuck ’em and move on.”

“I don’t know how.” Rain’s eyes are pleading, begging for something to take the pain away.

I recognize the look, but I don’t even remember what it feels like anymore.

Because I’m the one who does the leaving now.

Pain doesn’t even know my forwarding address.

“It’s easy.” I smirk. “First, you say, fuck. Then, you say, ’em.”

Rain smiles, and my eyes drop to her lips. They’re dry and swollen from almost crying, and when they whisper the words, “Fuck ’em,” I swear, I almost come in my pants.

“Good girl,” I whisper back, unable to look away from her mouth. “Now, let’s go light his house on fire.”

“Wes!” Rain squeals, smacking me on the chest with a tiny smile. “We’re not lighting his house on fire.”

She turns and starts walking toward the hardware store again, and I let her lead the way. Not because I don’t want to torch that little shit’s house. I do.

But because there is a dead woman staring at me from behind the wheel of that overturned minivan.





Rain


By the time we get to Buck’s Hardware, I feel amazing. The sun is shining, my pills have kicked in, Wes is being nice to me again, and I cannot wait to climb that sign and paint a much-needed F over that B.

God, I can’t believe I told him about Carter.

What did you expect? You took him right past the guy’s house.

I’m such an idiot.

Note to self: take the trail from now on.

I nod to myself as I follow Wes across the parking lot. He’s all serious again, slowing down and reaching for his gun as we approach the busted front door. God, it must be exhausting, trying to survive the apocalypse.

I’m just trying to stay high enough to keep from crying all the time, and that’s hard enough.

Wes props his bike on the kickstand next to the front door and shoots a warning glance at me over his shoulder. The way he looks reminds me of the way he described Rome. Soft and hard. Old and young. Pale green eyes shadowed by thick, dark brows. Soft brown hair grazing a hard, stubbled jaw. A floral Hawaiian shirt covering jagged black tattoos. I’m attracted to the boy in him and scared of the man in him, and I’m pretty sure I’d take a bullet for both of them even though I don’t even know their last name.

But, honestly, I’d probably take a bullet for anybody right about now. This waiting around to die thing is killing me.

The glass in the front door has been smashed out, and Wes doesn’t seem too happy about it. He pauses against the wall next to the door with his gun drawn and jerks his head, indicating that I’m supposed to join him next to the entrance instead of standing right in front of it like a dumbass.