Praying for Rain (Praying for Rain Trilogy, #1)(35)

Hope.





April 22



Rain


“That one looks like a cupcake.” I smile, squinting up into the afternoon sky.

Wes and I are lying on a red-and-white-plaid blanket in the middle of Old Man Crocker’s overgrown field, watching a parade of clouds float by. He pulls me into his side and kisses the top of my head. I feel it sizzle all the way down to my toes, like a bolt of lightning.

“You’re adorable … because that’s clearly the dog shit emoji.”

“Oh my God.” I giggle. “You’re right!”

“I know.” Wes shrugs, my head on his shoulder rising and falling along with the movement. “I’m always right.”

“What do you think that one is?” I ask, pointing to a human-shaped blob traveling by.

Wes picks a blade of grass and begins twirling it between his fingers. “The one that looks like a guy holding an ax over a teddy bear? Must be Tom Hanks. Fuckin’ asshole.”

I snort and cover my mouth with my hand.

“You know you sound like a pig when you do that?” Wes teases.

“You know you look like a pig when you eat?” I tease back.

“Guess we’re made for each other.” Wes lifts my left hand from his chest and slides the blade of grass he was playing with, looped and knotted to look like a ring, onto my fourth finger.

My breath catches as I wiggle my finger in the air, half-expecting it to glint in the sun like a diamond.

I prop myself up on my elbow and smile down at his beautiful face, trying to figure out how somebody who looks like he belongs on a poster in a teenage girl’s bedroom could possibly think he was made for me.

Wes props himself up, too, mirroring me, and places a sweet kiss on my grinning mouth. “I can’t wait until all of this shit is over, and it’s just you and me.”

He kisses me again, slower and deeper, sending a jolt of electricity straight between my legs that time. I don’t know if I pull him on top of me or if he guides me down, but somehow, I end up on my back again, this time with Wes hovering over me. His hair falls like a curtain over the side of his face, shielding us from the sun.

“I can’t wait either,” I reply with swollen lips and flushed cheeks. “When it’s all over, we should go find a mansion … up on a hill … and paint terrible portraits of each other all over the walls.”

Wes drops his lips to my neck, just below my ear, and whispers, “What else should we do?”

He kisses me there. Then, a little lower. Then, a little lower. The pillowy softness of his lips combined with the abrasive drag of his stubble causes my toes to curl into the blanket.

“Uh …” I try to think, but it’s difficult with Wes’s tongue sliding along my collarbone. “We should find a convertible … and clear the highway … and drive it as fast as we can.”

Wes makes his way over to my shoulder, sliding the spaghetti strap of my sundress down along his path. “What else?” he murmurs against my heated flesh.

Wes’s fingertips graze my skin as he slides the straps of my dress down to my elbows. The thin yellow fabric rolls off my chest, and Wes follows it with a trail of kisses.

“I …” I don’t even know what I’m saying anymore. My thoughts are scrambled, and my attention is focused completely on the scratchy-soft feel of this beautiful man. I reach up to stroke his silky hair and say the first thing that comes to mind, “I want you to learn how to fly a plane”—I gasp as his curious tongue swirls around my exposed nipple—“and take me somewhere I’ve never been.”

“Like where?” he asks, continuing his descent, taking my dress and inhibitions with him as he kisses his way down my stomach.

“Somewhere with … windmills … and flower gardens … and-and little thatched-roof cottages.” I arch my back involuntarily as I feel the tip of Wes’s finger trace the seam of my body over my lace panties.

This is heaven, I think, feeling the sun’s warmth on my skin and Wes’s tender touch all the way down to my soul. That’s the only explanation. I died, and this is my reward for letting my mom drag me to church all those years.

“What do you want to do when it’s just the two of us?” I ask, glancing down the length of my body.

Wes lifts his mossy-green eyes, narrowed in wicked playfulness and hooded by bold, dark eyebrows. “This,” he says before disappearing under my skirt.

“Rainboooow!” A voice as familiar as the name it’s calling floats past us on the wind.

Mom?

I sit up and peek over the top of the tall grass. My mother is standing on our front porch across the street with her hands cupped around her mouth.

“Rainboooow! It’s time to come hoooome!”

“Mom!” I struggle to pull my dress up, eager to run to her.

I’ve missed her so much. But, as I go to stand, the ground begins to rumble. I grab Wes for stability as the knee-high grass shoots up all around us. In seconds, it grows as tall as Wes, caging us in. A ripping sound pulls my attention to our blanket, which is splitting down the middle as more blades of grass burst out of the earth, separating us like the bars of a jail cell.

“No!” I scream, grabbing Wes with both hands. I pull him to my side of the blanket just before the last grassy rod explodes from the ground.