Praying for Rain (Praying for Rain Trilogy, #1)(37)

“Wes?” I sit up and take in the scene before me.

Carter’s bedroom in the light of day is even more depressing than it was last night. His open closet is full of athletic equipment and basketball trophies and a tangle of wire coat hangers. His empty dresser drawers are pulled open at random lengths like a sideways city skyline. And the man I slept with on Carter’s bare mattress is curled up beside me in the fetal position, shivering and sweating and running from his own horsemen.

My eyes roam over Wes’s naked body. His furrowed forehead is covered in tiny beads of moisture, his strong body is shivering despite the heat waves radiating off of it, and his bullet wound is on full display in all its gory, oozy glory.

Shit!

I was supposed to keep it clean and bandaged, but just like everything else, I forgot.

Yesterday just disappeared so quickly, I try to explain to myself. Everything was crazy with the flat tire and the storm and being in this house and …

I feel my cheeks heat and the corners of my mouth curl upward as I remember what else we did yesterday. The way Wes kissed me like I was his last meal. The way he held me and called it perfect. The way he poured himself into me, filling the emptiness that I’d once thought was bottomless. Wes showed me depths I hadn’t known he possessed last night, and I drowned in them, happily.

Wesson.

My smile widens at the thought of his name. I don’t want to feel happy about what I did. What we did. I want to feel guilty and terrible and disgusting. I just cheated on the only boy I’d ever loved … or thought I loved … in his own bed, for God’s sake, but … in the words of Wesson Patrick Parker …

Fuck ’em.

Carter left me here to die.

Wes is the only thing that makes me not want to.

I slide off the bed and sit cross-legged on the floor next to my backpack. I quietly dig past the food and water until I find the first aid kit I packed. There’s plenty of ointment and bandages in there, but Wes needs antibiotics and probably some painkillers. That gory mess looks like it probably hurts a hell of a lot worse than he’s been letting on.

I pull the orange prescription bottle out of the front pocket of my backpack where I stashed it while I was changing out of my wet clothes. Holding it up to the light, I’m surprised to see how many pills I have left. Thinking back, I realize that I haven’t taken a single one since yesterday afternoon. I haven’t needed to. Wes’s kisses are my new memory-erasing drug, and if I’m really lucky—which I’m not—those won’t run out.

I set the hydrocodone next to the first aid kit and tiptoe down the hall. I don’t know why I feel the need to be so quiet. Maybe it’s because I don’t want to wake Wes up. Or maybe it’s because I’ve spent the last few years trying to avoid being caught naked in Carter Renshaw’s house.

I glance at the fireplace on my way through the kitchen, suddenly remembering that we left it burning before bed. But the blaze is long gone, the glass doors shut tight. I smile and shake my head. Wes the survivalist. I should have known he would come back out here in the middle of the night to take care of it.

Evidently, Boy Scout duty wasn’t the only thing Wes was up to last night. I head toward the kitchen on my way to the laundry room but do a double take when I realize that our clothes have been laid out all over the couches and tables and floor in front of the fireplace. I remember the power outage and giggle, picturing a very naked Wes pulling our wet clothes out of the washing machine and cursing up a storm when he figured out that the dryer wouldn’t work.

I pull on the plaid flannel shirt and ripped black jeans I packed for today, pleasantly surprised at how dry they are, and fold the rest of our clothes into a nice little stack—with Wes’s Hawaiian shirt on top, of course.

Hugging the stiff, wrinkled cotton to my chest, I scurry through the house, opening the blinds for light and checking the bathrooms for leftover antibiotics, which I find in practically every drawer and medicine cabinet I check.

“If April 23 doesn’t kill us all, antibiotic resistance will. Now, take those.”

I chuckle as my mom’s smart-ass comment from months ago surfaces in the recesses of my mind. I was recovering from a sinus infection, and she made sure I took every last damn antibiotic I’d been prescribed. She even watched me swallow them like a prison nurse.

Sudden awareness slaps the amused smirk right off my face.

A memory. Shit.

Pushing it away, I toss a fourth unfinished prescription bottle onto my stack of clothes and step into the master bathtub to open the blinds. The sliver of sky I see above the pines is still angry and gray, but it’s stopped raining. I focus on that tiny miracle. On the glimmer of hope that we might find the shelter today.

We have to find it today.

All we have left is today.

When I turn to go check on Wes, a scream bursts out of me. Pill bottles tumble into the bathtub, rattling like handfuls of gravel against the porcelain.

“Fuck,” I gasp, clutching the folded bundle to my chest. “You scared the shit outta me!”

The tall, muscular, tattooed man blocking my exit leans his uninjured shoulder against the doorframe. “You scared me first.”

He’s completely unashamed of his nudity, but I’m too concerned about his pale, clammy face and bluish, heavy eyelids to appreciate the view.

“One of the horsemen took you from me. Pulled you right out of my arms, and …” His voice trails off and he shakes his head, ridding himself of whatever torturous fate I just suffered in his mind. “When I woke up, you were gone.”