Praying for Rain (Praying for Rain Trilogy, #1)(42)

A snort bursts out of Rain before I clap my hand over her mouth, choking on my own laughter. We tumble to the carpet, and I reach out, pushing the door almost completely shut with my hand, hoping it will muffle some of the sounds we’re making.

“Guess those assholes aren’t gonna get to eat your corn dogs after all,” I whisper, my lips grazing her ear.

“Shh-h-h-h-h.” Rain giggles even though she’s the one making all the damn noise. Her body shakes underneath me with suppressed laughter as I drop my lips to her shushing mouth.

I vaguely process the sounds of shouting and squealing and banging around in the kitchen, but my senses are too busy feasting on a rainbow to pay them much attention anymore.

Rain smells different today, like fruity shampoo instead of sugar cookies, but the feel of her hasn’t changed a bit. Her soft, round edges are obedient—molding to fit the shape of my cupped hands, smoothing flat against my hard planes—but her tongue is a defiant little cocktease. It coaxes me deeper just to disappear with a wet smack as her lips slide down the length of my tongue. The tiny, breathy noises she makes as her hips rise up to meet mine are the sexiest sounds I’ve ever fucking heard, and the sight of her beneath me—eyes shut, back arched, lips parted—could only be better if she were naked.

“Wes …”

That one whispered word has me ready to tear the buttons off her fucking shirt. I push up onto my forearms to do just that when her eyes pop open, wide and worried.

“Wes, do you smell smoke?”

I sit up and inhale, coughing immediately as my lungs reject the hazy gray air tumbling in from the hallway. “Fuck!”

I grab Rain by the arms and yank her to her feet, but we both start coughing as soon as we’re upright. The air is so much thicker up here. So much hotter. It burns my eyes and sears my nostrils as I fight to suck the oxygen from it.

“Get down!” I command, pulling Rain to the ground as I drop to my knees. Crawling over to the door, I look down the hallway and listen for signs of life, but all I hear are the sounds of destruction coming from the kitchen.

Rain is right behind me as we make our way toward the living room, which looks like it’s been inhabited by a swirling black thundercloud. A crash so loud it sounds like a stack of dishes falling off the back of a pickup truck cuts through the thickened air. I ignore it as we emerge from the hallway, my sights set on the closest exit. I turn left and head toward the front door, careful to avoid the broken glass those little shits left everywhere on their way in. When I reach the handle and throw that fucker open, I gulp two lungfuls of humid air before turning to help Rain navigate the glass.

“Rain?”

Another crash, even louder than the first, rattles the walls as I peer into the blackness, looking for my girl.

“Rain!”

“I’ll be right”—cough—“back!” Rain’s voice sounds strangled as it filters through the smog.

“What the fuck are you doing?” I scream. When I don’t get a response, I barrel headfirst into the house. “Rain!”

Knowing her, she probably went to go check on those dumb fucks in the kitchen, so I charge into the living room, heading toward the source of the smoke at the back of the house. After a few feet, the air gets so thick and hot and hard to breathe that I have to drop to my elbows and army crawl the rest of the way.

“Rain!” I call one last time before making it to the entryway of the kitchen, which now resembles the fiery fucking gates of hell.

The entire back wall of cabinets is engulfed in flames. They’re burning so bright and so hot it’s as if they were varnished with bacon grease. The stove appears to be the source of the inferno—or I should say, the mangled, melting tower of Tupperware piled on top of the gas burners, which have been turned on full blast. The bottom has already burned out of the cabinets to the left and right of the stove, hence the crashing dishes we heard, and it looks like the roof is gonna be the next thing to give.

There’s no sign of Rain or the motherfuckers who set the fire, so I turn around and crawl back the way I came.

At least, I think it’s the way I came. The air is so black I can’t see my own hand in front of my face. I stop as my coughing gets the better of me, but the sound of the ceiling buckling above propels me forward. My heart races faster with every foot of ground that I cover. I should have reached the front door by now. I should have at least hit a wall. Regret coils around my throat, stealing the air from my lungs.

“Rain!” I snarl between lungfuls of poison, her name leaving an even worse taste in my mouth than the noxious fumes I’m breathing for her.

I knew from that very first day that she was going to be the death of me. I knew it, and I let it happen anyway.

“Us,” I hear her soft voice coo in my head.

The sound makes me want to puke.

This is what us gets you. It gets you fucking killed.

I hear her voice again and assume I must be hallucinating until I realize that she’s not saying us.

She’s saying, “Wes! Wes! Oh my God!”

I feel her tiny hands reach out to me in the dark, gripping my arms, touching my face. The relief I feel that she’s alive is overshadowed by the rage burning inside me hotter than a Tupperware fire.

“Just a few more feet. Watch out for the glass.”

I feel something sharp cut into my forearm as the light of day becomes a gauzy reality up ahead. Rain shuffles backward out the door as I follow, tumbling onto the porch where I alternate between coughing and dry-heaving until the world finally stops spinning. All the while, I can feel her concerned hands all over me.