Praying for Rain (Praying for Rain Trilogy, #1)(52)

“Better?” he asks, his voice barely above a whisper.

I nod, surprised to find that I actually mean it. My parents might be gone, and tomorrow might not exist, but here, in this bathtub, with the one person who came back for me, I do feel a little bit better.

“You wanna tell me what happened?”

With my cheek on his chest and my eyes lost in the flickering candlelight, I nod again. I want to get it out of me. I want to finally be free.

“I … I couldn’t sleep that night, so I snuck outside to smoke one of my dad’s cigarettes. I had a few stashed in my dresser, and I thought it might help calm my nerves. He’d gotten so paranoid about the rioters and the dog attacks that I knew he’d flip out if he saw me going outside that late, so I was super quiet. I even smoked out in the tree house because I was afraid he’d see me on the porch.”

I take a deep breath and focus on the rhythm of Wes’s heartbeat beneath my cheek. “Just as I was finishing my cigarette, I heard a gunshot. It was so loud; it sounded like it came from inside the house, but I thought that was crazy. Then, I heard another one.”

“Your room,” Wes says, stroking my hair. “I saw the hole blasted in your bed when I carried you in here last night.”

I nod, staring at nothing. “He thought I was asleep under the covers, like her.”

I lift a shaking hand to my mouth and then still when I realize I’m not holding a cigarette. I can almost feel the grass slashing at my bare legs as I flew across the backyard and around to the front of the house, grabbing the handle on the front door as the third blast went off.

“I saw it happen.” I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to stop the flow of fresh tears. “I saw my dad—”

Wes wraps his arms around me tighter and begins rocking me from side to side again.

“And, when I called my mom’s name, she didn’t answer …” I catch my sobs in my flannel-covered hand, remembering the way she looked before I pulled the quilt over her head. I kissed her goodnight over the covers and told myself that she was just sleeping. That they were both just sleeping.

Then, I shut the door, polished off a bottle of cough syrup, and I went to sleep, too.

“I’m so sorry,” Wes whispers into my hair.

There are those words again. “I’m so sorry.”

But, for some reason, when Wes says them this time, they don’t hurt.

They help.





Wes


I lead Rain down the stairs and out the back door with my hand over her eyes and my stomach in knots.

“Can I look now?”

“Not yet,” I say, guiding her off the patio and into the knee-high grass.

We walk about thirty feet until we’re standing in the shade of a giant oak tree on the right side of the property.

Last night, once I was sure that Rain didn’t have anything left to throw up, I didn’t know what the fuck to do with myself. I couldn’t sleep in that house. I couldn’t stand to be in there a second longer than I had to with those fucking corpses just a few rooms away. And knowing that Rain was going to have to face all that as soon as she woke up … completely sober, I knew I had to do something before I lost my shit.

I just hope it was the right thing.

With a deep breath, I uncover her eyes. “Okay. You can look now.”

Even though I spent all night and most of the day on it, the job isn’t pretty. The graves are shallow and the mounds are muddy and the crosses are made from sticks fastened together with grass, but at least I got those fuckers out of her house and into the dirt where they belong.

I chew on my bottom lip as I watch Rain open her eyes. After everything she’s been through, the last thing I want to do is hurt her more, but when she covers her mouth and nose with her hands and looks up at me, it’s not tears of pain I see in her big blue eyes. It’s tears of gratitude.

I pull her against me, feeling every bit the same way. She’s here, and she’s okay. Even though I might only have her for a few more hours, or even minutes, every single second feels like an answered prayer.

The first one in my entire fucking life.

Prayer. That reminds me …

“Do you want to say anything?” I ask, kissing the top of her head.

She nods against my chest and lifts her glassy eyes to mine. “Thank you,” she says, and the sincerity in her voice cuts me to the fucking core. “I don’t … I can’t believe you did all this. For me.”

I smile and brush a tear away from her cheek with my thumb. “I’m beginning to realize there’s not much I wouldn’t do for you.”

That makes Rain smile, too. “Like what?”

“What wouldn’t I do for you?”

She nods, a glimmer of mischief returning to her sad red eyes.

“I don’t know … piss on Tom Hanks if he were on fire?”

Rain snorts out a snotty laugh and covers her nose with the crook of her elbow as she giggles. It’s the most adorable thing I’ve ever seen. As I watch her, I try to commit every sound, every freckle, every eyelash to memory. I know it’s stupid. I know I can’t take these memories with me any more than I can take her, but I hang on anyway.

If the horsemen want her, they’re going to have to pry her out of my cold, dead hands.

When her laughter dies down, I gesture toward the graves with a flick of my chin. “I meant, is there anything you want to say to them?”