Praying for Rain Read online

With someone else.

  Rain’s not making love to me. She’s making love to him.

  The pressure I was feeling suddenly disappears. I can breathe again. I’m not in danger. There is no threat. This is simply a transaction—sex in exchange for a little boyfriend role-play.

  Well, that’s too fucking bad. If Rain wants to fuck somebody, she’s gonna have to settle for me.

  Grabbing her ass with both hands, I rear up onto my knees and chuckle as she squeals and wraps her arms and legs around me. I stand and drop her onto the mattress, crawling over her like a predator as the MP3 player tumbles to the floor. The singer is whining about some girl who left a tear in his heart. I feel bad for the guy. He really shouldn’t let himself get that attached.

  I form a plank over Rain’s body, careful not to touch her as I line myself up with her tight little slit. That’s all she’s getting from me. I do the using in this relationship, and tonight, I’m using her for sex. Boyfriend role-play not included.

  The moment I plunge inside of her, Rain wraps her thick thighs around my waist and laces her fingers together behind my neck. “Come here,” she whispers, tugging me toward her, and the huskiness in her voice has me dropping to my elbows to kiss her.

  Rain’s lips are brutally soft. Her touch, too. I thrust into her harder, hoping she’ll take the hint and drop the act, but she’s determined to make this fantasy happen. I’m just about to flip her over and take her from behind when a single syllable stops me in my tracks.

  “Wes …”

  Wes.

  Not What’s-his-face.

  Wes.

  “Yeah?” I rasp, that fucking noose tightening around my throat again.

  Rain’s hands slide to my cheeks. “What’s your name? Your whole name?”

  I wish I could see her face. I wish I could see the sincere curiosity I hear in her voice shining out of those big blue doll eyes.

  “Wesson Patrick Parker.” I swallow, but the noose only tightens.

  “I thought you might be a Wesson.” Rain presses her little feet against my ass and tilts her hips up, drawing me back into her molten heaven.

  “What’s yours?” I manage to choke out, burying myself in it to the hilt.

  “Rainbow Song Williams.”

  I retreat slowly, missing her with every inch, and thrust back in again. “What does it mean?”

  Rain moans softly and wraps her arms around my back. I slide my hands under her shoulders and lie flush on top of her, wondering if she can feel my heart pounding the way I can.

  “It’s the title of a song by that band, America, from the ‘70s.” Rain nuzzles her face into the side of my neck and plants a kiss there. “It’s kinda sad actually. It’s about a girl who fell asleep on a rainbow while she was hiding from blowing leaves and broken dreams.”

  I brace myself on my forearms and look into the reflective pools of her eyes. “It sounds like you.” I watch them crinkle at the corners as she smiles, and before she can say another word, I surprise myself by sitting back on my haunches and pulling her up with me. Rain sinks down onto my dick again, and we’re just like we were before—her ass in my hands, her parted lips on mine, and her fingers running through my hair.

  Fucking perfect.

  Her movements are less tender now. More desperate. Mine feel less awkward, more confident. Rain nips at my tongue with her teeth as she slides up and down on my cock. I slap her ass and grin as she tugs on my hair in response. This isn’t what she did in the dark with What’s-his-face. This is what she does in the dark with me. And, when she moans my name again, I fucking know it.

  “Wes,” she chants, her voice a breathy plea as her ass slaps against my thighs, and her tight little slit squeezes me even harder. “Wes …”

  The feeling of Rain coming all over my cock with my name on her lips and my head in her hands is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before. It shatters me. A tear rips through my heart as I clutch her panting, writhing body—just like that Twenty One Pilots motherfucker said it would—because I want this. I want her. But how can I keep her when everybody fucking leaves?

  My hips jerk and my balls tighten as I thrust up into her. I know I should pull out. I always pull out. But, as my dick swells and stiffens inside her pulsating body, I just … can’t. Not this time. Nothing has ever felt more right in my whole fucked up life, so I decide to let myself have it. I’m a selfish bastard, and I want this.

  I want Rain.

  With a final surge, I coil my arms tighter around her waist and pour everything I fucking have into a girl I just met yesterday. As my cock jerks and spurts hot cum inside her still-trembling body, the pressure in my chest and the noose around my throat fade away, replaced with something warm and fuzzy and completely foreign.

  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.

  Panting, I glance at his face, expecting to see anger or confusion or that look of focused determination he pulls on when he’s trying to hide his feelings from me, but there’s just … nothing.

  His features are as expressionless as a wax figure, and his eyes look right through me when he opens his mouth and says, “Time to go home, Rain.”

  He slowly raises one arm and points to something behind me. I turn and see that a trail has opened up in the side of our grassy, six-foot-high cell.

  I exhale in relief and tug on Wes’s still-outstretched hand, but his feet are rooted to the ground.

  “Come on!” I shout, tugging again. “I’m not leaving you here!”

  “Everybody leaves.” His voice is monotone as he recites his personal mantra.

  I feel like I’m in Oz, and he’s the Scarecrow—familiar but confused as he mindlessly points me away from him.

  “Rainboooow!” My mom’s voice sounds farther away.

  We have to go.

  “Come on!” I tug on Wes’s outstretched hand again, this time yanking hard enough to get his feet moving.

  We enter the narrow path, and I have to pull him every single step of the way.

  Until it forks.

  Shit!

  I glance down both trails, noticing that each one appears to end in another fork.

  “Give me a boost,” I say, walking behind Wes and putting my hands on his shoulders.

  He mechanically does as I asked, giving me his hand as a foothold so that I can climb up onto his back. When I peer over the top of the grass, my stomach sinks. Old Man Crocker’s field has morphed into a giant, intricate maze. I can still see my mother standing on the porch across the street, but it feels like she’s twice as far away now, shielding her eyes from the sun as she looks for me in the field.

  “Mom!” I call out, waving my hands above my head. “Mom! Over here!”

  Something catches her attention, but it’s not me. The earth rumbles again as I turn to follow the line of her gaze. I watch in amazement as a green stem grows up out of the middle of the field, as thick and tall as a telephone pole. Once it’s reached its full height, it blooms.

  I expect to be dazzled by velvety flower petals or palm leaves the size of water slides, but instead, the stem opens and releases a single black-and-red banner that unfurls all the way to the ground.

  My heart plummets along with it, landing in the acid bath of my stomach without so much as a splash.

  Three more stems spring from the quaking earth. Three more ominous banners bloom, each depicting a different hooded figure on horseback.

  And a date, written at the top in bold.

  “Wes, what day is it?” I cry, already knowing the answer but praying for a miracle.

  His body is as rigid as his voice is emotionless when he replies, “Why, it’s April 23, of course.”

  “Go!” I shout, gripping his shoulder and pointing toward my house. “Run, Wes! Run!” I watch as my mother recoils from the evil banners, walking backward into the house and shaking her head in disbelief. “She’s gonna leave, Wes!”

  “Everybody leaves,” he recites again, his feet rooted to the spot.

  “Shut! Up!” I scream, hitting him as hard as I can. My blow lands on the side of his head. It feels like I punched a pillow, but when I look down, Wes’s head is lying on his shoulder, and straw is sticking out of a huge tear in the side of his neck.

  “Oh, Wes,” I sob, trying to stuff the straw back in. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” I lift his head back into place and hold it steady with my hands. I realize that his once-shiny brown hair has turned to brittle hay, his skin beige burlap.

  The ground rumbles again.

  I’m afraid to look, but my head swivels around anyway. There, at the edge of the field, stand four black horses—eight feet tall at the shoulder, smoke billowing from their flared nostrils—and their faceless, cloaked riders. They don’t appear to be pursuing us though, and for a moment, I allow myself to hope that perhaps the field is somehow off-limits to them. I exhale a sigh of relief, but it leaves my throat as a scream when the horseman on the far right lowers his flaming torch to the top of the grass.

  “Run!” The word tears out of me as I urge Wes to move, nudging and pushing and kicking his straw-filled body, but he just stands there like the empty scarecrow he is, staring at a wall of grass.

  I climb off of him and tug on his lifeless arm. Smoke and flames climb toward the sky behind him as the sound of my mother’s motorcycle roars behind me.

  “She’s leaving! You’re gonna burn! Please, Wes! Please come with me!”

  Tears blur my vision and burn my cheeks as I stare into the dead button eyes of a soulless man.

  “Everybody leaves,” he repeats mindlessly. His straw-filled brain unable to listen to reason.

  Fire consumes the wall of grass behind him, blacking out the sky with smoke as I tug his arm completely off. Straw flies from the severed sleeve as I toss it into the blaze and wrap myself around his burning, hot waist.

  “You’re wrong,” I sob into his tattered plaid shirt just before it goes up in flames. “I’m not leaving you.”

  The heat sears the flesh from my arms, but I don’t let go.

  Not until I wake up.

  I open my eyes slowly, waiting for the intense heat to disappear, but it doesn’t. The body that I’m wrapped around is just as hot as the one from my nightmare.

  “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.