Page 54 of Saving the Rain
Raine’s cold laugh cuts me short. “You did. So, just keep on living a lie. Go throw yourself at some hot little cunt and pretend and continue to hide who you are. Because that’s what you do best, right?”
Wetness seeps through the shoulders of my hoodie. My hair starts to cling to my forehead the longer I’m out here pleading with him for god knows what reason.
“I don’t want to hide.” My fists clench, and I’m outright staring at the water droplets clinging to his close-cut beard and stubbled mouth.
“Yeah... yeah, you do.” His tone is just about as icy as the wind that rips through this mountain for half of the year. God, why did I ever think he’d be willing totalkor anything approaching some sort of chance to get our heads around last night?
“You’re such a dick.”
That makes his upper lip twitch. A sneer or a snarl, I don’t know, but it’s a derisive look he coats me with. One long assessment dragging down my body from head to toe. “Have you told all your little friends about your knee?”
My face falls.
“No? Didn’t think so.” Lifting his cap, he rakes through his now damp hair before shoving the hat back down.
“I’m sorry, ok?” I blurt out. “I just... I don’t know how to do any of this. I don’t know how to get anything right.”
“Well, excuse me for not being available to gather up the pieces of your life for you.” He turns, one hand already on the door handle, and I’m moving without thinking a goddamn thing through.
An unfamiliar, illogical urgency propels me to stop him. All I can think is that I don’t want him to leave, and I have no goddamn idea why it seizes me with an impulse I can’t deny or turn away from.
“Raine . . . just, please, wait . . .”
Reaching out to catch his arm, I try to prevent him from opening the truck door. My fingers catch the elbow of his jacket, and that’s when my world flips. One moment, I’m standing there, hand extendedout to grab hold of him; the next, I’m being manhandled with a punishing grip and shoved away.
My spine collides with the wooden railing running along the perimeter of the yard. Except I’m not being shunted aside or thrown off balance. With a yelp, I’m pinned in place by a vise grip powerful enough to leave the air rushing from my lungs.
When I blink through rain-soaked lashes, blazing, dark eyes hover only inches from my own.
Chapter 22
“Stop touching me.” Through a clenched jaw, my words seethe out. “Stop. Goddamn. Touching. Me.”
My stepbrother just keeps on being an unmitigated headache in my life, and I was all of two minutes from disappearing down the mountain. Ready to leave Devil’s Peak and be rid of this place.
I should have gone earlier today. This morning would have been the time to leave if I’d been in my right mind.
I shouldn’t have stayed as long as I did.
Now... this is exactly what I didn’t want to happen.
One of my fists is locked tight on the front of Kayce’s hoodie, the fabric partially sodden from how hard it’s raining. The other has him gripped by the collar, the fold of worn cotton on the side of his hood. And as I glare down at him, I realize we’re in almost exactly the same position as last night.
This time, however, there’s something intensely different hanging between us. Last night felt as if I still had a tenuous thread of my control left. I gave him what he was searching for; I took charge in the way he needed me to.
In the here and now, with Kayce shoved against a wooden railing, his cheeks flushed, I’m entirely out of bounds.
“You should have left me the fuck alone today.” I bite out, and his stupidly blue eyes grow wider.
His throat dips, and words drop as a whisper. A confession flying over shivering, wet lips into the mountain air. “I can’t.”
My grip tightens on the fabric, and I let out a groan of frustration. “Fuck this. Fuck you, Kayce.” I’ve been crawling out of my skin since last night. The way he touched me, so hesitant and uncertain, felt like nothing I’ve ever experienced before, and I damn well hate that it’shim.Because none of this makes sense. This is monumentally fucked up, and surely I should be pushing him away. I’m supposed to be halfway back to Crimson Ridge, and yet I can’t seem to unclench my fingers from his fucking hoodie.
His little noise, the flutter of a gasp that comes out when he feels our bodies press harder together... when my weight pins him against the railing at his back, it does something to my brain. I’m dumped upside down into a place where I can’t seem to focus on anything but his pouty lips and desperate looks.
“I’m sorry...” He gives methatexpression. The wide-eyed stare of someone who has absolutely no idea how to navigate any of this and goddamn begs me with those bright blues of his.
“You should be staying the fuck away from me.” A dark noise vibrates from somewhere deep in my chest, and I lose it. I finally lose any sense of control.