Downpour (The Griffith Brothers, #2)

by Maggie C. Gates

I didn’t need him to fucking check on her. I would fucking check on her.

I reached up, cupped her chin, and wiped away the tear with my thumb as a low growl slipped from my chest. “Who the fuck did this to you?”

On top of the nightstand was a plastic bag of blue and pink Sweet Tarts.

I hated people watching me. It was like waiting for rain. The downpour would let loose sooner or later. Whatever was anticipated was always a disappointment.

“If the clouds don’t part where you are, keep going until you find your sunshine.”

We walked through the brief moments granted between midnights, holding fast to the glimmers of elation and joy to ground us when anguish crashed in downpour. We were suspended in the tension between birth and death, chasing purpose and fulfillment. And in this moment—in this place—I felt mine begin to bloom.

“Darkness and light exist together in the same moments. We find it in sunrises and sunsets. It’s the clash that people trek across mountains to experience.”

Ray pressed his lips to my temple. “How was that?” Our chests stuck together, fused by sweat, adrenaline, and comfort. “Like I’d wait lifetimes for you, if only to find you once.”

I was so stupid. I shouldn’t have gotten involved with him in the first place. What did I think was going to happen? We were going to just fall into life together and live happily ever after? Things like that didn’t happen to me.

“Downpours happen. You either drown in it or grow after it.”

If I had to choose between you and the sun, it’s you. In every lifetime, you are the most brilliant thing in existence. Your love is blinding and sustaining. I crave your warmth. The incandescence of you is what gives me light when my nature is to seek darkness. In every form that you exist, you are my sun. And I’ll be your moon. I’ll be the light that drives the nightmares away. The glow that soothes. And the calm you seek refuge in. Because you can burn eternally without me. But not me without you.

“You have all of it. Every single thing. You want me? You have me. You want my family? They adore you. You want to be part of this ranch? You’re the best thing about it. You want my last name? It’s yours. I didn’t want to come back here, but now I can’t imagine leaving. So, before those doubts consume you, let me fill your mind with something else. I love you. I fucking love you, Brooke. Nothing—absolutely nothing—will change the fact that you belong here.”

“The moon reflects the sun and stores its energy until the moment comes when the sun cannot be seen. During the moments when you can’t find your light, I’ll be here to give it back to you.”

“I think I would have loved you in any form, at any point in life. It would always have been you. Your soul and mine. Then, now, and whatever is still to come.”

The rodeo was my first love, but she was my forever.