After Rain Falls (River of Rain, #2)

by C.E. Ricci

Every star in the night sky would have to burn out before it isn’t River.

He should’ve tattooed his name across every available inch of my skin in exchange for my sanity because in the end, I’ll never be anything but his. Until my dying day, I’ll belong to River Lennox. And for some godforsaken reason, the idea alone of branding myself with his name has the hair on my arms standing on end. As idiotic as it might be, I want it on me. Forever claiming me.

“There was a point in my life when I thought your cum was the sweetest thing I’d ever tasted.” I grind the words out, desperate to gain control over the war inside me. Giving in to my desire to kiss and hold and fucking love him is the last thing I can do right now. “But I was wrong, baby. I think I prefer the taste of your tears.”

He is the object of my obsession, the gravity for my orbit, every star in the night sky, reminding me that I’m not alone. He’s the center of my goddamn universe. And I just broke him. So no, the person I hate…it’s not Rain. Not even close. The real person I hate is myself.

I love with every goddamn inch of who I am. And I know I deserve nothing less in return. Yet my life would be so much simpler if I could numb the pesky emotion altogether.

How can emptiness feel so heavy?

The number one rule of self-preservation: detach from what destroys you.

“I can’t keep spinning in circles on this merry-go-round with you. Sooner or later I have to get off or it’s gonna tear me apart from the inside out.”

Without you, it’s impossible to breathe.

“People only obsess over each other when things between them are left unfinished.”

Throw it away, a voice inside me, the smartest part of myself, chants. Begging me to free myself from his clutches. But I remember the look on his face when he gave me this. The raw vulnerability and honest to God fear in his eyes. It was the beginning of him opening up to me and letting me see the side of him that he, for whatever reason, keeps hidden from everyone else. Which means I can’t throw it away. I can’t give up the small piece of him that cared about me enough to do something like this. Fuck, I refuse to believe he can separate and detach so easily to the point where this wasn’t a monumental moment for both of us.

“I just can’t,” I whisper brokenly, bringing my eyes back to his. “I can’t fuck you. Or let you fuck me. Or let this go any further.” A deep breath escapes me before I continue. “I can’t be with you when I’ll be thinking about him the entire time instead.”

Except he’s not the mountain in this scenario. They’re the walls he hides behind. Rain himself, he’s the oxygen. Not a want or a desire, but a need. And it feels like the higher I climb, the closer I get to the top of the mountainous walls around his heart and mind, the less of him I have once I reach the top. It’s like in an effort to get more of him—from him—the more I lose in the process.” And lose yourself too.

Every thought of you burns my skin. And knowing my sleep is the only place I’m able to kiss you, touch you, and feel the fire you consume me in…makes me crave the nightmares.

from the very beginning, I fucking knew. From the moment we met, something inside me said you’ll lose your heart to this one. After him, you’ll never be the same. And it was right.”

But the thing about pain is…you have to let yourself feel it. Otherwise you would never know the wound is healing.

But Rain, while he’s rough around the edges and so guarded and broken...he softened those edges eventually. For me. And he lets himself feel.