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.

“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 feel physically ill

Because I know I’m spiraling. I feel it in my core like an impending midnight storm, ready to consume the night sky in crashes of thunder and bolts of lightning. I feel it all coming to a head and I know soon enough there won’t be anything I can do to stop it. I’m drowning beneath the sorrow and the grief and the self-loathing, all searching for a way to devour every atom of my being. And all the oxygen is being sucked out of the atmosphere. Because I’m trapped.

This is literally what it feels like. Fuck.

So, I know this is it. What rock bottom looks, feels, sounds, smells, and tastes like. It looks like all your dreams being doused in gasoline and set ablaze by those you love the most. It feels like the most intense heat, burning hotter than the sun with anger and disdain radiating in licks and flashes of fire. It sounds like the cracking and breaking of your very soul. The foundation of who you are being unable to defy gravity any longer when the embers become too heavy before it collapses around you in shambles. It smells like smoke to the point you can’t fucking breathe anymore without suffocating.

How can emptiness feel so heavy?

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