Dying for Rain (The Rain Trilog - BB Easton Page 0,68

ever listened to me until Michelle handed me a tube of red lipstick and a microphone. She showed me that I don’t have to roll over and let bad things happen to me anymore. To the people I love. I can fight for them with nothing more than a camera and a press pass.

Only now, I do it under my new name, Rain Parker, instead of Stella McCartney.

My mama’s wedding rings gleam on my left hand as I walk my short nails up baby Lily’s chubby thigh. I blow a raspberry on her squishy cheek and feel my insides turn to mush when she lets out a tiny, breathy giggle.

I had no idea that Wes had saved Mama’s rings for me until he surprised me on Mother’s Day, a few days after the assassination. He took me to the Fulton County Courthouse, and in the exact same spot where Governor Steele had sentenced him to death, Officer Marcel Elliott pronounced us husband and wife. When I asked Wes why he wanted to do it there, he said it felt like “a nice fuck you.”

And it did. It felt perfect actually. Lamar walked me down the aisle. Officer Hoyt and Officer MacArthur were our maid of honor and best man. Michelle and Flip were in the audience, taking pictures and videos, and Wes even invited his mama, who cried like a baby the whole time.

After Lily was born, Wes had a tattoo artist transform the wilted pink flower on his ribs into a vibrant orange tiger lily. He said he didn’t want to be marked by what had happened to his sister anymore. He wanted to move on. And a big part of that was letting his mama back into his life. Rhonda has stepped up and become the mother he and I both needed. She’s clean and sober, she has a job and an apartment, and she comes over for dinner every Sunday. We don’t let her babysit though. Wes’s trust only goes so far. Besides, we have Lamar for that. At least, until he goes off to college.

I turn my head and smile as Wes saunters over. He’s wearing his blue Hawaiian shirt—my favorite—and carrying a tray full of the world’s most mediocre barbeque. We don’t normally eat at the Renshaws’ place—things are still pretty tense between us—but today is special. This is the anniversary of the day we met, right here in this very restaurant—or as Wes likes to call it, the day he kidnapped me at gunpoint from Burger Palace. But he knows he saved me that day. I was as lost as a person could possibly be. My house was a crime scene. My parents, the victims. My friends were gone. My boyfriend had abandoned me. I was being jumped by half the town while high as a kite on my daddy’s pain pills. And the world was supposed to end in a matter of days. All I wanted to do was stay numb and die.

All Wes wanted was someone to help him survive.

But somehow, together, we figured out how to live.

Wes’s full lips curl into a smug grin the second he catches me staring, and my heart does a little backflip. I can’t believe I get to keep him. I can’t believe we actually got our happily ever af—

Without warning, the lights go out, and the doors on either side of the restaurant burst wide open. Police sirens blare, and blue lights splash across the darkened walls as hundreds of shoving, screaming bodies run full speed into the restaurant. The customers all around us stand up on their chairs and benches, and they’re all wearing riot cop gear—gas masks and shields and billy clubs and guns. When I look back at Wes, he’s gone, swallowed by the chanting, fist-thrusting mob.

Chairs and punches are thrown at cops. Tear gas and bullets fly into the crowd. Noxious smoke fills the room as Lily begins to cough and cry behind me.

I pull her blanket over her face and stand up on my seat, hugging the car seat to my chest as I try to find Wes in the crowd. I scream his name, but I can’t see or hear anything through my own stinging, watering eyes and the painful wails of my baby girl. I get closer to the edge of the crowd, searching through the blinding, burning smoke when someone reaches out and grabs me, pulling me in.

The crush of fighting, clawing, panicking bodies is so forceful