Follow the River (River of Rain Book 1)

by CE Ricci

  It’s like I said before.

  Art, like love, is messy.

  We leave tomorrow.

  And it’s honestly the most sobering realization in the entire fucking world.

  I think neither of us want to leave. I know I don’t want to.

  Living here at this escape from the real world has been like our own little paradise. Once we got past the bullshit, that is. But we do have to leave, so we decide to make our final day here as just the two of us as memorable as possible.

  The day started with eating breakfast on the porch, even if it was cold as shit. We didn’t care, simply lit a fire in the pit on the deck and curled up in blankets together while devouring the best fucking breakfast burritos I’ve ever tasted. I swear, the thing I might miss most about waking up in a house with River is his breakfast skills.

  Okay, that’s not true. I’m also going to miss waking up with my cock in his mouth and the copious amounts of sex we’ve been having.

  But after that, I’m going to miss the food the most. The guy’s cooking rivals what I remember of my father’s.

  Then we spent a couple hours back in bed, to no one’s surprise.

  By that time, it was nearly lunch, so we packed some sandwiches, thermoses of hot chocolate, and blankets for a hike up to the lake overlook. The same one I painted and gave to River.

  And it was perfect. Everything I could have asked for on our last day out here.

  Now it’s after dark and we’re lying in the hammock River was desperate to set up for us, though it’s not very comfortable with two six-foot plus football players in it.

  But I don’t care. The second he said he wanted to look up at the stars, saying it was how he always liked to spend his last night in the mountains, I caved.

  I always seem to be caving when it comes to him.

  And then he said something, I swear to God, I’ll remember until the day I die.

  Staring up at the night sky, it’s the best way to remember we are so much smaller than we make ourselves out to be.

  And the second he shut off the exterior lights and I looked up, I understood. I felt it, deep in my core.

  So here we are, curled up under a pile of blankets and a sleeping bag rated for thirty below because it’s fucking freezing, in a hammock that might break any second from all the weight.

  And I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.

  Which tells me I’m not ready to leave this place. Not now, when we’ve found some peace, both within ourselves and in each other. I couldn’t tell you when it happened or why, but over the course of the past five weeks, River went from being my enemy to…my everything.

  My friend, my lover.

  The keeper of my secrets.

  My saving grace.

  And for the life of me, I don’t want this to be over between us.

  “You might be silent, but your thoughts are loud,” he tells me after a while, his fingers playing with the strings of my sweatshirt, tapping them absently against my chest. “Wanna talk about whatever’s eating you?”

  Not particularly.

  “I’m just thinking about tomorrow. Leaving,” I say, which isn’t exactly a lie.

  “Don’t think about it. Not when we still have tonight.”

  I know he’s right. And I don’t want to ruin what little time we have left here by being a fucking pessimist about it.

  We both knew our time was limited. Five weeks isn’t a lifetime. It’s finite.

  So why am I wishing five weeks is the equivalent to forever?

  “Tell me something true,” he says, pulling me from my thoughts. “Something I don’t know.”

  “I like you,” I whisper immediately, and it doesn’t feel wrong to admit that.

  Quite the opposite, in fact. It feels right.

  “I already know that,” he laughs, glancing up at me. “I mean, what’s not to like?”

  Cocky as ever, this one.

  “Nevermind, I take it back,” I deadpan, which only makes him grin more.

  “I like you too,” he whispers, brushing a kiss against my lips before snagging my hand resting on my chest. “But that wasn’t what I meant, and you know it.”

  I think on his request for a moment, rolling over the options in my mind. Because there are plenty. So much about myself that he doesn’t know.

  So much he will never find out.

  Deciding on a safe route leading to the least amount of questions, I start to speak. “Back home, I went to this super uppity prep school called Foxcroft Hall. Right outside of Philly. It was filled with rich assholes I couldn’t stand. I mean, some of the wealthiest families in the state sent their kids there. Kids of politicians, media moguls, all that.”

  River gives me a half smirk. “Is this an inadvertent way of telling me you’re loaded and are going to be a sugar daddy one day?”

  A laugh escapes me, and fuck, it feels good. I never realized before staying here with him that I didn’t laugh nearly enough. “Is this an inadvertent way of asking to be my sugar baby?” The urge to smack myself immediately overwhelms me as words tumble out before I have the chance to think about what they imply.

  River and I being together. Really together.

  A future we both know we don’t have, because this all ends tomorrow.

  “I wouldn’t say no. I’d make one helluva sugar baby.” Thankfully, River doesn’t press that any further, just snuggles closer to me and plays with our joined hands resting on my stomach.

  When I remain silent, he switches back to the original topic. “It couldn’t have been too bad. I’m sure you had friends. Your teammates maybe?”

  I smile and press a kiss to his hair. “I wasn’t one to hang out with the popular crowd, though I most definitely was considered a popular kid as a jock. But I had a couple friends,” I murmur, memories of my days in high school flooding to the front of my brain. My smile grows when I think of the two people who kept me fucking sane while at that hellhole. One of which I recently saw for the first time in years. “I actually grew up with this set of twins. Fraternal, a boy and a girl.”

  “Siena and Roman?” he asks softly.

  “Yeah,” I whisper, clearing my throat. “They’re a senator’s kids, grew up in heavy politics. Extremely wealthy family that holds a lot of power and clout. They were a year ahead of me in school, but they were my lifeline during the years we were at Foxcroft together. Si, she’s great, as you’ve seen. A real firecracker, always busting the balls of any guy who gave her shit. Including her brother and myself.” I let out a chuckle and grin at him. “I honestly don’t know how Taylor puts up with her.”

  River lets out a sigh and shrugs against me. “He loves her. And people will do really crazy shit for the person they love.”

  I nod. “That they do,” I say, my voice suddenly hoarse with emotion. “That they do, Abhainn.”

  And I’m starting to understand that now. Little by little, I’m learning what it means to let someone in and trust them with the pieces of myself I don’t particularly like.

  I wouldn’t do that for just anyone.

  Tell him about Roman, a small part of my brain whispers. Better yet. Tell him everything. And then maybe, just maybe, you can keep him.

  But deep down, I know I can’t. I can’t tell him.

  I can’t keep him.

  Because why the fuck would anyone, especially someone as put together as River, want to be with someone who can’t even slay their own demons?

  Can’t even hold a sword to them without help.

  But you can give him this.

  “And then Roman,” I start, taking a deep breath to prepare myself for what I have to say, “he was more than a best friend to me. He could have been a brother. We were inseparable from the time we met.”

  “It sounds like you had two really great friends in your corner, then. Where is Roman now?”

  “Out in Oregon somewhere. Going to school. Business, I think.”

  “You think?”

  I shr
ug, trying not to let my answer eat at me. “We don’t keep in touch anymore. I haven’t seen or spoken to him in years.”

  River rolls slightly, leaning up on his elbow to look at me. It’s dark, only the faint glow of a crescent moon lighting his features, but I see the confusion on his face. “How does someone go from being like your brother to almost nonexistent in your life?”

  I let out a huff of air, creating a small cloud in the frigid air between us. His eyes, imploring as ever, ask for only honesty in what I’m willing to share, and it’s astounding how he knows when to push me for more and when he needs to let me come to him.

  Tell. Him.

  Rubbing my hand over my face, I groan.

  “Roman…is bisexual.”

  At those three words, River’s brows lift in the darkness, but he doesn’t say anything, just waits for me to continue. “I knew the minute he figured it out for himself. We told each other everything, as best friends do, and it didn’t change anything for us. It was something we never really talked about past the one time.

  “But then the night before he left for college, we got drunk as hell while we were taking a late night dip in his pool. More drunk than normal because neither of us were ready for him to move across the fucking country to Oregon, but it wasn’t to the point where we were gonna do anything to stupid or reckless like drown, ya know? Or at least…I wasn’t.”

  Memories of that night flood me. Roman’s dark hazel eyes staring into my soul from across the pool, drunken and full of lust I thought I was just imagining. Because we were best friends, brothers, but never anything more than that.

  “Everything was chill, we were doing our thing like we always did, but then Roman…he swam over to me from across the pool and he just…kissed me. He grabbed the back of my neck and he kissed me and I…and I kissed him back…and I didn’t hate it. I didn’t hate that he was a guy, or he was my best friend or that it was wrong. I…” I sigh, searching River’s eyes. “I kissed him back.”

  River nods his head, his eyes dropping to my mouth before coming back to meet my gaze. “So, if you didn’t hate it, what stopped you from being friends?”

  And if that isn’t the question of the fucking century.

  My mind plays that night back, the softness of Roman’s lips on mine, the whiskey on his tongue as it slid into my mouth to tangle with my own.

  “I’ve wanted to do this for so long,” he murmurs, his voice husky against my mouth as he continues to lick and suck at my bottom lip like it’s his God given right.

  My fingers twist in his damp hair, bringing his entire body tighter against mine. I feel his erection against my thigh, long and thick, only being contained by his swim trunks. And I feel mine too. Desperate to break free from its confines, aching to be touched. Stroked.

  “What took you so long?” I ask, sliding my hand between us to palm his cock through his trunks. “Why wait until the night before you leave?”

  Because for the past year of my life, my thoughts about my best friend have been anything but friendly. Hell, maybe longer than that. I’ve fought them, pushed them into the back of my brain and continued down the path of least destruction to my mental sanity.

  The straight path.

  How long has he wanted this?

  “Because, Rain,” he says, uttering the nickname he coined for me against my mouth. “I had to know the taste of your lips, if only this once. I had to see if you felt it too.”

  I do. I feel it too.

  His free hand snakes down, slipping into my trunks to grip my cock, giving it a long, slow tug that has me almost coming on the spot.

  “Because I’m selfish, Rain,” he tells me, his lips moving down my neck as he sucks and bites at the skin there. He continues to stroke me and it’s surreal that it’s actually happening and not a figment of my drunken imagination.

  Because this is something I’ve wanted, thought of, for far too long too.

  Roman’s body presses me back against the edge of the pool, the tile biting into the skin of my back as he continues to jack my cock. “And I have to have you this one time, even if it’s the only time I can.”

  “Rain?” River asks, his voice bringing me back to the present.

  “Yeah?” I ask, shaking my head clear of the memory fog that consumed it.

  “I asked what happened to make you stop being friends.”

  I nod, flicking my gaze past his head to the stars above us.

  “He kissed me knowing he was leaving. Knowing he wouldn’t ever be coming back. Knowing he could never give me…” I trail off, not knowing where my thoughts were leading me. Or rather, not wanting to go there. “He kissed me, fully knowing it would only confuse me more. And I hated him for that.”

  Part of me still does.

  Because Doctor Fulton was right the day in therapy when she called me out, telling me I was infatuated with Roman.

  Though I couldn’t accept myself as anything other than straight, I was dancing around the idea of him and I for years. Of what it would be like to be together as more than Roman and Rain, best friends. But he never so much as hinted he wanted something more than that until that fucking night in the pool.

  And by then, it was too late. Our time had run out.

  So I turned to hatred, if only to mask the hurt.

  But what I felt for Roman? It doesn’t hold a candle to the way River consumes me entirely.

  “And so he left the next day, not looking back? And your friendship was just over?”

  I nod. “Pretty much, yeah.”

  River licks his lips and nods. I watch the gears turn in his mind, thinking of all the questions he’s dying to ask. The apprehension is written all over his face, the open book he is. “And was he the only guy you’ve kissed?”

  I nod again, my hand coming up to cup the back of his head. “He was the last person I kissed until you.”

  He smiles, big and brighter than the moon. “So, what you’re telling me is I’m special?”

  I roll my eyes and laugh because he most definitely stole that kiss, but I’m not about to remind him. It’s not a lie, though. “Yeah, Abhainn. You’re special.”

  His nose crinkles in amusement as he leans in to place a soft kiss on my mouth, short and sweet and leaving me wanting more.

  “Is this your way of telling me because I kissed you, you’re gonna ignore me again starting tomorrow?” he utters against my jaw. I hear the way he’s trying to play it off in a joke, but it’s not working.

  I know him better than that, I can see past the jokester exterior to see the vulnerability.

  “Never,” I reply, fingers curling into the hair at the back of his head. “I just wanted you to know.”

  “Good, I’m glad. I don’t want to lose you when we go back to school. When we leave this place,” he whispers into my throat before kissing my Adam’s apple. “I know it won’t be like it is here, and I understand why. But I can’t go back to enemies either.”

  “We won’t,” I say, swallowing gravel as the words come out. “I don’t want to lose you either. Not when I know what it’s like to have you.”

  River leans back and looks into my eyes, his own full of so many emotions it would take me a thousand years to name them all. “You have me. You will always have me. Until every star in the night sky burns out. And maybe even then.”

  I smile sadly at him, knowing he means those words right now. Knowing always coincides with forever in his vocabulary. And he’s anything but a liar.

  But we live in a reality where lies spill from our lips disguised as the truth with our knowledge or not. “You don’t need to say that, Abhainn. Not when we both know life is full of broken promises never meant to be kept.”

  “What do you mean?”

  His fingers grip mine tighter, as if to ground himself to me. As if he knows the words about to leave my lips will be harder to hear than any insult I ever threw his way. “You’ll meet someone. Someone who makes your heart pound in your chest, and whether it’s a guy or
a girl, if they’re the right one for you, they won’t force you to be someone you aren’t. They won’t attempt to shove you back into the closet. And when that happens, this will all become a distant memory.” Rubbing my thumb against the backs of his knuckles softly, I sigh. “A happy one, I hope. But a memory nonetheless.”

  I can tell from his silence he’s taking my words and letting them run rampant in his mind, trying to decode them and find hidden meaning where there is none.

  “Hey,” I whisper, catching his chin in my hand, his rough stubble scraping against my fingers, “I’m not saying that as a bad thing. We both know what we signed up for with this. It’s run its course, but that’s okay. Being stuck here with you has been the most enjoyable five weeks of misery I’ve ever had.”

  And if that ain’t the irony of it all.

  I thought coming to this cabin with River, being forced into cohabitating with him would be my own personal hell. And for a while, it was. But the day I thought he left me here, when I couldn’t find him for hours, it was more than fear that clawed at my skin. The panic that set in also ground something into my soul when it came to him. And whatever the hell it was, it changed me, even if I didn’t realize it at the time.

  “Are you tired?” he whispers, craning his neck to look up at me with those eyes that twist my heart into knots every time I stare into their depths.

  “No,” I murmur. “Are you?”

  He shakes his head before leaning up, searching for my mouth. “Do you want to go to bed?” he asks, his lips brushing faintly across my own.

  I nod, wanting the chance to be with him one last time before this is over for good.

  We move quickly to the bedroom, removing each other’s clothing with lightning speed along the way. I don’t know who ends up on the bed first or who is in charge right now. All I know is our bodies tangle together on the bed in frenzied passion while we touch and lick and bite at each other, desperate for time to slow down so this moment never has to end.

  “What do you want, Riv?” I pant against his mouth, stroking his cock while his hand travels a lazy path down my chest.