Sparks Fly

Chapter Six: Rain, Feasts, and Casanovas

Hello! Thanks for coming back to check out the latest chapter. This one is a little longer than the rest. It's around 4,000 words, so I'm both very sorry and very proud (you're welcome). This chapter should offer a little more insight into Rain's life and her mind. 

Up top, If I Die Young by the Band Perry (one of my all time faves).

Hope you enjoy it ;) Don't forget to vote and comment if you like it!

--VIVKELLER23

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Rain

It was Wednesday night and she was stuck indoors waiting to be called down for dinner. Her father had prepared a lavish feast to impress his future son-in-law. Rain still didn't know how he thought he would manage that without having another daughter, but she wasn't going to walk down the aisle for nobody.

Her father had yet to accept that fact.

In recent years, he'd been displaying signs of a terrible disease that was only getting worse over time.

The disease: selective hearing.

For a man in his early fifties, he was as stubborn as a mule. She'd stopped wasting her breath when she turned nineteen and he'd finally allowed her to go to college. He seemed to think that since she no longer protested every time he invited the pompous jerk who was to be her fiancé over to the house, she had agreed to his demands.

She hadn't, but as long as she played along, her father was content staying out of her choice of study.

Not a bad bargain.

It was the second to last week of September now, closer to October and everything pumpkin spice. Outside, she could hear the gentle pit pat of the unexpected rain that had begun falling ten minutes before her last class of the day had ended.

She hated being so predictable, but even she couldn't deny that she loved the sound of the rain as it fell on the estate's roof, loved the smell of the wet soil surrounding the gravel road outside. So it was fitting that her mother had named her after it.

There was just something so calming about water coming down from the sky to restore the dryness left behind from Summer.

She also preferred the rain because then she had a reason to wear boots and coats and comfy socks. Rain meant staying indoors where she preferred to be anyway. Because staying indoors kept her away from the world, away from the things she could hear others whisper about her. It kept her away from the monster she couldn't stop dreaming about when she succumbed to sleep at night.

Here, inside the grand walls of her father's pride and joy, she was safe from falling victim to Gray's very own Casanova.

She smiled just thinking about his persistence. She would have thought his curiosity was only surface deep, that he'd give up trying to get her attention after two days of disinterest from her. But it seemed the opposite was true. The more she pulled away from him and tried to keep him at a distance, the more determined he became to try to scale her protective walls.

It was as maddening as it was funny to find the typical playboy act atypical.

Now, it appeared she was stuck with him for the next few weeks. Profess- Dr. Tilden had assigned Teagan to be her partner for his class project.

The assignment should have been simple.

Normally, she would have been assigned to another slacker in class who was only there to fulfill the mandatory 12-unit requirement to receive financial aid. The effort would have been minimal at best and the outcome easy, safe, and predictable.