Page 55 of Meet Hate Love
“You put a dead cat in the trunk?”
“Out of everyone I know, you, of all people, should understand the terrible decisions a person can make when they panic.”
“Fair enough. Go on.”
“I put him in the trunk and then waited until my grandma got home.”
“Because Granny was going to resuscitate him?”
The streetlamp cast a warm glow over his face as he shot an unpleased glare in my direction. “No, because I was sixteen and didn’t know what to do.”
“Bury it?” That would have been the sensible, yet still morally wrong, thing to do.
“My grandma told me to take it to the neighbor’s house.”
I could just imagine a sixteen-year-old Vance carting a limp and mangled Mr. Snuffleupagus to the neighbor’s front door. “Did you just leave it on the porch?”
“I rang the doorbell. But I told them I’d found the cat on the road on my way home from school.” Traffic zoomed past as we headed over a bridge crossing the Seine River. “The lie made it worse somehow.”
Although nothing about Mr. Snuffleupagus’s death was good, it wasn’t like Vance had run him over on purpose. He had a conscience.
“What about you?” he said. “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?”
Biting my lip, I glanced at him. Mine was worse. Mainly because it hadn’t been an accident. But I’d made him tell me… “When I was in sixth grade, I gave one of my best friends a horrible haircut.”
“That’s not bad.”
“I did it on purpose because Rosco Stevens, the love of my twelve-year-old life, liked her.”
“Okay. That’s cruel.”
“I know. I felt horrible about it, so to make it better, I gave myself the same horrendous haircut, so she wasn’t the only person being made fun of.”
“At least you tried to make it better…”
By the time we’d reached the hotel lobby, still hand in hand, I was no closer to not liking him than I had been fifteen minutes before. He’d never clotheslined a bicyclist. He rolled the toothpaste from the bottom of the tube, not the middle like a monster. I couldn’t find one thing I didn’t like about him—even his alarms now had a soft spot in my heart.
When I turned to head toward the stairwell, he didn’t let go of my hand. Instead, he dragged me toward the elevator and pressed the button.
“I’m not getting on that thing. I already told you I’m—”
But before I could finish that statement, his lips were on mine, and the door had opened.
Vance shifted us inside the small space, bunching my skirt as he pinned me against the wall. The elevator closed, and his lips went to my throat, teeth raking my neck while he groaned the word fuck. “I want you so bad, Blake.”
And I wanted him, too. I fisted his hair, grabbing and groping his body with my other hand as the elevator slowly rose. One time wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. At this point, it would almost be rude not to… “This is bad,” I said between kisses.
“Why?”
“We can’t have sex.”
“That’s fine.” His teeth scraped my throat. “I just want to eat your pussy.”
Oh, God. Heat fired through my body. I went for the hem of his shirt, ready to strip him naked in the elevator, but before I had a chance, the door opened.
Vance backed me out of the elevator, his lips still firmly on mine. Our bodies bumped along the walls as we fumbled toward the door.
“Just,” he pressed a greedy kiss to my lips as he dug in his pocket, “a minute.” The second Vance crammed the room key into the lock and opened the door, he shoved me inside the dark room. My purse dropped to the floor. So did his backpack.
