Page 101 of The Cruelest Kind of Hate
Oh, God. I feel like I’m going to cry again, but for a different reason. Before I can make a fool of myself with more blubbers and whines, all the guys dogpile me, bringing me into one gigantic team hug that I disappear into.
You’re not alone anymore, Cali. And you never will be again.
It’s beenhours since the guys left, and I’ve made a permanent home for myself right next to Gage’s side. Thankfully, Hadley’s been kind enough to watch Teague while I stay with Gage, wanting to be the first person he sees when he wakes up.
I’m beyond thankful that Gage has such supportive teammates that love and believe in him. After my talk with them, I thought long and hard about the role I played in all of this, and I’ve come to accept that what happened was out of anyone’s control.
I feel myself dozing off, opting to use Gage’s arm as my pillow, when a small voice cries my name from the doorway, the patter of tiny feet rising in volume. I stand up, bleary-eyed, feeling arms wrap around me and a nose bury itself in the notch of my neck.
Teague.
I hug my brother back without regulating my strength, squeezing him so tightly that I’m afraid I’m hurting him, but he never lets go of me. My pulse trips over itself as my heart scampers against the cage of my ribs. I’ve missed him so much.
When we pull away from each other, I check his face for residual tears, on a mission to erase the pain from the stress lines etched into his features.
“Are you okay?” I ask, tucking a curl of his hair behind his ear.
“I want Gage to be okay,” he says, a wet sniffle whistling through his nostrils, the slightest wobble to his chin. His eyes are large, glistening with a splash of moisture, and they look at me like I have all the answers in the world.
“Me too, Squirt. Gage is strong. He’ll be okay.”
“What if…h-he…d-doesn’t…wake u-up?”
Teague’s words rot on my tongue, his worry like a body-deteriorating sickness that I want to cut out and burn alive. I swallow down the sand drying my throat, trying my best to keep my emotions in check. When the first tear starts to fall on my brother’s red face, I catch it immediately, wiping it on Gage’s jersey—which is stained with my own tears.
“He will.” It’s a truth forged from hope so bright that it defeats the shadows of grief preying on young, undeserving hearts.
Teague’s mouth knots into a frown, and this time, I’m not fast enough to stop the river rapids from flowing freely. “I don’t want him to go, Cali. I want him to stay here with us,” he sobs, balling his fists and banging them against my chest.
I pull my brother back into an embrace, bearing the hits that rattle my breastbone, doing everything in my power to take his pain. I hate seeing him cry. I hate it even more when I can’t be the one to fix things. All I can do now is be here for him. All I can do is love him and tell him that everything’s going to be okay.
I’m not running into my mother’s arms anymore, crying and screaming and losing it. Now I’m the one who gets all the tears and heart-wrenching howls of pain. I’m the one who gets to keep everyone afloat. Nothasto butgetsto. This is my purpose in life—being my brother’s protector. I just wished I’d gotten better at it a lot sooner.
“He’s my best friend,” Teague bawls, blowing snot bubbles against my front.
He’s mine too.
“Shh, shh. I know it hurts, Teague. But we have to be strong for Gage. He’d want us to be strong.”
“I-I…don’t think…I c-can.”
I crouch down in front of Teague and rub my hands down his arms. “You can. I know you can. You’re the strongest person I know, which is one of the endless reasons why Gage loves you. And when you love a person, you always find your way back to them. Remember that time you got hurt on the ice?” I ask.
Teague nods, trying his best to fight the quiver of his bottom lip.
“Remember how strong you were? How you got back up right away and didn’t cry? Gage needs you to be that strong for him.”
My brother rams straight into me with another hug, letting me pet his back like my mother used to pet mine when I was upset, and I siphon each negative worry from his body, determined to carry the weight of his crumbling world and reinforce it. A wail of my own almost leaps up my esophagus, but it’s smothered when Hadley voices her presence.
She opens her arms up as Teague runs to her and disappears in her oversized sweater. “Come on, Teague. Let’s give Cali and Gage some privacy,” Hadley coos, tucking him close to her leg.
We’ll be outside, she mouths to me before they desert the room, leaving Gage and me alone once again, the future of our relationship hanging heavy in the distilled air.
I grab Gage’s hand—as if the five minutes I wasn’t holding it has somehow hurt him—and I bring his knuckles to my lips, trying to warm the frozen flesh with a shaky kiss.
I foolishly thought I had cried all the moisture out of my body, but more tears toe the shoreline of my eyes, and the beginning of my words launch from my mouth in a rocky, fumbling start. “Gage, I don’t know if you can hear me, but I’m sorry thishappened. I’d switch places with you in a heartbeat if I could. Seeing you in pain…it fuckingkillsme. I feel like I’m losing my mind without you here. Like, you’re here, but you’re not really here. I just need you to come back to me. I need you to make stupid jokes and pay me cheesy compliments and annoy the living hell out of me. I need you to wrap your arms around me when things get hard because it’s the only place in this entire world that I feel safe.”
I force a breath as my tears splatter the hospital sheets, permeating the thin material in shapeless blobs.
