Page 16 of The Cruelest Kind of Hate
My tongue prods the inside of my cheek. “That’s the one.”
“Didn’t she t-bone your car?” Hayes follows up.
I curb the laugh wanting to barrel up my throat, aware of the incessantly fast and entirely unrhythmic cavort of my heart. “Something like that.”
Fulton’s eyes have doubled in size. “Oh my God. So she’s in your dance class with you?”
“Yep.”
“Is there any way you can, like, go at a different time and not run into her?”
Aside from the blush I can feel tingeing my cheeks, my anxiety has made a return visit, drenching me in sweat and stirring bubbles of nausea in my belly. “Not…really,” I say vaguely, swallowing down the profuse saliva in my mouth.
“Why not?” Casen inquires, speaking for the rest of the group.
“She’s the instructor,” I mumble under my breath.
“What?”
An exaggerated sigh. “She’s the instructor.”
“Oh my God…” Fulton covers his mouth with his hands.
I don’t need to go around the room to take note of everyone’s expression, because I can guarantee that shock takes the lead.Only someone as unlucky as me would seriously find himself in this situation and thenvoluntarilymake it harder for himself by asking her to rehabilitate him.
Kit’s quiet for a second, and then he keels over in obnoxious laughter. “That’s…holy…I…that’s incredible,” he wheezes.
Fucker. Where’s my crutch? I’m going to shove it up his ass and make him rotate.
“Yeah, yeah. We get it. Gage fucked up. Again.”
“It’s not like you have a thing for this chick, do you?” Kit manages between wiping the tears from his eyes and the breath-stealing guffaws rocking his chest.
“What? No! Of course not,” I answer a little too quickly.
Hayes offers me a sympathetic grimace. “You can’t just find another dance studio?”
I dial my focus on the frayed hem of my jacket sleeve, picking at the pigeon-gray strands with my bitten fingernails. “Not really. And, uh, we kind of made an arrangement with each other.”
Why am I still talking? Gage, stop talking! This is embarrassing!
Bristol squints. “That sounds…”
“A SEX arrangement?” Fulton screeches, so pale that he looks like he’ll be taken out by a light gust of wind.
As much as I present myself as a playboy, I’m not. I’m not fucking a girl every single night. I’m not flirting with the shortest skirts or highest heels. I’m not keeping tally marks on my wall of how many pussies I’ve “conquered.” And because it’s been a hot second since I’ve been with anyone, me and Fulton don’t talk about our…extracurricular activities. Not to mention that Fulton has the sexual prowess of a scarecrow: stiff, unsettling, and should be posted up in a field far away from women. I’m pretty sure Hayes thought he was gay for the longest time because he never talks to girls.
The day my boy finally gets his cherry popped, I’m buying acake from the store and writing YOU GOT FUCKED in red frosting on it.
“God, no. No. She’s helping me with my hip, and I’m giving her brother hockey lessons,” I divulge, finally mustering the courage to tip my head up and take in the unblinking faces surrounding me.
Casen scrubs a weary hand down his stubbled jaw. “I feel like I’m going to regret asking this, but helping your hip…how?”
I open my mouth to shut downanypossible alternative explanations, but Kit beats me to it when he jumps up from the couch and humps the air, all while employing his best pornographic moans. “Oh, yes, Gage! Faster! Harder!”
Yep, that guy’s gonna be a father in seven months.
Unfortunately, that scenario will never happen for as long as I live. There’s a better chance of me tearing my other hip flexor than Cali ever wanting to have sex with me.
