Page 70 of The Cruelest Kind of Hate
The fluorescents burn my eyes, but if I turn off the lights, it might put me in some weird pain-sleep coma. So my retinas suffer through the blinding laser treatment as my equilibrium attempts to right itself from the constant dizzy spells jumbling my brain.
Exhaustion pulls at my limbs like strings on a marionette, and my lower stomach cramps and twists, as if there’s barbed wire shredding my womb into bloodied ribbons. Not to mention that the overpowering stench of copper is everywhere, only worsening the headache in my skull.
Every single month it’s the same old torture—bleeding, cramps, sometimes puke, crying, and damning my female anatomy for having to shed my stupid uterine lining. Granted, the alternative is being pregnant, so it’s a lose-lose situation.
I’m so dehydrated that my eyes are beginning to droop shut, despite tap water being just out of reach. I’m too afraid to move in fear of passing out. Thankfully, that possibility doesn’t look like it’ll be happening any time soon. My pain receptors are working overtime, alerting me to the pins and needles in my legs, to the staccato beat of my heart, to the heat sprawlingthroughout my body like a gradual forest fire, and to the periodic contractions in my belly.
But I don’t get a second of peace before there’s an incessant knock on the door that seems forceful enough to bust the entire partition down.
“Teague, go away,” I groan, curling into a fetal position in the delusional hope that it’ll allow me some magical reprieve.
A low and growly baritone rumbles from the other side, far too mature to belong to Teague, and far too angry to successfully fit in my baby brother’s four-foot-seven body. “Calista, open the door.”
Shit. Shit. Shit. It’s Gage. Why is Gage here? How did he get in? How did he know I was even here?
Conjuring the tiniest scrap of energy, I unfold from my pathetic position, scrambling and pressing my back against the thick stump of the toilet. I stare down at my bloated belly protruding over the jeans I failed to button, and I nearly fall victim to another snot-filled crying session. Gage can’t see me like this.
“Don’t come in here!” I scream, staring at the little piece of metal keeping me from feeling Gage’s full wrath. I need to make him leave. I need to think of the most disgusting excuse in the world so that he’ll never be turned on by me ever again.
“I have…uh…explosive diarrhea. Yeah. It’s terrible!”
“I don’t care if it’s coming out of both ends, open the fucking door, or I’ll force it open myself.”
I don’t doubt that Gage is more than capable, given his mountain of man muscles. He’ll rip that door right off its hinges or pull a Jack Torrance and axe it down.
I’m too weak to get up and barricade the door. I’m too weak to keep arguing with him. All I want to do is fall asleep on this cold bathroom floor—probably teeming with germs and the possibility of pink eye—and drift into a weeklong hibernationuntil The Crimson Wave has receded back into the depths of hell from which it came.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock-knock-knock-knock.
BUT I CAN’T. Because Gage is determined to play a goddamn drum solo on the door until I let him in.
“Gage, please go away,” I whimper, feeling the beginnings of a fever start to work its way through me like a slow-acting poison. And now the rhythm of Gage’s knocking has somehow bolstered my run-of-the-mill headache into a fully powered migraine.
I expect another curse to fall on my ears, but to my surprise, Gage’s shadow moves from under the door and his footfalls shallow down the hallway.
Did he justlistento me? I can’t tell if this is a good or bad thing. For any regular person, when someone does what you say, it’s a good thing. But for me, when Gage does what I say (usually stubbornly), it means that hell’s waiting to break loose. Is he going to the store to get a battering ram? I don’t think stores sell battering rams. Where does one even acquire a battering ram?
With this newfound silence, I try to focus on the cold of the ceramic tile as it scares away the heat nesting deep inside me, reverting it to nothing but an infant flame.
And when peace is just a grab away, levitating outside of my arm’s reach, a strange, tinny noise sideswipes my attention. It’s like this grating, scratchy sound, as if someone’s trying to insert something into a hole.
This bitch.
My eyes cut toward the commotion to confirm my suspicions, and of course, the doorknob is jiggling all over the place. Gage is picking the lock.
I probably have approximately fifteen seconds before he getsthe door open, so I’m pretty much helpless at this point. Fifteen seconds is nowhere near enough time to make myself look presentable. This is it. He’s going to see me in a sweaty puddle on the floor, get disgusted by me, then probably never want to speak to me again. I mean, I’m bleeding out of my pussy. My pussy! That’s the furthest thing from sexy.
When the lock makes this littleplinksound, I hear the doorknob turn, and then I come to a staring impasse with Gage, who’s huffing and panting and looking a tad bit homicidal.
“Why”—wheeze—“didn’t”—wheeze—“you”—wheeze—“open”—wheeze—“the door?”
“Um, maybe because I didn’t want you to come in here!” I snip, doing my best to cover the bulge of my belly with my arms. Embarrassment paints my face in shades of pink, and all I want to do is sink into the floor, have it absorb my pathetic body, and die a peaceful death underneath the crawl space of my apartment.
It takes me a few seconds to register the heaping pile of plastic bags next to Gage’s feet.
