Page 71 of The Cruelest Kind of Hate
“Gage, what are?—”
“Do you know how worried I was, Cali? I was fucking sick to my stomach after not hearing from you for three days. I had to ask Aeris if she knew what was going on with you, and when she told me you hadn’t been in class, I lost my goddamn mind.”
I worry my bottom lip, swallowing around the thickness in my throat. I feel like an even bigger bitch for not telling him I was sick. I just didn’t want him to, well, do what he’s doing right now. I didn’t want him to drop everything to come take care of me. And hearing myself say that in my head reminds me of how good of a guy Gage is. How he’s been there for me like no one else has in my life. How he’ll always be there.
“I’m sorry,” I blubber, face-planting into my palms. “I should’ve told you. I’m not sick, Gage. I’m…”
He’s somehow materialized right next to me, crouching down to my level and brushing snarled strands of hair out of my face. “I just want to take care of you, Spitfire. I need to know I’m taking care of you,” he says softly.
“I’m on my…meriod.” I whisper the last part under my breath, retracting my hands from my face so I can stare at the off-white bottoms of Gage’s shoes.
“What?”
“My…shmeriod.”
A growl sits precariously in the pit of his chest, rumbling outwards though his body. “Cali…”
“I’m on my period!” I exclaim a little too loudly, still evading his eyes as a drop of shame rolls down the bumps of my spine.
The concern on Gage’s face seems to retreat, sated by the news of me not contracting a fatal disease, and it’s replaced with a snort of laughter. “That’s all?”
“What do you mean ‘that’s all?’”
Gage gently rests his hand on my arm, and my pulse flutters like that of a bird trapped between the maws of a hungry predator. “It’s a period, Cali.”
“It’s disgusting!Ilook disgusting.”
“Stop,” he snarls. “You do not look disgusting. You’ve never looked disgusting a day in your life. You’re the most beautiful girl in this entire world, and I’ll keep telling you until you get tired of hearing it.”
Normally, I’d have a barb perched on the tip of my tongue for him, but right now, the only response I have for him is…a fountain of tears.
They begin to pour out of me with the complementary hiccups here and there, and sobs break through the seal of my throat, bursting to the scene with enough volume to probably reach the neighboring apartments. Everything intermingles onmy face—tears, snot, sweat—and they form a sticky resin that’ll need a good wiping afterwards.
“Oh, baby,” Gage sympathizes, doing his best to wrangle some of my tears with the soft pads of his fingers.
“I’m s-sorry I’m s-so emotional,” I wail, desperately trying to maintain some picture of calm while my hair looks like it’s been electrocuted, and my face is a teary, acne-ridden mess. My chest racks from the turbulent sobs, and my vision has been indefinitely fogged by my stupid hormones, reducing Gage to a shapeless blob in front of me.
He caresses my cheek. “It’s oka?—”
“I’m breaking out, I smell terrible, and I’m on the toilet for hours!”
“Okay, I didn’t need that much informat?—”
My lungs empty a breath, only so I can launch into another tangent. “And my stomach! Oh my God, I look like I’m pregnant,” I whine, grabbing the dome of my rock-hard belly. “I don’t want to look pregnant.”
“Calista,” Gage commands in that hauntingly low voice of his, picking my attention up by the goddamn scruff and forcing it to behave. His eyes are a slate-colored tone, every chiseled line on his face making an appearance, and I’ve never seen him look so serious before—so darkened by the frivolity of my self-deprecating comments.
Calista.My full name. I never liked it growing up as a kid—because a lot of people didn’t know how to pronounce it—but when Gage says it, it’s a sweet-sounding melody designed just for me.
“I don’t care what you look like. I’ve seen you at your lowest when you were bawling your eyes out, I’ve seen you at your highest when you were nonstop smiling. I’ve seen you in a stained hoodie, I’ve seen you in that black romper that drives me crazy, I’ve seen you in my goddamn jersey. The bottom line is—each time, you were nothing less than stunning. And that doesn’t change now,” he tells me, soaking up the rest of my tears with the built-in tissue he calls his hand.
A sigh exits me, and I blink the last of the moisture from my bleary eyes, now feeling the full extent of the burning taking place there. My whole body feels drained—not that it was bursting with energy to begin with. The only good thing to come out of my therapeutic crying fit is my precursory humiliation dwindling to a much more manageable size.
A warm smile favors the right corner of Gage’s lips, summoning some of that lopsided charm he has flying out the wazoo. “Plus, you’d look sexy as hell if you were pregnant.”
I glare at him. “Donotget any ideas.”
“Trust me, I want you all to myself before I have to share you with a little demon spawn.”
