Page 75 of The Cruelest Kind of Hate
I squeeze her hand as my gaze carves a languid path from the striking beauty of her eyes to the ample tenderness of her lips. Two things in great contrast to one another that somehow work on the same canvas—two things that would never work on anyone else excepther. “I’ll always be me, but I’m yours above it all.”
There is no preparatory cheek-holding or prolonged eye contact. It’s a rush of her mouth on mine with a breakneck urgency that I’ve never known possible, and she kisses me like she’ll die if she doesn’t.
I’ll die, too, if she ever stops.
But eventually she does, and I whine to have her lips back on mine.
“I have to apologize,” Cali says embarrassedly, ears red-tipped and fingers playing with the forefront curl of my hair.
Maybe it’s because her hands feel so good tugging at my scalp, but I have no idea what she’s talking about. “What?” I ask dumbly, coming down from a post-kiss high that’s rendered me slightly speechless and a whole lot brainless.
“I have to apologize. About hitting your car the first time we met,” she elaborates. “I was in the wrong from the beginning, but I was too proud to admit it. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have taken your parking spot in the first place. And I definitely shouldn’t have damaged your car.”
The lights turn back on in my head, and laughter fizzes up in my chest like carbonation in a sugary drink. My hand comes up to gently caress hers—which is still laboriously curling my hair—and I calm her aimless fidgeting. “You don’t need to apologize, Cali. I’m the one who’s sorry. I shouldn’t have boxed you in. And I was a ginormous dick for not moving my car when you asked me.”
“No, Gage. I still?—”
“Hey. It’s okay. The damages barely cost anything. Money was never an issue,” I assure her, moving my hand to cup her cheek instead, and she’s generous enough to lean into my touch. “Plus, it was about time someone knocked me on my ass.”
25
THERE’S BEAUTY IN THE BROKEN
GAGE
“Are you sure you’re okay with watching a horror movie?” Cali asks in a small voice, snuggling into my side when I open my arm up to her. Her cramps seem to have subsided for the time being, which is good, because I don’t know how long I’d be able to sit here while she’s squirming in pain.
“Of course I am. Why wouldn’t I be?” Though I’m nowhere near prepared for whatever proverbial roller coaster I’m about to be strapped into, I’m determined to give Cali the day she deserves, and if that includes three painstakingly long hours of over-the-top gore, then so be it.
“I just know you aren’t the biggest fan of horror.”
I make a sputtering noise, bracing my hand against my chest in faux offense. “I’m notnota fan of horror. Plus, I want to watch whatever you want to watch.”
Cali grazes her teeth over her bottom lip before chewing on the middle, glancing unsurely between me and the television that projects the title card—My Ex-Therapist Is a Hatchet-Wielding Psycho—complete with a half-naked woman drenchedin a fountain of blood, aforementioned hatchet raised above her head and cherry-red lips frozen in a scream.
“If you get scared, we can turn it off,” she promises.
“Cali, I don’t getscared,” I scoff. Ironically, at the same time, apprehension begins to soak into my bones like rot, and a sinkhole opens in my stomach where regret—and only regret—dares to wade across a sea of popping acid.
I’m going to have nightmares. It’s not an assumption. Iwillhave nightmares. If I thought a few store-bought, plastic organs on Halloween were terrifying, the realistic-looking ones are going to make me weep like a goddamn baby. I don’t do well with horror, much like the majority of the levelheaded and rational population. And I especially don’t do well with gore. It’s not normal for a person’s insides to be outside, okay?
But I know Cali loves horror movies, so I’m going to force myself to love them too, even at the expense of a good night’s sleep. I’d do anything to spend time with Cali.
So as the movie begins, with her head resting soundly on my chest, the opening scene hardly acts as a soft, predictable gateway into the spine-chilling terror I’m about to endure for the rest of the night. I try to keep my focus divided between the screen and the excitement flitting across my girl’s face, and I’m pretty sure that if the volume wasn’t so deafeningly loud, she’d be able to hear every cry for help from my poor, overstimulated heart.
I jump. I flinch. I twitch. I shut one eye and try to keep the other open. My blood pressure shoots through the roof like Superman on speed. Meanwhile, Cali’s smiling and chuckling like the last victim’s stomach didn’t get hacked all the way open.
I thought I’d soldiered through the worst of it when the antihero ends up curb-stomping a dude’s head in with her stiletto heel, and I bury my head in Cali’s shoulder while I swallow down a gag that sounds seconds away from being productive.
She pauses the movie—thank God—and sighs sympathetically, stroking the back of my head with her hand. “You really are a big baby when it comes to horror, aren’t you?”
“’M not,” I muffle against her shoulder, disregarding the fact that I’m barnacled to her side and clinging to her like I’m weathering a California-grown earthquake. I can feel sweat seep past the waistband of my pants, I bet my complexion is sickeningly white, and I can’t get the hyperrealistic squelching noises out of my head.
“Oh, really?” Cali muses.
I lift my head up slightly, hand still curled in the fabric of her shirt. “Uh-huh. I just wanted to…snuggle.”
Not fully a lie, alright? Cali smells nice, her body is soft, and she gives hugs so good they blow old people hugs out of the water.
