Page 98 of The Cruelest Kind of Hate
I lift the hem of his baggy jersey up just a little and turn around, revealing the inked set of numbers on my lower back, sandwiched right between the crescents of my back dimples. A small, fine-lined tramp stamp.
Gage goes quiet—probably taking in the beauty of it all—before all hell breaks loose and he screams at the top of his lungs. “What the fuck, Cali?”
The rest of his teammates look over at us, half-concerned, and I shoo them back to their own personal conversations.
I look over my shoulder. “What?”
I’ve only seen Gage truly mad three different times. Scary mad. Like, mad to the point where his blood pressure was aneurysm inducing. One, when I teased him about Dilbert before he ended up ripping my clothes off. Two, when I teased him about my secret lap dance…and then he ended up ripping my clothes off. And three, when I just showed him the tattoo I got to honor our agreement.
“Calista,” he growls in a low, demonic-sounding voice, a guttural warning that starts in the pit of his stomach and vibrates outwards.
I feign confusion. “What?”
“That’s not my fucking number.”
My fingers touch the seemingly permanent brand, and I pout, putting to use that one semester of high school when I was obsessed with theater. “Yes, it is,” I argue.
Gage runs his hands through his hair and grips the strands, a lick of lunacy raging in his eyes and highlighting that one forked vein throbbing in his forehead. “No, that’sFulton’snumber,” he tries in what I think is supposed to be a “calm” tone.
Fulton looks at my back to inspect the tattoo for himself, and all I can hear from behind me is a storm of subsequent laughter.
“Oh my God. Cali, that’s awesome!” Fulton enthuses.
I keep the hem scrunched at my navel as I give a half-hearted shrug. “Oops. I must’ve gotten them mixed up.”
Gage’s last-ditch effort to remain calm gets thrown down the goddamn drainage pipe. “Mixed up? MIXED UP?” he shouts, somehow louder than the surround sound of a thousand plusvoices in the skyscraper arena. “He wears a twenty-one. I wear an eight. AN EIGHT.”
He’s losing it. He’s all sweaty and red and huffing like he’s just snorted a line of cocaine or blown down a pig’s stick house. If he wasn’t swathed in layers, I’m assuming his muscles would be all hard too. Hard and coiling and maybe even glistening with perspiration.
That shouldn’t turn me on as much as it does. I’m a cruel, cruel person.
He drags his hand down his face. “Please…please tell me that it’s fucking fake.”
I stick my finger in my mouth—which he watchesveryintently despite being furious with me—and then pop it from my lips, wiping the wet pad over the dark numbers, even rubbing a bit to show him that they don’t smear.
“You’re getting it lasered off. I don’t care how much it costs. That shit isn’t staying on you.”
“Come on, Gage. It’s small. You’ll barely even notice it’s there,” I insist, knowing full well that hewillknow it’s there when he takes me from behind, fucking a girl who’s marked with another man’s jersey number. God, this is giving me such an adrenaline rush. The tattoo’s obviously not real. Henna. Should come off within a few days, but the kill-all expression on Gage’s face right now was worth every penny.
His fingers crumple into a fist. “No. Nope. You’re not saying anything.”
Then he whips around to deal with Fulton, gunning him down with a blood-red haze clouding both his eyes and sensibility. “I’m going to fucking kill you,” he mutters under his breath, which is a thousand times more terrifying than if he were to yell it.
All the color drains from Fulton’s face. “I had nothing to do with this!”
“I don’t care. I’m going to shove my fist down your throat, rip your spine out, then wear your bloody jersey number as a prize.”
Both Fulton and I are speechless.
Dear God. I’ve created a monster.
The starting anthem for the Reapers blares over the speakers, and the guys file into a single line, ready to make their grand entrance. This is fine. Everything’s fine, right? Hockey’s an aggressive game. This will make him play better.Right?
Before Gage joins the rest of his teammates, he looks me dead in the eyes and smiles like a sick bastard. “I’ll deal withyoulater.”
Rememberwhen I thought Gage would be nervous to be back? He’s not. In fact, I think I gave him enough rage to fuel an islandic village. He’s only missed one goal of the entire game, and we’re already on to the second period. His blocking is so precise that the other team is getting antsy and making poorly judged shots. He’s killing it out there. It doesn’t even look like his hip flexor was torn at all with the way he’s moving.
“What did you say to him?” Hadley asks, eyes bolted on me while she stuffs a handful of popcorn and M&M’s into her mouth.
