Page 99 of The Cruelest Kind of Hate
I deviate from the game. “Huh?”
“Did you flash him a titty? Promise to suck him off if he won?”
I gasp and slap my hands over Teague’s ears—who’s thankfully too mesmerized by the grown men on skates to pay much mind to the very inappropriate conversation happening.
“Hadley! There are children present!” I scold, but in the same breath, a mischievous smile materializes on my lips. “I just gave him a little something to motivate him.”
Am I worried about whatever punishment is awaiting me after the game? Yes. There’s really nothing else for me to say. I don’t know how, but Gage will probably find some way to edge me for an hour until I regret ever pulling this prank on him. Or he’ll kill me. Both are equally bad.
I remove my hands from Teague’s ears, and he presses his grubby face against the plexiglass, looking the most focused I think I’ve ever seen him. His eyes follow the puck’s every move, leaping meticulously from player to player. He looks so proud of Gage, admiration emanating off his little body like a second skin.
Hadley nudges my leg with the toe of her boot. “You dirty little slut. I love that for you. Ugh! Going off and having crazy, passionate sex with a hockey star.”
She sniffles and pretends to wipe an invisible tear from her eye. “They grow up so fast.”
The arena comes alive with a collective cheer that rumbles underfoot, and judging by Teague’s springy celebration, Gage must’ve blocked another potential goal. The atmosphere, the people, the fanfare—it’s such a step up from Teague’s minor league games. Hell, the Reapers have a full theme song and a giant Grim Reaper cutout that descends from the ceiling at the start of every game.Andthey have a Jumbotron for kiss cams and capturing celebrity lookalikes.
I’m dating an NHL player. I’m dating afamousNHL player. Not just that, but Gage worships me. I’m pretty sure he’d lay his body on the ground so I could walk over a puddle and not get my shoes dirty. I don’t know if my life will ever feel real again. Everything’s perfect.
I’ve finally allowed myself to be happy with the man of my dreams, I’ve come to accept my mother’s new living situation, Teague’s admitted that the teasing from his teammates has stopped, and I onlysometimesget existential crises during mythree a.m. showers. The studio isn’t doing too bad either. With Gage helping finance my mother’s stay at the nursing home, extra money from her would-be medication cost is going toward bills and groceries. And with Teague and me not scraping by every week, I’ll be able to give him a normal childhood.
Of course, if it was up to Gage, he’d take care of everything with his yearly eight-figure salary. He still supports me teaching, but he doesn’t want it to be a source of financial stress. God, he’s just…perfect.
But as perfect as things may seem, life can’t always be stuck on this continuous, upward path. Eventually, the bad weighs it down again, and life has to come back to the middle. A regression to the mean.
And instead of a moderate period following my high one, a low one comes in place of it…in the form of a repeated trauma that I’d never wanted to live through ever again.
Out of my peripheral, an offensive player crashes into a defensive player at an abnormal speed, creating a buildup of bodies that tumble across the ice, heading straight for the Reapers’ goal. Heading straight forGage.
Everything happens so fast. They’re halfway across the ice, and then there’s a pile of bodies crushed against the boards. The entire crowd goes silent—nothing but the onrush of frantic shouts from refs in the echo chamber of the stadium. I choke on the breath refusing to budge from my throat. My heart…my heart just stops. It doesn’t drop to my stomach or skip a beat. It stops entirely, and time freezes around me like the rest of the world is moving in slow-motion while I’m stuck helplessly in the middle. I can’t feel any part of my body. Everything is numb, cold, a flame of life that’s been stubbed out like the butt of a cigarette.
I don’t know how long I stand there, but he’s not moving. Medics start to roll out with stretchers in tow, and the shrill wailof an ambulance pierces my eardrums, which is the only noise to rip me from my paralyzing bubble. The rest of his teammates stay stranded out on the ice, waist-deep in shared confusion and concern.
It’s like I’m standing in the middle of the rink with a single spotlight shining down on me, blacking out the empty rows and the bloodstained corners of prior mistakes. Everything is crumbling around me, my world falling to chunks of debris and pulverized masses, leaving broken terrain that’s impassable when I know Gage is on the other side counting on me to reach him. But I can’t.I can’t reach him.
I shove through the panicked mob of people, ignoring the shrieks of my name by a little, high-pitched voice, bruising myself on the brunt of bodies that all flood toward the nearest exit. Tears ribbon down my face, blurring my vision in ink blots, and the moment my heart restarts with a barely there hum, it cries out to be reunited with him. Cries out above the screeching sirens and the traumatized screams and the culmination of pain swallowing every inch of my body in white-hot flashes of fire.
His lifeless figure is getting farther away from me. Pleas fire off my tongue in quick succession, begging the world to stop for a single fucking second, begging my legs to move faster when they’re fighting against the hold of quicksand.
I let the tears impair my vision, I let the ache in my thighs burgeon, I let the breath flee from my lungs. I rub every nerve ending raw because beingforcedto feel is better than being catatonic. I don’t know how, but I traverse the eighty-foot-long rink without stumbling or slowing one bit. My hands clamp down on the side of his stretcher, my waterlogged eyes fixed on the beaten and battered state of his body where padding wasn’t enough to protect him. WhereIwasn’t enough to protect him.
“Please don’t leave me,” I cry, holding his gloved hand, letting my body be dragged out of the arena and to the doubledoors of the ambulance. My fingers don’t slip—they don’t leave him, even if he can’t feel me here.
Hiccups and sobs are slurred beyond comprehension, tear-ravaged eyes burning despite the water that steadily flows down my wind-bitten cheeks. “Please don’t go, Gage. I can’t do this without you. I need you.”
You promised you wouldn’t leave me.
34
AN ODE TO MY BROKEN HEART
CALISTA
I’m back in the one place I never thought I’d be again—among the barely living and the graves where once-beating hearts now rest in an eternal sleep. Fluorescents and disinfectants greet me with welcoming arms, the buffering beep of heart rates on expensive machines tailing me down bland, alabaster halls that form unsolvable labyrinths. Snapshots of the game flip through my mind like jaundiced camera film in a projector, and I can still hear Teague’s screams ringing in my ears, steeped in an unbridled fear that no child should ever have to experience.
I haven’t left Gage’s side. It’s only been a day, but he hasn’t woken up yet. The doctor deduced that he must’ve suffered major head trauma when he was thrown up against the boards, and that while the damage isn’t lasting, it might take him a while to come to. There’s a contusion on his head that’s swelling, underscored by a plum-colored bruise, but thankfully no bleeding occurred from the injury.
I know he’s going to be okay. I know he’s going to wake up. But there’s a small part of me that’s hyper focused on the what-ifs of this scenario. What if he doesn’t wake up? What if theinjury worsens? I can’t…I won’t be able to deal with that alternative reality. I need Gage to be okay.I need him to come back to me.
