The Cruelest Kind of Hate (Riverside Reapers Book 3)

GAGE

I never wanted our dancing to end. I’m not a dancer. I don’t particularly like dancing if I’m not under the influence. But with Cali, I’ll dance for the rest of my fucking life. Sober. I’m about to feel everything with this girl.

I know that I had my tongue in her cunt less than a week ago, but dancing somehow seems so much more intimate. She was inviting me into her world, and I didn’t want to overstay my welcome. That’s why I was so hesitant at first. And even though I might’ve claimed dancing was easy, it certainly isn’t.

But all those first-time jitters seem so trivial now.

I hate hospitals. I have since I was a kid. The repugnant scent of ammonia, the harsh fluorescents, the eggshell-white walls, the continuous beeps and trills of machinery, the incomprehensible droning of hospital personnel as they deliver lifesaving or life-ending news. And although the hallowed halls are bathed in buckets of bleach, it doesn’t erase the noxious odor of decay that’s seeped beyond vinyl and into the skeletal structure of the time-worn building.

But it wasn’t just the atmosphere that made me sick to my stomach…it was the familiarity of it all. It’s a part of my past that I don’t like to revisit—a part of me that I keep in the dark for a reason.

My parents—using the word loosely here—were terrible fucking people. Two egotists who couldn’t love each other without swallowing the other one whole. They were neglectful because they became so consumed by their own lives that they forgot about the life they brought into this world, and I’m not just talking about myself.

When I was a kid, I had a younger brother. We were four years apart, and when he was born, the doctors told my parents that he had a congenital heart defect. It was a chronic condition, but with treatment, he would be able to live a long, normal life. I didn’t think much of it at the time since I was so young. I didn’t treat him any differently, really.

Until he got weaker. And when he got weaker, I begged my parents to do something. But because they were going through their divorce at the time, fighting every second of every day and focusing all their attention and money on winning their child custody battle, they couldn’t have cared less. All they wanted was to be the victor in their fucked-up relationship.

My brother needed a valve replacement, and since my mom and my dad were too wrapped up in their divorce to realize he was getting weaker, his heart stopped beating when he was only eight. The doctor told them that surgery could’ve saved him if they’d noticed his condition deteriorating, which is exactly what I tried to tell them. But it was like they never heard or saw me. It was like I wasn’t even there.

My brother was promised a full life—one with obstacles, yes, but a full life nonetheless—and I misplaced my faith in the people I thought were going to help him. I couldn’t do anything to save him. I was twelve. I didn’t have the money or the jurisdiction or even the knowledge to ensure my brother got the surgery he needed.

I failed him. I lost him. And even though the blame sits solely on my parents’ shoulders, the guilt still chokes me. If I could’ve just…done something…maybe he would still be here. If I’d tried harder or somehow forced them to listen. If I’d gone to someone else for help instead of blindly relying on my parents, maybe things would’ve been different.

So as soon as Cali told me what happened to her mother, we took my car and raced over to the hospital as fast as we could. I wasn’t about to let her go through the same pain I went through alone.

Since I’m not family, I wasn’t allowed back with her. I sat for a devastatingly long time by myself, in an uncomfortable hospital chair, praying that Cali and her mother would be okay. Maybe I’ve lost my goddamn mind, but I feel this duty to protect Cali and her loved ones, as if it’ll amend the mistake I made in not protecting my brother.

She came out of the room after about an hour and sat next to me. She’d barely gotten comfortable when the presiding doctor came over to talk to us about her mother’s condition. Apparently, Cali’s mom has multiple sclerosis, and she was admitted to the hospital during Cali’s and my dance lesson. The doctor said she’d probably been suffering from a severe vertigo flare-up for the past few days. She was trying to open a window in her room for fresh air, and one of the neighbors saw her collapse from across the street. So they rushed over to the apartment and called an ambulance.

Cali never told me her mother was sick, or that she was her primary caretaker. And I took her away from her mother because I needed help stretching my stupid hip. If Cali had been home, none of this would’ve happened.

I wish she had told me what was going on. I wish I could’ve helped somehow, but all I did was make everything worse.

It feels like history’s repeating itself.

I stopped keeping track of time after the sky darkened. Since the doctor broke the news, Cali and I have found refuge in the semi-busy waiting room, and I have a feeling that she won’t want to leave until her mother gets discharged. The doctor said he wanted to keep her a few days to monitor her symptoms, assess the severity, and then form a plan of action to give her mother the best life possible with her chronic condition.

Cali and I haven’t spoken for twenty minutes. She was, however, cooperative enough to let me give her my hoodie so she didn’t freeze. Even though our chairs are right next to each other, I’ve never felt so far away from her. She’s curled in on herself, hugging her knees to her chest, her face streaked with leftover tears and her sclera feathered with burst blood vessels. Her hair is a scraggly mess shielding her face, and even beneath the coverage of my hoodie, I can still see her body shake.

I don’t know what to say to her. I don’t know how to make any of this better. All I want to do is hold her and tell her that everything’s going to be okay. But the worst part of it all is that I never knew how hard her life really was. She’s had to take care of her sick mother and younger brother for years. No person should have to bear that much responsibility.

After my brother’s death, my parents were so grief-stricken that they began to shower me with materialistic shit, as if that would somehow make up for the love I’d lost over the years. From there on out, they chose to stay together and give me everything I could’ve ever wanted. I flunked a test and wanted to go on an impromptu vacation? My mom would have a private jet ready for me within the hour. I needed a job over the summer but wasn’t qualified for any? My dad would get me an internship at his business, or he’d pull strings with other business owners to hire me.

I haven’t really spoken to my parents since I entered the NHL. I’m cordial with them, sure, but I don’t rely on them for anything. I don’t want to be around them. And when I’m older, I don’t want my wife and kids to be around them either. Forgiveness is something I’m working toward, but it’s hard when a person’s sincerity is so weak it’s questionable. My parents regretted their decision (or lack thereof) because the worst possible outcome came true. If the outcome had been a simple dip in my brother’s health, they wouldn’t have felt an ounce of guilt for not giving him the attention he needed. Now I wish they hadn’t done shit for me—I wish I had grown a backbone and refused all their lavish gifts.

I never had to work for anything—aside from hockey. But Cali…Cali’s had to work for everything. She’s running a dance studio, looking after her mother and brother, and looking after herself (barely). It’s no wonder she didn’t like me at first. We’re complete opposites. I was the self-conceited asshole with the flashy car who blocked her in because I was feeling petty. She was the struggling sister who needed an open spot to pick up her brother.

This girl teaches who knows how many dance classes a day, has to drop off and pick up Teague from hockey practice, then has to go home and take care of her mother. She doesn’t get any time to herself. And that’s just based on the information I know; she probably has so much more on her plate that she’ll never tell me.

The waiting room is completely silent. Well, aside from the occasional hacking cough. We’re crammed in a twenty square-foot area, and an endless line of hideous chairs wrap around the perimeter while the rest remains back-to-back in the center of the room. There’re no TVs or magazines. Just a fuckton of chairs. Flimsy chairs with hard, wooden armrests, backrests with gaudy geometric patterns, and cushions that are the nastiest shade of shit brown. The only pop of color in this depressing landscape is a green snake plant in the corner, and even that dude doesn’t look like he wants to be here. The accompanying glug of the water dispenser goes off every few minutes, as does the tick of the clock hanging directly above us. The waiting is excruciating. The distance, however, is going to kill me.

I gently rub Cali’s arm, fearful of startling her but hoping that she’ll give me a glimpse of her beautiful face. My hoodie is giant on her, turning her figure into a shapeless pile of cotton.

“It’s not your fault, Calista,” I whisper, working past a swallow in my shredded throat, my heart beating a slow, sluggish tune akin to the beeping of a vital signs monitor attached to a heavily sedated patient.

She bristles under my touch, but she doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t turn to face me. Her body remains in the same position it has for the last hour—half-fetal, so incredibly small that it’s almost as if she’s punishing herself for taking up too much space.

I hate seeing her like this—so helpless. I don’t know how to help without overstepping boundaries. All I want to do is hold her, but I can tell that’s the last thing she wants right now. Does she even want me here?

I know I’m going to regret it, but I try filling the empty space with words of consolation—to show her that I’m here if she needs me, and that I’m not going anywhere. “Your mom’s going to be okay. I’ll stay here with you for as long as you want.”

Involuntarily, my hand reaches out to scrounge for skin-to-skin contact, but she’s deprived me of that as well. I am lucky enough, however, to receive more than her usual grunt of acknowledgment. She turns the slightest bit toward me, only enough so I can catch a sliver of her face.

“I hate hospitals,” she murmurs, displeasure crunching her brow and a frown fastened to her lips. “It feels like I’ve spent half my life in them.”

Hospitals. I can work with that.

“I hate them too,” I offer, notching my thumbnail into the woodgrain of the chair’s armrest. “My brother was really sick when I was younger. He practically lived at the hospital. I knew every corridor by the back of my hand.”

Cali’s gaze crawls over to me, analyzing my face in search of grief. “Was?”

I press my bitten nail into the chipped wood, folding the keratin. “He’s…not here anymore,” I confess, unable to halt the grinding thoughts in my head about my late brother. About how sickly and malnourished he looked in the end. About how, despite frequenting the hospital, he never received the treatment he deserved.

“Oh, Gage. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay. I just…don’t want to get into it right now.”

Cali seems to sink further into her seat. “Right. Yeah. If you ever do, though, I’ll be here to listen.”

I want to say thank you, but the words turn to sludge in my mouth, and I don’t have the energy to force them into the world. So, I carefully extricate myself from the conversation and focus on my own silence, on the air entering through my nose and the deep breaths exiting through my mouth. I focus on the acidic burn in my eyes from keeping them open for so long. I focus on the creaky discomfort of my hip from the subpar guest chairs. I focus on the faint gnaw of hunger in my belly since I skipped dinner.

Cali said that Teague was at a playdate when everything happened, and that he’s being driven over to the hospital as we speak. Teague’s just a fucking kid. A great kid who’s dealing with the worst possible thing the world could have thrown at him. Cali and her family are the last people in the world that deserve this kind of heartache. If I could switch my life with hers, if I could bear the weight of her pain, I would do it in a heartbeat.

I don’t know how to describe it, but it feels like there’s this invisible thread connecting me and Cali. Everything she feels and projects into the world—I feel it too. Maybe not to the degree she does, but I feel it in aftershocks.

As exhausted as I am, I’m not going to sleep until Cali does. I need to watch over her, to make sure she’s okay, and I can’t do that if my head’s dangling halfway off the armrest. I’m about to reach out and try my luck at starting another less morbid conversation when my stomach grabs my attention with a monstrous rumble.

The only thing worse than hospitals themselves? The food. And not just hospital cafeteria food, but vending machine food.

I don’t want to leave Cali’s side for too long, but I’m starving. And if I’m starving, then she has to be too. So, I internally debate with myself on what I should do, all while the continuous rumbling refuses to cease, and I eventually stand up for the first time in two straight hours.

My joints creak, and my knees pop. “I’m going to get some food for us, okay? I’ll just be around the corner.”

“Okay.”

I shuffle into the hall with my useless hip, drag myself in front of the dilapidated vending machine, and stare into the clouded, tempered glass illuminated by spurts of blue light. The glass is covered in scratches and oily fingerprints, but the clarity of it doesn’t seem to matter as there’s barely any product inside. A few lone bags of chips, a single chocolate bar, and a package of corn nuts.

Great. Awesome.

I shove my hand into my pocket to fish out a few dollar bills—which are crinkled, of course—and quickly try to iron them out with my clammy fingers. Impatience cleaves through me while I stare dazedly at the cash validator. I take my (mostly) flattened bill and ease it into the slot, watching as it slips halfway in before the machine announces to the whole hallway with an ear-piecing screech that my money’s been declined.

You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.

I smear both of my hands down my face, letting my fingers snag on my heavy eyelids.

Deep breaths, Gage. You need to stay calm for Cali.

With a determined grunt, I take the bill and straighten it on the edge of the wall, sawing it back and forth until…it pretty much looks the same as it originally did. I gently shove that fucker into the slot, wait for that infuriating screech to go off, but it never does. The bill slipped inside faster than a lubed-up cock.

I click one of the buttons for the last bag of Doritos and watch as the spiral pushes it forward comically slowly, the orange package of cheesy, heavily processed, triangular chips budging closer to the edge. And it tips forward enough that it could easily fall into the dispenser without additional help, but it doesn’t. It doesn’t move. The bag is stuck teetering on the ledge of its shelf.

This is some sick joke. It has to be. What did I do to you, God? I mean, I did do a lot of shit, but why do you have to punish me now? Couldn’t it wait? Like, until I got home? Or three years from now?

I’m aware that the hospital is nearly silent aside from hushed voices and machinery. But I’m also aware that if I don’t eat something soon, I’m going to turn into a fucking demon and start ransacking trashcans.

This might be controversial, but I start shaking the vending machine. Hard. My hip doesn’t allow me to kick it, so shaking is all I have. The whole thing comes to life in a cacophony of metal and springs, which can definitely be heard all the way out in the waiting room. There’s a point where the vending machine comes off the ground, but none of the items inside wiggle free from their spiral prisons.

“Motherfucker,” I hiss under my breath, setting the machine back on the ground and waving off the concerned stares of passersby.

I bang my forehead against the germ-ridden glass, watching as my breath fogs the scuffed surface. Screw this night. Seriously. Screw everything about it.

“Do you need help?” a small, polite voice asks from beside me. It’s one of those kid voices that are bubbly sweet and basically ooze hope and sunshine and butterflies. It’s annoying as hell.

“No, thanks,” I grumble, peeling back my forehead and turning to face the ankle biter who decided to interrupt my sulking.

But upon recognition, my frustration ebbs, and my impatience swirls away along with it. It’s Teague, and he’s looking up at me with wide eyes, his puffy cheeks sprinkled in a red hue from the nightly chill.

It’s a breath of fresh air to see the little guy.

“Sorry, Teague. I didn’t see you there. How are you doing?” I ask, crouching down to his height, a consolatory grimace sliding onto my chapped lips. I ruffle his hair, but it doesn’t seem to diffuse the dark cloud lingering over his four-foot-seven body.

“I’m okay. Mom’s been sick for a long time,” he says in a disturbingly distant voice, no evidence of tears swimming in his eyes, and no tired bags under them alluding to sleep deprivation. He looks…normal. Maybe he’s in shock.

I don’t know what the mortality rate is for multiple sclerosis, but I know what it’s like to see your loved ones suffer in pain for an extended period of time.

Unexpected moisture licks my eyes, and my heart weakly pulses with sympathy. “I’m so sorry, buddy. I can only imagine how hard that must be.”

Teague ignores me. “Are you hungry?” he questions, dividing his attentive eyes between me and the gloating vending machine.

“I’m fine, Little Man,” I assure him.

He frowns—which makes him look just like Cali—and rummages around for something in his pocket, brandishing a fistful of multicolored, half-melted gummy worms. I have no idea where his hand has been…or what he’s done with those things.

And suddenly, the riot in my gut is dead silent. “Let’s go see if your sister wants one, yeah?”

I walk him over to the waiting room with the expectation of finding Cali burrowed even further into my hoodie, but to my surprise, she’s standing and looking right at me. Her eyes are bloodshot, tears pearl on her lashes, and faint streaks have been left in her foundation from previous crying bouts. Her hair has the subtlety of a lion’s mane, and I can see dark stains of tears and snot on my hoodie from when she probably used it as a tissue.

“I want to go home,” she says quietly, hugging her arms around her midsection.

I cradle the side of her face, ghosting my thumb over the last remnants of water on her cheekbone, a smile emerging on my lips like a crocus shaking off powdered clumps of snow.

She came back to me. My girl came back to me.

I soften my voice, undoubtedly making Cali privy to the undercurrents of worry riding on my tongue. “Your home?”

“No. Yours.”