The Cruelest Kind of Hate (Riverside Reapers Book 3)

GAGE

Fear. I know it well.

Sometimes it presents itself to me in different forms: an icy grip on my neck, heart palpitations, the burn of bile on my tongue, a short-lived panic that suffuses heat to my head. Right now, I’m experiencing all the above.

Teague’s helmet slams against the ice in a single freeze-frame, and then he goes absolutely still. My world goes even stiller.

My gaze quickly pivots to Cali, and there’s a slash of fear on her face, ripping through her composure as if it’s as flimsy as paper mâché. My throat protests the weight of a scream, but Cali’s pained cry ends up defiling the ambience of the arena. A banshee wail—an omen of something far darker than just death.

“Teague!”

I throw my gloves off and take the lead in skating over to him as fast as I can, not even incapacitated by the anxiety sloshing around in my stomach. Cali’s right on my heels, and I scramble over to Teague’s lifeless body, trying to assess him without moving him.

Come on, Teague.

Multiple sets of unwelcome eyes drag over us, unwilling to lend a helping hand, only willing to exude sympathy.

No, no, no. This isn’t happening. I’m not going to fail him like I did my brother. Realistically, somewhere deep in my subconscious, I know that the worst injury he could sustain is a gnarly concussion, but all I can think about is the possibility that he might not wake up, however irrational that thought may be. I underestimated my brother’s illness, and his condition only deescalated. What if I underestimate this?

“Come on, buddy. Open those eyes for me,” I whisper, waiting a few minutes to see if he comes to on his own, and I’m just about to scream for an ambulance when Teague groggily peels his eyes open with a groan.

“Did I make it?” he croaks.

I’m nearly to the point of tears, but not so far gone I forget to smile, and my lungs rattle with a bottled exhale, shooting out into the fifty-degree atmosphere like a gradually vanishing contrail. I know he’s asking about the goal, but all I say is, “Yeah, buddy. You made it.”

Cali’s a hysterical mess, and maybe it’s because my mind is in fix-it mode, but all I can focus on is alleviating her stress. I’m not granted a moment to lose it, even though that was singlehandedly one of the scariest things I’ve ever witnessed.

Yeah, I’m a hockey player who’s been injured a few times, but watching it happen to someone else you care about—someone who’s just a kid—makes it all the more terrifying.

I squeeze Teague gingerly, then let Cali bear hug him, and I swear she squishes him so tightly his spine almost pops.

My head is still reeling, my adrenaline has yet to come down from its massive spike, and my heart is on its own goddamn warpath with the way it’s pounding against my ribs. I walk over to the edge of the rink—too riled up to skate that far of a distance safely—and I steady myself on the plexiglass.

Even though my body’s not in any danger, it tenses in preparation for the nonexistent threat, all my senses being whaled on from every direction. My thoughts pinball around my skull, and I abandon my effort to go in search of a medic by simply just yelling for one, unsure if I’m stable enough to navigate the freezing corridors in the state I’m in. My vision wobbles and strains, and insuppressible nausea burbles deep in my gut.

I’m still terrified. I can’t—I can’t put into words what just happened. I thought I was about to relive the moment my brother passed away. Nobody in my life, except for Teague and Cali, has ever meant as much to me as my brother did. And when people mean something to you, the hurt and pain they experience affect you in the same way.

My brother’s memory had been shoved down below the depths of my subconscious, never to buoy to the top for the rest of my existence. But in this moment, everything comes flooding back to the surface, drowning me in anger, guilt, sorrow, and regret. Drowning me in all those unresolved emotions I tried to quell beneath a storm-aggravated ocean.

A medic—who the arena keeps stationed here for Reapers practices—comes sprinting over to me with a first aid kit, and I walk him over to Teague and Cali, praying that Teague’s injuries are minimal.

Cali gives the medic room to work, and she joins me a few feet away as I stare blankly at the little boy in front of me, who’s putting on a brave face even after the horrifying experience he just had.

Fuck. Why wasn’t I watching him more closely? I could’ve caught him before he fell. I could’ve prevented this from ever happening.

“Gage, you’re shaking,” Cali says quietly beside me, worry crumpling her features.

“What?” I look down at my pale hands, which are shaking rabbit-fast, and I will them to stop, but it’s like my control’s been capsized.

She wastes no time enclosing them in her own hands, warming my frigid skin, and immediately, the tremors end. I blink a few times and pinpoint my glossy gaze on our layered fingers, still trying to wrap my head around how quickly Cali’s touch calmed me, and now I’m mirroring her puzzled expression with one of my own.

“You freaked out as soon as Teague hit the ice.”

“I…”

It hurts to breathe. Why does it hurt to breathe?

I’m trying to get my brain and tongue to cooperate with one another, but the words never budge from my mouth. Nothing’s physically restricting me from saying anything, yet I’m struggling with a speechlessness that’s foreign to me. My throat makes this pathetic gurgling noise in lieu of an actual response.

“Okay, let’s sit down,” she coaxes, guiding me to the side opening of the rink. I practically have to puppeteer my limbs to keep them from buckling underneath me.

We take a seat on the curb, and her concern has somehow grown tenfold over the minute it took for us to get here. Her face is veiled in shadows cast by the harsh lighting, and her teeth print impressions into her bottom lip. She hasn’t let go of my hand since she grabbed it.

Her big, frisbee-sized eyes adhere to me. “Are you okay?”

Please say something. I’m fine. I’m good. Say anything, you idiot!

I moderate my voice as best as I can given my lack of breath. “I’m okay.”

And like some weird fucking placebo effect, I force myself to believe it until my physical symptoms almost all wane, leaving me with the searing reminder of Teague’s accident instead of the searing hole in my belly. Oxygen returns to my chest, the heat in my temples recedes, and control reaffirms its iron reign.

She doesn’t stop examining my face, and her fingers only slip from mine so she can caress my cheek. “Gage, what happened out there?”

I’m done hiding my past from her. It’s time to tell her everything. She deserves it. I deserve it.

“I haven’t told you the full story about my brother,” I admit, partially hating myself for not telling her my brother’s story sooner, partially hating the way hurt dampens her eyes. She’s patient with me while I choke down the rest of my qualms and free a long-hidden truth from a lockbox of trauma.

She slowly lowers her palm back onto my folded hands for moral support. If I thought mentioning him at the hospital was bad, this is going to be torture.

“His name was Trip, and he was my best friend. We used to do everything together as kids. We’d go on adventures down near the creek behind our house, we’d spend sleepless nights reading ghost stories to each other, we’d bake the most disgusting creations in the oven while my parents failed to supervise us.” A laugh wrests itself from me—a laugh I didn’t think I’d be capable of given this fucked-up trip down memory lane.

“He was, um, born with a heart defect. To be more specific, he had something called aortic stenosis, which basically meant that his aortic valve was too small. In order for his blood to flow properly, his heart had to work ten times harder to push blood out to the rest of his body. And over time, his heart grew weaker from the stress. The doctors told us he would be able to live a long, normal life as long as he received constant treatment, but my parents…”

I can’t even say it. For a split second, I’m controlled by my fear again, watching helplessly as it tears at my insides and rips me asunder, letting me bleed out from pulled-apart muscle. The moisture in my eyes triples, but I don’t blink, because I don’t want to let a tear fall.

“I’m here, Gage. It’s okay. I’m right here,” she murmurs, salving my newly opened wound with her soft voice, sidling up against my body and keeping our laced hands close to her heart.

Aside from Fulton, I’ve never told anyone else about Trip. I never talked about him because I didn’t want to share him with anyone. I didn’t want people to know him because I barely knew him. I didn’t get seventy-some-odd years to know him or see what kind of man he grew into.

I’m close to running away from this conversation, to hiding from that pitiful look in Cali’s eyes. But the moment I feel the beat of her heart, it neutralizes that terror inside me. I know I should want to bury that memory, but this is the first time in forever that I don’t punish it—or myself—for existing.

I square my shoulders and take a breath, comforted by the feel of our skin touching and by the lullaby her heart plays just for me. She gives me strength that I never would’ve found anywhere else. She gives me more support than my parents ever did.

“My parents are terrible, money-hungry fuckers who never gave a shit about me or my brother,” I growl, feeling unchecked anger wring the last remnants of grief from my body. “They knew how sick my brother was, and they didn’t do anything to help him. It wasn’t a matter of money or resources or time. It was a matter of fucking love. And in the end, Trip suffered because of my parents’ neglect.”

“I’m so sorry, Gage.”

“I could’ve saved him. If I’d just taken matters into my own hands, he still would be here today.”

I’ve tried so hard to be okay. I’ve tried so hard to stop punishing myself, but the truth is, if I don’t punish myself, I’ll grow to accept what happened to Trip…and that’s something I could never bring myself to do. The warning signs were all there. There was a sufficient amount of time for treatment to be done. This wasn’t some out-of-the-blue illness that appeared overnight. I was a kid, yeah, but all I had to do was go to someone—anyone—and ask for help.

I can’t believe I just thought he’d be okay. I was so fucking stupid. I was his big brother. I was supposed to look out for him, and I didn’t. He relied on me to keep him safe. That was my one job. That was my purpose in life.

“Hey.” Cali’s cheeks tuck into a frown—a sight that I hate every time I bear witness to it—and she rubs circles over the back of my knuckles. Her touch isn’t the electrifying firework show it usually is, though. It’s so inexplicably cold that it doesn’t even feel like she’s there.

“None of it was your fault. None of it, okay? Please tell me you know that.” A rare desperation rides on the heel of her words, and although her assurance is gentle in delivery, the weight of it bludgeons me.

“I was supposed to be his protector.”

“You were a kid, Gage. A kid. You did everything you could to protect him.”

I try to pull my hand away from her, but she doesn’t let me. I don’t care that I was just a kid. I could’ve done so much more to keep him here. When I remember my brother, I don’t look back fondly on the moments we shared together. I don’t celebrate his life. Instead, a forecast of depression and survivor’s guilt threatens to drown me in the same way my brother’s fate befell him.

“That doesn’t mean shit, Cali. You were a kid taking care of your mother, and she’s still here,” I snap.

Cali flinches slightly, as if my words burned her. “That’s different. You were so much younger⁠—”

My lip curls back from my teeth in a snarl, and the volume of our private conversation seems to carry in the open-ended space. “How is it any different?”

My first mistake was assuming Cali would back down from our altercation. Her irises dip into a darker shade of blue—one more reflective of a deep-water trench than of the ocean’s glistening surface. “I get that you blame yourself, Gage. I get it, I do. But take it from someone who’s punished themselves their whole life—it’s not worth it. That self-destructive cycle will ruin you. You are the last person to blame in this situation. You were the only person who truly cared for your brother, and even though he’s not here anymore, you filled his last moments with the love your parents were never willing to give him. You were there for him through it all. Do you know how lucky Trip was to have you as his best friend? He was so fucking lucky, and if he was here today, I bet you he’d say the exact same thing.”

I don’t…nobody’s ever said anything like that to me before. I stare at her with beads of moisture smeared over my lower lashes, with my words stuck between my teeth like grade A chewing gum.

“Please don’t live the rest of your life blaming yourself for something out of your control,” she implores, sounding like a broken record that I’ve played many times before. And finally, the connection of our palms spark with heat, her once-frosted fingertips now leaving thermal prints over my skin.

I want to break down in her arms, want to uncork years of sadness and let it flood out of me until my body’s nothing but a dehydrated husk. But I refrain, still unsure of where our relationship lies.

“When Teague fell out there, it took me back to the helplessness I felt when my brother died. If something happened to Teague and I failed to save him…it would break me,” I explain, welcoming back the quiver in my voice, as well as the emotion no longer silenced by deafening indignation.

I never really understood why I was so drawn to Cali—aside from her being beautiful and terrible for my ego—but I feel like I understand now. The way Cali treats her brother is the way I wish my parents had treated Trip. She cares about the things Teague’s passionate about, she cares about how he’s feeling, she cares about how she can be a better sister. She’s always there for him when he needs her. If my parents had even showed an ounce of what Cali practices in her heart, Trip would still be here today.

Both she and Teague fill the hole in my heart that was left by my brother. They’re the first people to have ever made me okay with revisiting Trip’s memory. I hadn’t realized how dark my life had been before they shared their light with me.

She wraps me in a hug that would’ve knocked me on my ass if I wasn’t already sitting down, and she slots her nose into my neck. “Thank you for looking out for Teague,” she whispers. “And thank you for telling me about your brother.”

With the volume of her curls tied up, I settle for stroking her back, clamping my eyes shut, and finally letting a single tear sluice down my cheek.

Thank you for being the girl to heal me.