The Cruelest Kind of Hate (Riverside Reapers Book 3)

GAGE

This wasn’t how the night was supposed to go, but like always, I have a tendency to fuck up all the good things in my life. And right in front of me is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.

I have to remind myself that this girl isn’t just some figment of my imagination—that she’s the greatest blessing I could’ve ever received on this planet. That no human could’ve been conceived to be this perfect. That she must be some higher deity who’s given her hair color to California’s sunsets; that the constellations must’ve borrowed the formation of her freckles for their beauty; and that the ocean could never possibly rival the blue of her eyes.

Cali murmurs something unintelligible, a new layer of wetness signaling that her tears must have finally fallen and found purchase on my upper back. With our lack of clothing, I can feel the pummeling of her heart. I can hear it in the vacuum-seal of space we’re in, and it’s cathartic.

“My head and my heart want two different things,” Cali burbles, the clarity of her words obstructed by thickening saliva and sporadic sniffles.

We disentangle from each other, and the moment I see my girl’s gorgeous face, my heart sings for her attention, her touch, her love. Goops of mascara streak down her cheeks, and her red eyes suffer from burst capillaries. But despite the struggle on her face, I’ve never seen her look more beautiful. Raw.

“Which one is more important to you?” I dab at the leftover tears blemishing her pale complexion.

“I think…I think it’s my heart.”

To see Cali so numb, so drained—it cracks a fissure deep in my sternum, one close to splitting my heart at the seam. I want to be there for her, to prove to her that I’m not going anywhere, but I fear that her self-preservation instincts will keep me far away.

What are you supposed to do when you want to take care of someone who’s too afraid to let you?

“Then maybe you should listen to your heart.”

“But my heart’s selfish.”

“Humans are selfish by nature. That’s just a part of life, Spitfire. And I know you probably won’t believe me, but you’re the least selfish person I know,” I tell her, unable to tear my palm from the curve of her tear-softened cheek, anguish curdling in my stomach.

She bears desolation in the hard lines of her face, and it’s like I’m standing idly by as her inner light begins to dim, eclipsing her in perpetual darkness. Everything seems duller—her hair, her eyes, her posture.

She doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t look up at me. Her eyes are downcast, finding interest in the smears of dirt that begrime the hallway floor.

“Calista.” I use a knuckle to tip her chin up so she finally looks at me, and immediately, affection twins with something deeper in my heart, leaving it in a state of disarray. “It’s okay to put yourself first. It’s okay to dream and want. It’s okay to be selfish if you’ve been selfless for so long. But if you never go after what you want, you’ll never allow yourself the chance at a better life. The chance at a happier life.”

“I don’t want to let anyone down,” she wails.

“At this point, I think the only person you’re letting down is yourself. You play one of the most important roles in this whole equation. If you’re not taking care of yourself, then everything else falls to chaos. You’re the glue that holds your family together.”

Cali wraps her arms around her midsection, salty water refilling her eyes, distorting the darker blue rings of her irises. “I’m so tired of being the glue. I don’t want to be the glue for the rest of my life.”

“I know, baby. And you won’t be. Your mom’s going to be alright; you’ve done everything you can for her. And Teague will find his footing as he grows older,” I tell her, catching those sickle-shaped droplets as they begin to drip down. “And as for us, even though there isn’t really an ‘us,’ I’m not going anywhere. I’m here to show you that none of this works without you prioritizing your own happiness.”

Saying all these things to Cali—things that sound a lot wiser than I would’ve ever assumed myself capable of being—makes me realize that hockey isn’t my only purpose. After Trip, I was certain it was. Hell, I was so determined to get back on the ice after my injury that I went out of my way to take dance lessons and do physical therapy.

My purpose might’ve been hockey, but that all changed the moment I saw Cali. The moment she cussed me out and threatened me in front of half the local hockey community. The moment I realized that this girl has a hold on me unlike any other, and that even if she decides to let me go, I’ll run right back to her.

Everything is second when it comes to Cali.

“Thank you, Gage. I just…I think I need some more time before I’m ready to invest in a relationship. I’m sorry.”

She’s considering it.

And even though it’s not the answer I would’ve liked, I’m more than happy to wait. “You don’t need to be sorry, Cali. I’m a patient man.”

“I really don’t deserve you,” she cries, flinging herself into my body and knocking me backward with the force, her small arms latched around my torso.

I bark out a chuckle. “I’m the one who doesn’t deserve you.”

She rears back in confusion. “What?”

My heart begins to hiccup, everything else coming to a standstill except for her. She’s a lightning strike in a chasm of deep onyx, beautiful to look at but dangerous to touch up close. Dangerous yet alluring. A once-in-a-lifetime kind of phenomenon.

“After all this time, you still don’t understand what you mean to me, do you?”

Cali blinks at me with those doe eyes of hers.

I take her hand and rest it over my heart, feeling it speed up drastically. I’m convinced my heart could distinguish her touch even if I lost my eyesight.

“My heart’s always this fucked up when you’re around. You make me so goddamn crazy that I can never think straight when it comes to you. You’re just…you’re perfect. So insanely perfect that you should come with a warning label.”

I want to say those three words. I want to say them so badly. I know she’s not ready to hear them, but the feelings I have for her will never change. Maybe it’s too early. Maybe this is all infatuation. Maybe I’m just a young idiot who’s fallen completely head over heels. I don’t care what it is. All I care about is clinging to this emotion for as long as I can.

She spares me a smile just bordering on toothy benevolence, and slowly, the light begins to rekindle inside her. “You can be really sweet when you aren’t being an ass,” she admits humorously.

Her hand drops from my chest, giving my poor heart a reprieve, and I bring her body closer to mine, my hands roving over the curve of her spine and the small dimples resting just above her butt. “See? I’m a changed man because of you.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”

“Oh, really?”

Cali lowers my hands until I grasp the bottom of her ass—which is more than bare and cheeky thanks to her scrap of a thong. “You’re still a dog, Gage Arlington,” she drawls in an erotic whisper, her breath mangling when I knead the plentiful fat there.

“Then fucking chain me up, Spitfire.”

For the first time, she’s the one who initiates the kiss, servicing every Cali-starved crevice of my body, her tongue rolling over mine in a slow, deliberate stroke. My fingers squeeze her ass cheeks so tightly that I’m a hundred percent certain I’m going to leave a red handprint behind. I groan into her mouth, feeling my erection harden like granite, and I’m gonna give myself two minutes before I tear through this flimsy costume and flash everyone in the nearby vicinity.

When she takes my bottom lip between her teeth, a cocktail of desire and oxytocin mixes with the unwise decision of a few too many drinks in my stomach.

“Cali, we can’t do this here.”

“You’re right,” she purrs. “We haven’t even danced yet.”

I freeze as the aridity in my mouth grows. “Wha⁠—”

I don’t even have time to construct a robust response before the lyric-less EDM music over the speakers changes into a pop anthem. The tempo has sped up, and thanks to numerous car rides with Fulton torturing me with hits from the 2000s, I immediately recognize the beginning notes of Britney Spears’ “I’m a Slave 4 U.” A giddy grin seizes Cali’s face, and before I can protest, she pulls me onto the dance floor.

The blood in my ears, however, overpowers my sensibility to evacuate the scene as quickly as possible. Remember when I said dancing was easy? I was wrong. So wrong. It’s harder than anything I’ve ever done before.

With lips full of innuendo and an arresting sway of her hips, she’s dancing in front of me, her plunging cleavage mashing against my chest thanks to the leverage of her heels. My hands settle on her butt as my fingers brush against the thin strip of fabric getting swallowed by her ass cheeks. It’d be so easy to slide these off her right now without anyone noticing, and the access makes heat swelter in my fattening cock.

I’ve never met a girl who can move like Cali, and I’m cherishing every fucking second of this dance. And then, as if she can sense just how insanely hungry my erection is for the slightest attention, she spins around so her back is flush with my chest.

Holy fuck.

She guides my arms to her waist, rolling her body in time to the music. Her hips move back and forth in a sultry way that makes me grip her curves even harder, and her butt jiggles each time it grinds against my dick.

This was a bad idea, Gage. A terrible idea! But also a really good one.

She’s throwing her hair all over the place, placing my clammy hands on her sweaty tits, dancing with the skill and sensuality of a stripper. My cock is doing everything in its power to refrain from slamming inside her.

Three’s a crowd, dude.

Pleasure sparks like tinder in the bottom of my stomach, making it hard to concentrate. Cali is still jiggling her butt carelessly, her silhouette backlit by a pulse of strobe lights. She’s touching me in all the right places, notching her crack with my boner, undulating her hips to build a friction so delicious that it stings.

She seems blissfully unaware of what she’s doing to me, and that makes it hurt even more. I’ve never felt anything like this before—this craving to taste every inch of her until I overdose. I want to fuck her. No, I need to fuck her.

My fingers grip Cali’s hips harshly, enough to leave raised scratches on the squishable meat there. I lean into her ear breathlessly, my voice dropping an octave from the pain currently shackling me. “Calista.”

“Gage.”

“You’re playing with me.”

Instead of letting me rest peacefully in the bed I’ve made, she moves one of my hands to her ivy-hidden center, arching just slightly against my crotch. “I thought you liked it when I played with you,” she purrs.

Shit, shit, shit! Keep it together, man!

The only reason I’m okay with what’s happening right now is because the dance floor is pretty congested, and it’s way too noisy for anyone to overhear our conversation.

My chest bloats with a low, animalistic growl, and my desire metamorphosizes into a bloodlust that’s far from human. “Baby, I fucking love it when you play with me. But if you keep moving like that, you’re going to be the first girl I bend over in the middle of a party. Is that what you want?”

I keep my hand over her pussy, feeling the heat seep into my palm. My other hand is on a mission to fondle her overspilling boob, and if I wasn’t already fighting off a full-body fever, the warmth of pre-cum wetting the material of my costume makes my life that much harder.

I’m not going to last the rest of the night if she keeps teasing me like this.

“You want to fuck my pretty pussy, Gage?” she taunts quietly, inching my hand just a little farther south, where my fingers catch on the hood of her clit. I’m so close I can practically feel the wetness secreting from her swollen lips.

A nasally whine hisses out through my nostrils, and my dick’s in so much pain that it hurts to move, let alone imagine the tireless trek upstairs while I clench to prevent from coming everywhere. “Want it so bad, Spitfire. Want to impale you on my giant cock and milk that sweet cunt until there’s nothing left in you.”

She continues to gyrate against me effortlessly, and I have to pretend like I’m not desperately sucking in air just to keep up with her. Her hand then intertwines with mine, and she extends her arm up, letting me spin her around—and also letting the cramped bodies nearby get a look at my glaringly obvious boner.

And when she stops right in front of me, she licks her lips. “Then fucking do it.”