SWNOVELS The Cruelest Kind of Hate: Chapter 24
GAGE
I’ll never know what cramps feel like, but I’m guessing they’re the equivalent of having someone wring out your intestines like a wet sponge. Consistently. Over a seven-day period.
Pretty soon after I got Cali to bed, she passed out, which is probably a good thing considering she was crushing the bones in my neck when she was holding on to me.
When Aeris told me that Cali was sick, she didn’t really go into specifics. She said it could be one of two things. One: it could be a common cold that comes with the changing weather, but none of the students in her class were sick, so she thought that seemed unlikely. Or two: she was on her period. And then Aeris, as usual, overshared some very traumatizing memories about her period which I definitely didn’t need to know.
So I did the wise thing and stocked up for both with the usual soup, tissues, cough medicine, cough drops, thermometer, and Gatorade. And the usual pads, tampons, tissues (again), chocolates, heating pad, bath bomb, herbal tea, and candle. Oh, and a vanilla milkshake from Been There, Bun That.
I know next to nothing about periods. The only walking pamphlet of information I was afforded was the random middle-aged woman at the store staring at me while I was in the feminine product aisle.
I wanted to do something for Cali to make her feel better, so I enlisted Teague to help me spruce up her room for when she wakes. And he so generously offered to lend me some of Cali’s favorite movies, which—a surprise to no one—are all very graphic horror movies. Not a chick flick or Disney movie in sight. There’s even one in black-and-white because the color version had been banned in several countries.
Even though the rest of Cali’s apartment is decorated for Halloween, there were no decorations in her own room. So I took the liberty of finding a few twinkle lights and hanging them around. I then laid out everything I got her at the foot of her bed, ready to sprint to the bathroom in case she needs me to draw her a relaxing bubble bath. I heard heat helps with cramps. I also have trusty dusty Tylenol in case none of my efforts seem to work, but here’s to hoping they do. I have a tendency to fuck shit up a lot of times—mostly from carelessness, sometimes from overconfidence. I don’t want this to be one of those times. I don’t want there to be a time at all when it comes to Cali.
I know I should be watching practice right now, but there’s no way in hell I’m leaving her in the state she’s in. And honestly? There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.
While she’s curled on her side, snoring quietly, I relegate myself to the other side of her bed and keep a respectable distance between us. I don’t want to overstep any boundaries here. Like she said, we’re not…we’re not together. Just friends. But sometimes it feels like we’re more. It’s all really confusing, but she’s not ready yet. And I’ll be ready for when she is.
I know the future isn’t set in stone, but I think about it all the time. Specifically with Cali. I wonder if she’ll still be teaching when she’s in her fifties. I imagine myself swinging by Been There, Bun That and getting a milkshake to bring her after class. I’ll stand by the front desk and watch her dance, all as the condensation from her milkshake drips into my now-freezing hand, and she’ll keep dancing like nobody’s watching. But I’ll always watch her. Until my old heart stops beating.
I’m tearing up just thinking about it. Thinking about if we decide to have children. Thinking about us bantering like the old married couple we might eventually be. (Preferably) not thinking about having old person sex as our bones clank together like plastic skeleton Halloween decorations. Thinking about how grown-up Teague will be, and how he’ll probably be the one to put us in a retirement home after he gets fed up with our shit. Thinking about—
“Are you crying?”
I get whiplash when I spin my head around, staring bug-eyed at a very sleepy Cali sitting up next to me, her curls even more fluffed up from her short-lived nap.
“What? No,” I grumble, wiping my (only slightly) watery eyes with the back of my hand. “I have allergies.”
She reaches out to touch my arm, like one would comfort a crying child. “Men are allowed to cry, Gage. It’s okay.”
My heart begins to rev at an off-road kind of speed, and that cinnamon scent synonymous with her embraces me, as fresh as the aroma of oven-baked cinnamon rolls. Like I’ve said a million times before—she’s perfect. From her head of fire to her black-painted toes. She insists she looks unattractive right now, but I don’t see it. Not one bit.
“You know, I’m regretting saving you from the bathroom,” I mutter.
“If you regret it so much, then why does it look like a cloud threw up in my room?” she asks, gesturing to the white string of lights and the very girly products strewn over her quilted bedspread.
“It’s my charity for the day.”
She makes this little huffing noise that’s still scratchy with sleep, and I know this is the last thing I should be thinking about, but it sends a direct line of arousal straight to my dick.
Dude, read the room.
“Considering I almost died today, I think you should be a lot nicer to me,” she declares, turning her nose up with a fake—yet entirely irresistible—pout.
Since I’d self-exiled myself to my own side of the bed, I scoot a little closer, still very much aware of the invisible delineation that exists between us. “Actually, since I saved your life, you should be a lot nicer to me.”
When she glowers at me, butterflies tight-fist my gut, and a smile blusters over my face. But it’s not a deliberate smile—I mean, it is. It’s involuntary. As natural to me as breathing. Maybe I’m just permanently smiling whenever I’m with Cali.
“This is me being nice to you,” she snaps in her “nice” voice, rearing her arm back to hit me somewhere on my body—it’s a surprise every time—but she winces and groans before she can do any real damage. She leans her head back against the headboard, gripping her lower belly and performing some weird breathing technique to get through the pain.
I hate seeing her in pain. I’d do anything in the world to make her pain go away.
I quickly lean over and grab the Tylenol on her nightstand, along with a glass of cold water I brought in for her while she was sleeping. “Please take some Tylenol for me. You’ll feel better once you do.”
I pop off the lid of the pill bottle and dump three small tablets into my palm, then hand them off to her. She throws them into her mouth without any protest—which I’m thankful for—chasing the dry capsules down with a hearty gulp of ice water.
She mumbles out a quiet thanks, seeming the slightest bit relieved that the healing process has begun, and her fingers continue to rub the crux of the pain just below her navel.
Since I’m not putting all my trust in the Tylenol, I grab the rolled-up heating pad and hand it to her. “I know you probably already have one, but I got this for you.”
She takes it and looks up at me, and I can’t tell if the tears in her eyes are from the gift or the cramps. “You got me a heating pad?” she exclaims in disbelief.
“Of course I did.”
Cali’s eyes scan all the gifts on her bed. When her gaze connects with the half-melted milkshake sitting in a bowl I scavenged from the cupboard, a gasp rises in her chest, stuck somewhere between her throat and her mouth. “You remembered.”
I remember everything about you.
“Vanilla’s an easy flavor to remember,” I say casually, brushing it off as I tuck my arms behind my head and lean back against the headboard.
“Thank you,” she whispers, and I don’t know what it is about this particular smile, but this is the one that knocks the breath out of my lungs. It’s not big enough to show teeth, but it does make her nose scrunch up, and there’s no gloss or ostentatious color to tarnish the natural beauty of her lips.
I want her to smile at me like that all the time.
The blood rushing in my ears sounds like the ocean, there’s sweat breaking out on my hairline, and my stomach keeps doing nauseating handsprings whenever she glances my way.
All I have the brain power to say is “Mm-hm.” Definitely not calm, cool, or collected anymore. More like panicking, panicking, PANICKING.
Cali opens her mouth to say something, but she’s interrupted when she crunches over again in pain, this time clenching her teeth together and emitting a tiny whimper.
My back snaps straight, and I immediately reach for the heating pad in her hand. “You need to turn it on,” I say, but as I go to grab it from her, she swats my hand away.
“I’m fine. It’s not that bad,” she lies.
“It’s not fine. You were on the fucking bathroom floor when I found you.”
“Gage, I don’t nee—”
I reposition myself on the bed, plastering my back to her headboard and spreading my legs apart so that there’s room in front of me. “Come here,” I demand, brooking no room for argument as I pat the comforter.
I can tell Cali wants to protest with the way she glares at the spot like it’s been contaminated with some kind of biowarfare poison.
“I think I’m okay over here.”
“Cali, get your sweet little ass over here,” I growl, whacking the mattress again for good measure, though I’m not above grabbing her and planting her right between my thighs. Which, in hindsight, probably won’t turn out well for me.
She gives up the heating pad like a dog stubbornly relinquishing a chew toy. Rolling her eyes, she crawls over to me—which shouldn’t look as sexy as it does—and then squeezes herself between my legs, moving her butt around until it’s perfectly snug against my cock.
She turns to look over her shoulder, her eyes like spearpoints aimed directly at me. “Why am I sitting here?”
“If you’d just relax, I’m going to massage the cramps out.”
“Pfft, there’s no way that’s going to work.”
“It is going to work, and you’re not going to fight me on this because I picked your lifeless body off the floor less than thirty minutes ago.”
Cali grumbles to herself but slowly melts into my chest, sheathing her claws and fangs enough for me to wrap my arms around her torso, placing my hands over her bare, rounded belly. The hard fly of her pants digs into my forearms, but it doesn’t bother me.
She flinches. “Your hands…”
My hands flinch alongside her. “What?”
“They’re warm,” she observes, eventually settling into the mold of my palms and letting me feel her stomach balloon with a deep breath.
She’s gone boneless against me, resting her head against my chest, and I begin to knead her lower abdomen, exerting pressure as my fingers rub meticulous circles into her flesh. The steadiness of her voice dips into a raspy moan, dialing my hunger for her to a ravenous ten, and the fact that her ass is swallowing my dick doesn’t do much to satiate my soaring libido.
I locate a tight muscle and coax the tension out, determined to fend the cramps off for as long as possible. Is massaging the best preventive measure? Probably not, but I’ll give anything to be skin to skin with her for even a second.
“Oh, God…” She lurches forward as far as our position allows, too slow to quiet her cry before it pierces the air, just bordering on being loud enough to warrant a visit from a curious eight-year-old.
“Quiet, Spitfire. Teague’s still in the house, remember?” I nip at the stretch of neck below her earlobe, feeling her pounding pulse bash against my lips, tasting the salt from the traces of sweat still lingering on her skin.
“But it feels so good,” she whines.
You have no idea.
I continue to massage the swell of her belly, listening to the concoction of heated breaths and muffled whimpers in the otherwise silent space. I wish I could see how lax her face is—the dopey smile sewn onto her mouth, the struggle to keep her eyes open.
Sexual bodily desires aside, I focus on just being here with her in the present, committing to memory the feel of her body in my arms. I don’t allow myself to mourn her absence yet, even if I fear the self-imposed distance that follows. Whenever I’m away from her, all I can think about is running straight back to her. Running home.
“Are you feeling any better?” I ask, allowing my fingers to rest below her navel.
I’m not expecting much aside from a “yes,” but Cali turns around to face me, looking a thousand times more relaxed than she did a few minutes ago. No tight cinching of her brow, no concerning flush on her face, no misty eyes rife with fever.
A big, blush-inducing smile rewards me for my efforts, something strange and foreign swirling around in those stormy eyes. “Thank you, Gage.”
“You don’t have to thank me. If you got your period every day, I’d give you a massage every day until you felt better.” I’m probably as red as a beet, but I don’t feel the need to hide it anymore. If my body wants to make a fool out of me and broadcast my emotions for her to see, then so be it.
“Of course you would say something like that,” she chuckles.
“Because it’s true.”
Cali grabs my hand—which is still buzzing with the warmth from her skin—and interlocks our fingers together, not caring that my palms are a little clammy or that my blush deepens and slopes down my collarbone. “Because you’re you,” she corrects.
Maybe I’m love-drunk or dehydrated or extremely sleep-deprived, but I swear that the anomaly forming in her now-gray irises resembles something close to…love.
I squeeze her hand as my gaze carves a languid path from the striking beauty of her eyes to the ample tenderness of her lips. Two things in great contrast to one another that somehow work on the same canvas—two things that would never work on anyone else except her. “I’ll always be me, but I’m yours above it all.”
There is no preparatory cheek-holding or prolonged eye contact. It’s a rush of her mouth on mine with a breakneck urgency that I’ve never known possible, and she kisses me like she’ll die if she doesn’t.
I’ll die, too, if she ever stops.
But eventually she does, and I whine to have her lips back on mine.
“I have to apologize,” Cali says embarrassedly, ears red-tipped and fingers playing with the forefront curl of my hair.
Maybe it’s because her hands feel so good tugging at my scalp, but I have no idea what she’s talking about. “What?” I ask dumbly, coming down from a post-kiss high that’s rendered me slightly speechless and a whole lot brainless.
“I have to apologize. About hitting your car the first time we met,” she elaborates. “I was in the wrong from the beginning, but I was too proud to admit it. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have taken your parking spot in the first place. And I definitely shouldn’t have damaged your car.”
The lights turn back on in my head, and laughter fizzes up in my chest like carbonation in a sugary drink. My hand comes up to gently caress hers—which is still laboriously curling my hair—and I calm her aimless fidgeting. “You don’t need to apologize, Cali. I’m the one who’s sorry. I shouldn’t have boxed you in. And I was a ginormous dick for not moving my car when you asked me.”
“No, Gage. I still—”
“Hey. It’s okay. The damages barely cost anything. Money was never an issue,” I assure her, moving my hand to cup her cheek instead, and she’s generous enough to lean into my touch. “Plus, it was about time someone knocked me on my ass.”