“Strong things,” he said, breathing slowly. “All the things I’m not ashamed to want.”
I gripped his hair with both hands, clutching two fistfuls of soft locks between my trembling fingers. “I hate you.”
Relief swept across his face, his eyes glowing like stars and rainbow-colored lights. He’d finally gotten what he needed. And in some bizarre way, so had I. I couldn’t help but think that maybe he was right all along. Maybe hatred really was my love language.
“I was hoping you’d say that.” He pressed his lips to mine, kissing me so hard it felt like I was suffocating under his touch. We collapsed against each other, his mouth frenzied. Wild. I could feel his tongue slide between my open lips. I reached for his shirt and yanked it over his head, tossing it to the floor. My hands were on his back, my nails digging into his skin. The only thing I could hear was his heavy breathing, scorching as it sank inside my ear. His lips traveled along my jaw, all the way down to my collarbone.
“Maks,” I panted.
He stopped completely, snapping his head up. “You mean Snake,” he gasped between breaths. “This is awkward.”
“No, I mean from The Onslaught.”
“You’re picturing Maks from The Onslaught?”
“No. Ew. Bear with me.” I rubbed his neck and pulled him closer. “I was just thinking about The Snake Project. And, I mean, I have no interest in watching the source material, so just tell me. Do Maks and Margaret end up together?”
He smiled guiltily. “No. They both die.”
“Wow, that’s bleak. You said it was a romance.”
“I said it was doomed from the start.”
I gave him a half smile, despite the anxiousness buzzing in my stomach. “Isn’t everything doomed from the start?”
He watched my mouth as he ran his fingers along my cheek. Then he looked me in the eyes, really looked at me, and said, “I like to think people doom themselves.”
I wanted to ask him what he meant. If he thought the reason we were here in this position was because of some inherent fault of our own, and not a matter of forces beyond our control. I wanted to know if he believed in fate.
But instead of ruining yet another moment, I kissed him. I pulled him tight enough to memorize the sound of his heartbeat, no matter how irregular it was in the space between his chest and mine. The harder I kissed him, the more I wanted him to strip me open, dig out all of my pain, and have the choice to hate me or want me or leave me or forget me. I wanted him to regret me the way I would regret him later. If only in the midst of those ragged breaths and reckless kisses, I wanted our idea of enough to be the same. But it wasn’t, and that was an inescapable truth. Except for once, I didn’t want the truth. I wanted someone to lie to me the way only Snake could.
He slid his hands beneath my shirt, and it was gone. Skin to skin. I didn’t know how far I was willing to go, and it didn’t make a difference. I was only an empty shell trying to pretend there was a person inside. A full, living and breathing person capable of staying that way.
“Reggie,” Snake breathed against my neck. I couldn’t find a way to respond. He repeated my name, glancing up at me. “Your phone’s ringing.”
“I don’t care,” I whispered, pulling him to my lips.
“You know it’s your mom.”
“Then I really don’t care.”
We ignored it. It stopped ringing, then started again only seconds later. Snake groaned, tearing himself off of me and sitting up. “You need to get that. It’s distracting.”
The piercing ringtone jolted me back to my surroundings, ripping the veil from my brain and making everything clearer. Suddenly, I realized that I was in my bra. And Snake was shirtless. And his door wasn’t fully closed, and his moms were downstairs. And we had almost just pulled a Carla.
I grabbed the phone and found my mom’s name lit across the screen.
“I’m not answering it.”
“You have to.”
“No.”
“Reggie.”
“Fine.” I grunted and slid the green button. “Long time no see, Karen.”
She let out a dramatic sigh. “Oh, thank God. Are you okay? Where are you?”
“I’m fine. And out.” A man’s voice rumbled lowly in the background. It was confident. Professional. “Mom? Who’s that?”
Silence. Usually a privilege. But not that kind of silence. It was panic silence. Terror. I had a gut feeling this wasn’t about me running away.
“Mom?”
“We looked for you all day,” she cried, sniffling into the phone. “I left you voicemails, and we went around town. Your dad. Your dad isn’t supposed to get worked up . . .”
“What happened to Dad?”
Snake moved beside me and rubbed my back. I could see my fear reflected in his eyes.
“You need to come to the hospital as soon as you can.”
My mind wasn’t catching up. “Why?”
Silence. Too much silence.
“He’s had a heart attack.”
Chapter Nineteen
DEER. A DEER WITH GIANT ANTLERS. They were called bucks, I had been told. Male deer with giant antlers were called bucks. And they weren’t smart. They ran out in front of moving cars and walked directly in front of hunters without knowing it and always somehow ended up at my dad’s shop, stuffed with hardened powder and staring blankly at the remains of their own hides stretched out across my father’s fixing table. Dead. That was their one common trait. Not that they were deer or bucks or stupid, but that they always ended up dead.
“They aren’t dead,” my dad would say, stitching the finishing touches on a six-pointer someone had brought in from a hunting excursion. I sat on a stool across the room, drinking a juice box and keeping my distance. When I was a kid, I had this irrational fear that one would eventually come back to life on my dad’s table and take revenge on all the humans who had had a part in his slaughter. None ever did.
“Yes, they are,” I argued. “A hunter killed him. And now he’s dead.”
“What’s dead about him?”
“His heart doesn’t beat anymore.”
My dad set down his knife and looked at the buck. He ran his fingers along the antlers and touched the space on his chest where hearts were supposed to beat. An empty space. “So, a heartbeat is what makes us alive?”
“Yes.”
“That’s interesting,” he said, his hand lingering on the empty cavity. He studied the buck above the rim of his glasses, as if he knew it before it was nothing. As if he truly cared about what happened to it. “He still has a spirit, though. Doesn’t he? Doesn’t he make you feel something when you look at him?”
I observed his giant antlers, his body twice the size of my own. He looked like someone’s dad. A leader.
“He makes me feel . . .” I struggled for the right word. “He makes me feel sad.”
“Why?”