Page 38 of What If I Hate You
I square my jaw. “You want me to say I’m sorry? Fine. I’m sorry, Blakely. I’m sorry for being an asshole, and for not seeing what it costs you every time you have to prove you belong here. I’m sorry for using that word, too. I am. But I’m not sorry for thinking you’re better than every dickhead in that room.” The words come out hot, fast, before I can second-guess them. “And I’m not sorry for wanting to shut them up, even if it makes you hate me. Even if it makes you think I’m just another one of them.”
Her eyes flicker, their depths shimmering with emotion, but the rest of her is solid granite. “You don’t get to decide what I need, Barrett. You don’t get to make that call.”
My hands are in fists at my sides, and for a second, I think she’s going to swing at me. I almost want her to. Maybe I’d take the hit and feel less like a walking, talking mistake. But instead, she just stands there, eyes narrowed, lips trembling, not withtears, but with the effort of keeping every last shred of dignity intact.
“Do you really think,” she says, so quietly I almost miss it, “that I haven’t had to fight every goddamn day just to stand here?” Her voice shakes with the force of it, and now I see the real hurt, raw and unvarnished, behind all the steel and swagger. “You think I need you to rescue me?” she asks, bringing her hand to her chest. “That I’m not used to this?”
I don’t have an answer. Because she’s right. Because I see it now, carved into the lines of her face, the same lines I try to erase with every fuck-you save and every shutout. She’s been doing this, surviving this, a lot longer than I’ve been paying attention. I want to tell her I know how hard it is. That I spent my whole goddamn life fighting to get out of a shithole town where the only thing that mattered was how much money you had and if you had none, it was how fast you could drink a bottle or how hard you could hit. That I know what it’s like to wear a mask, not the goalie kind, but the kind you grow into your skin because if you let them see you hurt, they eat you alive.
I open my mouth to say something, anything, but she’s already turning away from me. Instinctively my hand darts to her wrist before my mind can catch up and she whirls, eyes blazing, every inch of her daring me to make another move.
For half a second, neither of us speaks. We just stare, locked in a standoff so charged it makes every press room spat and locker room rumor seem like child’s play. The air between us is taut, crackling with something so raw I almost forget to breathe.
Then I fuck it all up—again—because I can’t let her have the last word.
“You’re right,” I say, voice hoarse. “You don’t need me. But goddammit, Blakely, maybe I need you.” The words are out before I can stop them, and for a second I’m sure I’ll regret it, but it’s the only truth worth hanging onto.
She jerks her arm back, but she doesn’t move away. “Don’t,” she says, voice trembling with the effort. “Don’t you dare turn this into some—” Her breath comes out sharp, furious, but her eyes betray her, because for one impossible heartbeat, she doesn’t look angry. She just looks tired. “You can’t just barge in, play the fucking hero, then?—”
“Blakely.” Her name in my mouth is a promise and a warning. The sound of it splits the air between us like a puck off the glass, and I don’t know if I want to make her yell or never let her get a word in again.
She shoves me, flat-palmed, right in the chest, and it barely rocks me, but I stagger back a step to let her think she did. Her eyes are wild. “You don’t get to need me.” Her breaths comes in ragged gasps, her face blotched red, and for a split second there’s so much fire in her I want to skate right into it and never come up for air.
“Too fucking late,” I say, and as soon as the words leave my mouth, I know what’s going to happen. I know it the way you know a puck’s about to hit you in the mask, the way you can sense the vibration in your bones before the impact. But I don’t move. I let it happen.
She’s on me before I can even finish the breath, hands in my collar, lips crashing into mine with the violence of a thrown punch. There’s no finesse, just heat and fury, and I match it, grabbing her by the waist and hauling her flush against me, pinning her to the wall of the hallway. Her teeth find my bottom lip and she bites, hard, and I taste blood.
But I don’t care.
I want more.
I want all of her, every fuck-you she can throw my way and every goddamn shattered piece of her.
I want it all.
CHAPTER TWELVE
BLAKELY
Ishould have walked away. I should have let him stew, let the tension rot in the cracks of the cinderblock and the scuffed linoleum, let it crawl into the foundation of the goddamn arena and stay there soaking until the end of time.
But I didn’t walk.
I didn’t even run.
I let Cunningham pin me to the wall like a fly strip and all I did was reel him in closer.
His hands find my jaw with a bruising insistence, and it’s not delicate. It’s not even close. It’s hungry, almost ugly, the kind of needy that gets you arrested if you do it anywhere but a hallway designed for mopping up blood and Gatorade. My back slams the painted brick with a boom I feel in my jaw. I want to slap him again. I want to fuck him blind. I want both, in equal measure, and I can’t decide which will ruin me faster.
He tastes like salt and sweat and the ghost of something expensive, maybe that whiskey I saw him drink last night. I sink my teeth into his bottom lip, hard enough to draw blood, and he fucking groans, this guttural, involuntary sound like he’s lifting a car off a child. My pulse is a jackhammer and I’m a mess of want and war.
His hands are at my waist, then lower, and lower. I gasp into his mouth as his palm cups my ass and yanks my hips flush to his. There’s nothing subtle about the way he grinds into me, like he’s trying to anchor us both to the planet by sheer force of friction. It’s hate or it’s hunger, or maybe it’s just the only language either of us ever learned, but I don’t say no. If anything, I dare him to keep going.
I slide my hand up the inside of his shirt, shameless, greedy for the heat of his skin. He lifts me off my toes, until I’m nearly eye to eye with him. I can smell the scent of the rink on his neck, sharp and cold, and I want to drown in it. He’s so goddamned big I feel like I’ve been shrink-wrapped to his chest, and for a heartbeat I hate how good that feels, how much I want to disappear into the pressure of his hands and the certainty of his grip.
I hook a leg around his hip and he hisses, mutters something filthy against my lips, voice shredded to gravel. “You’re a goddamn sin, Rivers.” His grip tightens, pinning my hip to the wall as his other hand fists in my hair and jerks my head back, baring my throat to his mouth. He drags his lips to my jaw, then down the long line of my neck, biting at my pulse with enough pressure to mark me.
I want to say something snide, to take back the upper hand, but all that comes out is a breathless, high-pitched laugh that shivers against his lips. “You’re so fucking full of yourself,” I manage, but my voice is a wreck, needy and raw.
