Page 30 of Hate To Love You
“I’m just lucky I’m on a bed right now!”
Liam rubs Teague’s arm, then sits up. “Okay, give me a sec. I just need to shoot my parents a quick text. Just in case they didn’t already assume I’m staying at Gracie’s.”
Teague wasn’t kidding. By the time Liam slides off the bed, pulls on his underwear, and succeeds in fishing his phone out of the pile of clothes on the floor, he’s already fast asleep on the bed, snoring softly. Liam watches him for a moment, smiling and, with a strange out-of-body feeling, finds himself adoring the sight of the sleepy-boy-wonder, enjoying a rest in an actual bed for once.
He really is so adorable.
What a bizarre, incredible, beautiful night this has become.
Liam stands at the bedroom window as he sends his parents a text. The window faces the backyard, so he can see the hanging bench where this whole mess started as well as Teague’s dog, still sleeping on his bed.
What was the dog’s name? Rus? Teague started to say earlier what Rus was short for. Cer … Didn’t Teague start to say “Cer” …? It reminds Liam of the question that drew him into that dating app at all. That would be quite the freaky coincidence, Liam chuckles to himself, if Teague named his dog Cerberus. You know, despite having only the one head.
The thought makes him smile to himself as he glances down at his phone. He finds himself staring at the dating app now—and the unanswered messages to Hate2LoveU—with a strange and peaceful feeling of resolve. Maybe the dating app was in the way all along, proving itself more fruitless fantasy than reality.
If he hadn’t spent so much time on it, he might’ve seen what was right in front of him.
He might’ve seen Teague Jenson for who he really is.
But he has more courtesy than Hate2LoveU apparently does, so he decides to do the respectable thing and type out one final message.
TongueTiedInKnots
I appreciate the time we’ve spent chatting about everything under Apollo’s sun, but I’ve found someone in the real world I’d like to pursue. I hope you understand why I need to end things, though I’m not sure if anything started. I don’t know your name. You don’t know mine. That’s OK. I think we gave each other something more valuable on this dating app than a fleeting hookup. Thank you. I hope you find the right person for you and don’t have to take a trip to Hades to meet him. Farewell, Electric Butt Cheeks.
With a smile on his face, Liam hits the send button.
He hears a chime nearby. He lifts his gaze from the glow of his phone and stares at the desk where it came, confused.
Teague’s phone rests there, its screen lit up.
Liam stares at that phone. He seems incapable of blinking as he waits for Teague’s phone to make another sound, to convince him it isn’t what he just heard.
But the words on the screen are plain.
And it only takes one step toward the desk to make them out.
A single notification:Unread message from TongueTiedInKnots.
12
Electric Butt Cheeks
One moment, Teague is in the middle of a wrestling match, which is quite odd seeing as he hasn’t wrestled since graduation. But that doesn’t seem to concern him as he grapples with his opponent, attempting to flip him. Suddenly he has his opponent pinned to the ground and they lock eyes.
It’s Liam.
He’s wrestling with Liam.
“T-Teague?” he whimpers.
Teague squints down at him, confused. The voice seems very close and strangely disconnected, as if coming from an intercom rather than the person he just pinned.
The very next moment, the wrestling tournament and the gymnasium and all the bright lights vanish, and in their place is another Liam—the real Liam—who straddles him on his bed.
It’s Teague who is pinned to the bed sheets, with a somewhat perturbed Liam atop him, his face stony and his eyes intense.
The expression sobers Teague at once. “Liam? You okay?”
