Page 124 of Devils' Day Party
“Here we are,” I respond, leaning into him and putting my head on his shoulder. Either today was easy because Raz has always been waiting around for me or … the last three weeks have had some sort of effect on him. I want to believe the latter, desperately so. “Too bad we’ve wasted all these years hating on each other when we could’ve been together from the beginning.”
“The sex’ll be even hotter this way,” he assures me, and I grin, closing my eyes for a brief moment of rest. I’m very, very careful not to drift off to sleep though. No fucking way. Not before I get this goddamn tattoo. “Hate sex is the best.”
“How much hate sex have you had?” I question, and he laughs, throwing an arm around my shoulders and dragging me into his lap again. It’s like he can’t bear to not be touching me, like if he doesn’t have a hand on me at all times, I’ll disappear like dandelion fluff in the wind. Too bad for me it’s the other way around. He’s the dream and I, I am stuck in a nightmare.
“Ehh, hate sex is too much work. You have to love the person you’re having hate sex with, too, or else it’s just a regular old one-night stand.” He pauses as I mull over his words, reading between the lines the way I did when he mentioned coming inside of me plus his father’s anti-abortion views all in one, strange sentence.
“Are you saying you love me, Raz Loveren?” I ask, lifting my head up from his shoulder and opening my eyes. He’s watching me with a too-serious expression on his face. It almost makes him look like a different person. I wonder then what it’d be like to wake up next to him in the morning, watch him slip his glasses on, find his blue eyes watching me as I lay curled beside him. Fuck. I need to break this damn time loop; I have to. And not after ten years or however long Bill Murray’s character was trapped in Groundhog Day.
Now.
I need to break it now.
“Because you said you always get what you want, but you never committed to what, exactly, that was.” I dig my fingers into his hair, enjoying the silky texture of it, loving how casual he is about letting me touch him.
Raz throws me a saucy grin and reaches up, grabbing a handful of my hair—much less gently than I grabbed his, I must add—and pulling my face down for another kiss. He slides his tongue between my lips, making me groan and shift in his lap.
“Shit, you can’t do that Karma,” he murmurs against my mouth. “I have little self-control on a good day. With you … I don’t have any.”
“So, do you?” I repeat, not willing to let this go. There’s no more beating around the bush here. This is the last day I’m giving myself to just … be. Tomorrow, I’m on a mission. That is, unless today somehow works itself out. I’m quietly hoping for that, although my skeptical side is warning me against it.
“Do I love you?” Raz asks, blinking his red eyes at me as I muss up his hair with my fingers. “Of course I do.”
My hands still, sliding down to rest on his shoulders. It feels suddenly hard to breathe, but I have to say something, don’t I?
“Of course you do?” I repeat, and Raz shrugs one shoulder, like it’d be too much effort to bother with both.
“I get what I want; you’re what I want. What is there to argue about?” My eyes sting with tears, and Raz chuckles, reaching up both thumbs to swipe them away. “Don’t cry, Karma. I’ve made you cry enough already.”
“I’m happy crying,” I groan, putting my forehead against the side of his neck. But I’m not entirely telling the truth. I’m happy crying … but I’m also terrified. What if I break the time loop but fail to get the boys to admit their feelings after today? What if there’s some special Devils’ Day magic in there? Or, what if, like Luke suggested, I forget the time loop after I break it?
Ugh.
“And, you know, you can be my first true hate-sex partner,” he announces, stroking my purple hair back with his hand. “That’s something, right? Taking my hate-sex virginity. Lost the regular kind in freshman year to some senior chick whose name I can’t remember for shit.”
“Don’t talk about other girls right now,” I grumble, and he laughs again. But then I remember how sketchy he was at the cottage, when I asked about his prior sexual experiences. “Actually, how many girls have you been with anyway?”
Raz frowns, and then glances away, toward the front door of the shop. There’s a little something in his face that looks like … shame? But it can’t be, no way. Not Raz Loveren.
