Page 28 of Hateful
This isn’t like when Beck grabbed me months ago. This is … soft, almost yearning. His arms slide around my waist as he pulls me tighter. He’s warm, solid as he holds my rigid body in place. His big hands spread out and travel up my back, up the back of my neck. His fingertips slide into my hair.
His lips are so soft. They move slowly, ever so gently, against mine. His breath smells like cigarettes, but so does mine. I close my eyes and let myself melt into him for just a second, to let go and forget everything else as my hands come up to rest on his chest.
Everything about this is wrong, I know.
But that doesn’t stop him. So, it doesn’t stop me.
Our breathing becomes more labored.
I reach up and put my arms around his shoulders. He pulls me even closer, deepening our kiss, crushing my chest against his. His hand cradles the back of my neck. His tongue gently touches my parted lips, and I open them just a little to let him in, let him taste me just a bit, let me taste him in return …
And then he stops and suddenly pulls away. The twilight feels colder when he steps back and puts his hands in his coat pockets.
“Now it really doesn’t matter,” he says softly. “I know the touch of a woman’s body when I feel it.”
A strange mix of emotions floods through me—excitement, fear, happiness, anger—and I can’t move or speak for a few seconds. I want to talk, to say something.
But when I open my mouth, I ask, “Why didn’t you say anything before? Why didn’t youdoanything before?”
He shuffles a little where he stands. “I’ve been … ashamed. Of what I did. What I … almost … did.”
I nod. I still remember his fingers closing over my throat, the blood trickling from my nose, the pain of his fist slamming into my chest.Then the frenzy afterwards. The way his hands groped my body looking for the appendage that wasn’t there.
I don’t like to think about what he was going to do to me before he was jerked out of his near trance-like rage. I don’t think he does either.
But just the memory of it sobers my spinning head. At least, a little.
“I wanted to change,” he continues, holding his hands out, curling and uncurling his fingers, like he can’t figure out what to do with them. “But I—I couldn’t. I could barely stop myself from hurting you—reallyhurting you. I could barely stop myself from … from …”
He stops, panting a little.
He obviously can’t bring himself to say it, and I don’t know if I want him to.
“Did I stop,” he asks himself finally, staring at his hands, “just because you’re a girl?” He looks up at me, and his face looks … strange, foreign. I can’t put my finger on it, but I’ve never seen him like this before. “How fucked up is that?” he asks quietly. “How fucked up am I?”
That’s when it hits me like a ton of bricks.
The reason he’s been avoiding me. The reason the whole Brotherhood has been, because of him.
Because he’sscared.
I’ve never seen him look so scared. That’s why it seems so foreign. He’s always seemed big, imposing, and powerful, even. Now he looks almost like a little boy.
“Did you tell Heath and Beck?” I ask quietly, after a moment.
He shakes his head. “No. How can I? Without telling them what I did?”
Thank God.Somehow just having my suspicions confirms brings with it a flood of relief.
I rock back and forth on my toes. “So … you won’t tell anyone?”
“No. I can’t. I won’t.” He takes a step toward me, but I take a step back. There’s a strange gleam in his eye. “Promise you won’t tell them, either.”
“What? About me being a girl?” I shrug irritably. “That’s the whole point of masquerading around as a guy.”
“No—don’t tell them—about what I did. Promise me.”
A chilly hand grips my insides.
