The minute those words left Cali’s mouth, I had her upstairs and in my bedroom in record time. Thank you, hip, for not giving out during such a monumental moment.
“Gage, I know you’re drunk,” she says, keeping me at arm’s length like I’m some rabid dog trying to hump her leg.
I kind of am, but still. If she thinks I won’t chew through my leash to get to her, then she’s dead wrong.
“Are you sure this is what you really want?”
“Cali, that little dance number you pulled out there was like a bucket of ice water on my head. Whatever buzz I had going is long gone,” I assure her, ignoring the distance between us and stepping into her so she’s forced to confront me.
Her long lashes tap the ruby apples of her cheeks. “I just don’t want you to make a mistake.”
I thumb her chin, getting her to look up at me. “That word doesn’t fucking exist when it comes to you. You know that, right? In no universe could you ever be a mistake.”
My hands survey her body, getting the feel of where she’s the most responsive, lingering on the places that make my dick jerk in my costume.
“You know there’s no going back after this, right?”
A canyon of silence stretches between us before she utters, “I know.”
I’m expecting resistance from her—like I always get—but her next move consists of her stripping off her heels and tossing them aside. I’m struck dumb as usual by anything she does, unsure how thin the ice I’m standing on is, but then she wastes no time in mauling me, littering sloppy kisses all over my neck.
When she tongues the outline of my pulse point, I smack her on the ass, the sound reverberating in the confines of my bedroom, her skin recoiling under my fingers from the force. She mewls and roughs up my hair with her hand, fisting the roots to steady herself before biting the thin skin just above my collarbone.
A slew of keening moans hurtles out of me, and the pressure she’s exacting on my throat makes me grind my hips against her pussy, letting her feel the weight of my desire while it presses against her inner thigh.
“You gonna leave a mark, Spitfire? You want everyone to know I’m yours?” I taunt, my voice jumping when she begins to suckle and form a tender bruise.
“Don’t need to leave a mark,” she pants, licking a long, thick stripe up the side of my neck. “You’ll be screaming my name loud enough for the whole party to hear.”
My cock fucking shudders from that idea alone, spitting pre-cum into the inside of my undergarment, which is thankfully hidden by so many leaves that nothing will be visible. I get a sharp lance up my abdomen—one colluding with my ever-growing erection—and I’m afraid I’m going to lose my load before I even get inside her. She’s not going to make this easy for me, I already know it. And I’m going to fold. Every. Fucking. Time.
She continues to perfect the hickey, sucking and nibbling, even moving to another area to stipple a motley mulberry over my naked skin. And as she tortures me, her giant breasts flatten against my torso, dangerously close to my face.
“Bra. Off. Now,” I growl.
She unlatches her lips from my throat, a fine layer of spit coating them.
“You’re a big boy. Do it yourself,” she hisses.
Look, I don’t have Herculean strength or anything, okay? Cali’s just conveniently happened to wear a lot of poorly made clothing whenever we’ve done anything. My hands demolish the bra that’s been teasing me all night, a tornado of plastic leaves flying all over the place, and her tits
bounce free, swaying from their heavy weight. They’re perfect. Everything about her is perfect.
Haloed in moonlight, my attention homes in on the beaded points of her nipples, my mouth watering to taste her flesh again. It’s been too long.
“Need those gorgeous breasts in my mouth, Spitfire. Better yet, need to slide my dick in between them and watch them bounce as I tit-fuck you.”
“If you get cum in my hair, I’m going to castrate you with a pair of scissors.”
“I’ll take that chance,” I say with a smirk, lowering my head to suck one of her nipples into my mouth, flicking my tongue back and forth over the erogenous zone until I pull my first moan from her.
She pushes her chest into my face, allowing me deeper access, and crude slurping noises muffle around the rosy bud. Her hand entangles in my disheveled hair, tugging until my scalp burns, and I’m pretty sure she rips a few strands out. It doesn’t falter my pace, though. I lightly indent her areola with my teeth, dragging them until I get to that delicious pucker, then popping off before she gives me a goddamn bald spot.
“I need you, Gage,” she begs, pain dancing across her screwed-up expression. “I need your tongue in my cunt. I just…oh, God. I need you.
Right now.”
Ladies and gents, I present to you something that I never thought would happen in my lifetime: Calista Cadwell begging.
And fuck, does it turn me on more than her insulting me does. Which I didn’t know was even possible.
If I wasn’t loving this so much, I would be the one begging her. My dick is so hard that it hurts like a bitch. And my balls ache to the point where I can feel the pressure escalate in my lower abdomen.
“You gonna admit you’re drenched for me? How I’m the only person who makes your pussy throb and gush like that?” I slap the hood of her clothed clit, watching as pleasure crosses her face, liquifying every muscle in her upper body.
“No…” she starts unconvincingly.
I slip my finger past the gusset of her bikini bottom, contacting the flooded state of her slit and softly brushing over her liquid desire with the pad of my digit.
Her hips cant to take me deeper, and she claws into my back, denting my shoulder blades with her sharp nails. “God, fuck, yes! Yes, Gage!” she
cries out, quivering against my chest, nearly coming undone from a single touch. There’s a spent lull in her voice, raspy as all hell, pleading with me to whet her lust.
So sensitive.
“We’re not in heaven. There is no God here. You understand that, Cali?
I’m taking you to fucking hell tonight,” I whisper, squelching the length of my finger inside her, all the way down to my knuckle.
I don’t have to move much to get her to squirm, and when I begin to make good on my promise with a precise twittering motion, she moans loudly, her cunt squeezing in response. That smart mouth of hers is planets away, slackening with the intrusion of my digit. She’s a whimpering mess while I plunge another finger in, swirling both fingers around, hitting the destruct button that makes her gush even more onto my hand.
“This is nothing,” I warn her, juxtaposing the rough abuse of her cunt with a soft kiss to her cheek. “You keep moaning like that, and I’ll have no choice but to give you my cock.”
Trapped in the throes of absolute rapture, she keeps her watery gaze on me, a litany of whimpers fighting their way up her throat. The more I tend to her pussy, the more frequent her squeezes become, her pelvis thrashing and the swell of her belly drawing in with anticipation.
She goes to open her mouth—probably to damn me—but I cover it with my free hand, scissoring my digits until a ring of sticky liquid lathers around the base of them. “You don’t get to talk. Listen. Listen to how wet you are.”
She mewls against my palm, but it’s muted beneath the loud squelching of her cunt.
“Fuck, that’s such a pretty sound. You hear that, Spitfire? That’s what I do to you. I own your pussy. All this lying to me about being dry isn’t going to fly anymore. Do I make myself clear?”
All she can do is nod, still bucking fruitlessly into the air, unsatisfied by the thickness of the two fingers already jammed in her.
“Such a greedy girl,” I tut, teasing her with the addition of a third finger, then feeling her walls dilate hollowly around the girth. She continues to let loose all kinds of sounds behind my hand, so I slowly remove the blockage from her lips.
“Need your dick,” she demands, her impatience offsetting the bliss still splayed on her features.
She suddenly glares at me and growls. “If you don’t take it out, I’ll do it for you.”
Okay, noted. Nice Cali only lasts a few minutes.
“I haven’t even made you c —”
“If you think you’re getting two orgasms out of me tonight, you’re wrong. You’re only getting one.”
I withdraw my wet fingers, bringing them to my mouth and sucking every last drop of her arousal off of them. “Oh, I can get two,” I quip confidently.
She grabs me by the shoulders, spins my back toward the bed, and throws my body onto it. Granted, it’s more like a shove, and I don’t know how she manhandled all one hundred and ninety pounds of me, but she did, and it was hot as fuck.
When I situate myself at the headboard, she crawls on top of me, breasts hanging and ass up in the air, bridged by the sexiest arch of her spine. Our lips mesh together, and my hands snake into her hair to grab a fistful, wrenching her neck slightly.
Kissing her never gets old. It’s a rebirth every time. It’s the equivalent of a cold glass of lemonade on a sun-scorched day; it’s the feel of silk sheets on a freshly washed body; it’s the satisfying remembrance of something you’ve forgotten; it’s the smell of petrichor in a lush green forest on a morning walk. It’s every human emotion rolled into one.
I keep my lips puckered like a fool before realizing she’s moved to my stomach, marching her lips downwards in open-mouthed kisses, and when she gets to my navel, she licks it. I moan embarrassingly loudly, and thanks to the very thin walls in this house, if anyone’s on the second floor they can probably hear what’s going on in here. My abs flex as my swollen dick weeps for a single touch, sacrificing my manhood for a morsel of mercy.
And then I feel her fingers finally reach my costume, and I’m expecting a sudden wave of release when —
“Holy shit. No way. I’m not putting that thing inside me,” she says, immediately sitting up.
I look down at my distended cock resting against my stomach, seeing nothing but nine inches of an angry, red-hued, vein-riddled appendage. Oh, and the metal barbells piercing the underside of my shaft.
“You didn’t tell me you were pierced!” she exclaims.
“Why would I—why the fuck would I ask you that?”
“I don’t know! Why are you freaking out?”
She gestures to my offending penis. “Because that thing is going to shred my vagina like a small, medieval torture device!”
My eyebrows climb up. “Small?”
She groans, throwing her arms up in exasperation. “Decently sized.”
“Big,” I counter, propping myself on my elbows, staring her down until I get her to agree.
“Slightly above average.”
“Big. ”
Dear God. Arguing with her doesn’t make the pain go away. It’s somehow inflating my cock even more, and the bulbous tip leaks more pearlescent pre-cum into my belly button.
Her face is wrought with horror. “Fine! It’s big. It’s disturbingly big.
And not only will it rip me in half, but it’ll tear me up with those miniature metal stabbers!”
“I can take them out,” I reply quickly.
When girls see that I’m pierced, they’re either all for it or all against it.
Each sexual experience differs from person to person. For some, the piercings enhance everything. For others, it’s uncomfortable.
She drinks in a centering breath, closing her eyes for a brief second, then opening them again. “No, you don’t need to do that, Gage.”
“I want you to be as comfortable as possible, Cali. We don’t have to do this.”
She shakes her wavy locks, which have lost some of their volume from me combing my fingers through them like a cracked-out raccoon. “It’s not that, it’s…” She trails off, chewing on her lower lip self-consciously.
Her voice becomes small. “Will it hurt?”
“It, uh, it depends on the person. I’ve been told it feels uncomfortable before, but I’ve also been told it feels great,” I answer.
She deadlocks with my dick, just mindlessly staring at it while God knows what spins around in that pretty head of hers. I stare back at her, suddenly feeling very naked under her analytic gaze, and all those nerves begin dogpiling inside me.
Why didn’t this possibility cross my mind? If anything was to go wrong tonight, it would be my fucking dick jewelry. Is she disgusted by it? Did I
just ruin the mood? Will she call me Pinhead for the rest of my life?
After a beat of silence, her brow sets into a determined line. “Okay.
Let’s do this.”
“Are you sure?”
She runs her finger over a dominant vein tracking all the way to the head, and even though she isn’t applying any pressure, my cock twitches for the relief only she can offer. Grinding my teeth together seems to be the only preventive measure I have from humiliating myself in front of her. I’m as sensitive as a fucking tripwire.
“I’m sure.”
I open my mouth in search of reassurance, wanting to make sure she really means it, but she’s stripped her thong off before any words can take flight. That perfect, gorgeous pussy is waiting for me, drenched in pent-up arousal, and I want her to disgorge all over my length until I’m dripping onto the sheets.
“Let me get a condom.” I reach for my nightstand, praying that they haven’t expired since it’s been eighty thousand years since I’ve had any action, but Cali stops my hand.
“I want to feel them—you,” she murmurs almost shamefully. “I have an IUD.”
Am I about to die? Is that why so many good things have been happening lately? Feeling Cali raw…fuck. It’s something that hasn’t even crossed my mind. I always wrap it before I tap it. I’ve never not wrapped it.
I also don’t know shit about IUDs. Is that the little metal thingy that goes in the arm? Is it even an effective contraceptive?
“Yeah?” I ask.
“Yeah,” she assures wantonly.
With the mobility my hip allows me, I swiftly switch our positions so she’s beneath me, letting my cockhead snag over her damp clit, just giving her a taste so she can brace accordingly. When her eyes widen, I realize the top of my piercings must have grazed her folds, and a small gasp traps itself in her throat.
“Are you sure you’re okay with this?” I ask softly, arms stationed by her head, making sure to keep the majority of my weight suspended so I don’t crush her. Putting this amount of pressure on my knees definitely isn’t good for my hip, but if sex with Cali means I’m set back three months in recovery, then it’s fucking worth it.
My stomach clenches in a combination of both anticipation and arousal, though I’m not sure which is more potent. “At any point you want me to stop, you just tell me.”
She looks like the sexiest centerfold sprawled out underneath me, breasts heaving in a thin finish of sweat, swatches of pink dusting her cheeks, and her flaming mane fanned out on the pillow. She nods, but worry stilts her next set of words. “If you think that’ll fit inside me, you’re insane.”
“I was made for you, Spitfire. Only you.”
When Cali consents and spreads her legs wider, I slowly slide myself in, calculating the pace based on the contortion of her features—how her nose scrunches and a phantom grimace wrings her lips. The minute her cunt greets me with a welcoming slurp, I’m shock-stricken by how perfect she feels around me, and my brain has to hotwire itself back to its regularly scheduled programming.
I’m only halfway in, but my piercings have been swallowed up inside her, kissing her inner walls with every adjustment of her hips. I don’t move until I get some kind of confirmation from her.
“Oh, God,” she gasps, heeding the breach of her pussy, still tentative to move around or suck me any deeper.
I start to panic. “Is that a good ‘Oh, God’ or a bad ‘Oh, God?’”
“It’s—I—” She throws her head back, reveling in the sensation, her mouth forming a stunted, It’s good, before she wiggles around some more.
I don’t think she realizes how excruciating all her flailing around is.
She’s involuntarily playing with the most sensitive part of me, and grunting through the pain doesn’t seem to be working.
“Spitfire, you need to stop…” I smash my molars together as my biceps shake. “Moving so much.”
She stills, so timid that it’s endearing. “Oh, sorry. A-are you in all the way?”
“Give me some credit. I’ve got a few more inches than that.”
Her hands anchor themselves in my sheets, and her belly flattens when she whimpers. “Gage…”
“You’re gonna take it, and you’re gonna like it. Need to see that pretty cunt clenching around all of me.” I slot myself between the juncture of her thighs, pushing, pushing, and pushing until I’m buried to the hilt, my blunt tip bullying her cervix. Her throat works with a pained whimper, but she
parts around my girth, stretching to adapt to my size like the good girl she is.
“Fuck, you’re tight,” I hiss, balls tapping gently against her ass, my own ass clenched like my fucking life depends on it.
“I’m not…” she huffs, gnashing her teeth. “You’re…huge!”
“You don’t need to flatter me. I’m already inside you.”
“I hate you.”
I bend down to whisper in her ear, already starting a measured pace as I snap my hips, plowing the furthest I can go and letting her natural lubrication help with the consistency of my thrusts. “Then fuck me like you mean it.”
When I probe a sensitive spot, her nails rake down my back in smarting stings and scarlet scratches. I nearly lose my balance, but with the earnest way she’s milking me, I’m kept in place. I can feel the obtrusion of my piercings catch on her inner walls, but she doesn’t resist.
Cali moans, practically shaking the walls with the volume, pulsing around my dick and lifting her hips for me to find a better angle. I take advantage of her willingness, lining my waist up with hers to drive in askew to my previous position. I almost regret losing momentum until her back arches, and it feels like her fingers draw blood. Her eyes shutter closed, as if minimizing her vision will somehow dull the pressure in her lower belly.
“Look at me, Cali. Look at how well you’re taking me,” I demand in a husky whisper, easing myself out enough so she can watch as I slide back in.
Her eyes nearly pop out of her head as she watches, and she continues to cling to me, rolling her hips against mine. Her words are a blend of pleasured garbles and mewls, her tits bouncing when I take the liberty of speeding up. “So…good. Gage, it feels…”
“I know.”
It feels better than good. It feels fucking fantastic. Everything is heightened with Cali—the feel of her soft skin, the taste of malt on her tongue, the sight of her unraveling as her orgasm closes in, the little noises she makes that stroke both my ego and my cock, the intensifying smell of her arousal as more of it seeps into the suction we’ve made.
“Such a good girl with the way you’re squeezing me—letting me abuse this perfect cunt of yours. The best girl,” I praise, feeling my dick spasm as
the coil in my abdomen begins to stretch. “Take what you need from me, Spitfire. Take whatever the fuck you need.”
I’m not going to last long. Jesus, it doesn’t even feel like we’re fucking.
I’m gonna sound like a sappy shit, but it feels like we’re making love. A little rough in unpolished places, but soft overall, words of affirmation traded for our usual clash of tongues.
“Need you filling me up, Gage. Need to feel your cum dripping out of me,” she coos, wrapping her legs around my torso and giving me an all-access pass to that holy paradise between her thighs.
“Fuck,” I groan, punctuating my eager agreement with a body-rocking pump, feeling her grasp me even tighter, nails following the irritated marks she made prior. “You have no idea how much I want that, baby. Want to paint your walls until you’re leaking onto my sheets. Gonna worship this incredible pussy so you’ll remember this moment long after it’s over.”
“Trust me, I’ll remember,” she whispers.
I press my forehead to hers. “I will too.”
I double down on the roughness of my strokes, going as hard as I possibly can without hurting her. My orgasm is scaling an impossibly tall mountain, just inches from reaching the summit, and I can see the golden glow of release just beyond the snow-capped peak. Her legs tremble and her feet lose momentary hold on my lower back, her tits recoiling from each now-sloppy rut. Our moans harmonize, rising above the party’s commotion, and my knuckles are bleached from digging into the mattress.
I have no idea how my stamina or my hip have lasted so long, but I’m not complaining. I spear my cock into her, balls slapping against her asshole, and I flex myself to make sure she can feel my piercings stimulate every nerve in her cunt.
“Mmm, Gage! Oh. Oh, God. I think I’m gonna…”
I can tell she’s getting closer with the strain of her eyes, the uneven hitch of her breath, the viselike clench of her cunt. She isn’t self-conscious about what’s going to happen next like she was the first time we were physical, and getting to see her fully let go is better than saving the winning shot of any hockey game.
My dick prods her G-spot, giving her the first taste of her long-awaited orgasm, and it only takes a few more shunts until she falls apart in my arms with a guttural cry, squirting all over my dick in concentrated pulses. Her
cum leaks around the plug of my cock, dripping onto the sheets and splattering the lower half of my body.
Feeling her bathe my cock, seeing her all over my navy sheets, is enough for me to sputter inside her, spraying long, thick ropes of cum that intermingle with the overflow from hers. Everything is warm and wet, coddling my happily softening dick, and I don’t rush to pull out of her.
My milky spend travels down her legs, accentuating the sticky slap of her thighs, and the combined scent of our desire steeps the space around us.
This is a goddamn dream—seeing her spent beneath me with my cum trickling out of her.
The breath Cali’s not wasting on insulting me is flowing out of her in quick pants, face flushed and a dazed look in her eyes. “That was…”
Still hovering over her, I grin. “The best Halloween you’ve ever had?”
She looks up at me through her lashes. “Second best.”
“Good thing I’m not done with you yet.”
Cali props herself up on her elbows, tits rising and falling with overtaxed breaths, her thoroughly fucked expression a lick of fire to the flickering wick still burning strong in the bottom of my stomach. “We’re going to miss the party,” she says.
Even though her glorious cunt is keeping my cock warm, I pull out of her, letting a viscous string of arousal stretch between us before it soils the sheets below. “I promised you another orgasm.”
She goes uncharacteristically quiet, her cheeks prickling with embarrassment and her eyes looking everywhere but where I yearn for them the most. “I don’t think I can have another…”
She doesn’t even finish her sentence. I can tell she’s still hungry for me, though, with the way her body tenses in lustful anticipation, how her tongue wets the cushion of her bottom lip, priming it for the slight indentation of her teeth.
“Guess we’ll just have to find out, won’t we?”
Before her self-conscious thoughts become cobwebbed in her head, I spread her legs apart, slapped in the face by her pretty, puffy pussy lodged full of my load. I know something about eating my own jizz should turn me off, but when it’s undercut by that sweet escape between her thighs, it doesn’t even bother me. All gentlemanly sweet talk—or ungentlemanly dirty talk—is abandoned when my tongue finds her soaked clit, and I press
the flat of it to her still-sensitive entrance, feeling her writhe slightly and shake the bed.
She’s still on her elbows, except her back is arched this time, her legs are wrought by tremors, and the tiniest of moans previews the chorus of obscene noises just waiting to penetrate the stillness of the bedroom.
I lick over her outer lips, tasting the first dregs of salt on my tongue, and then I breach the opening of her cunt, immediately doused in the overwhelming scent of sweat and cum. A ribbon of possessiveness weaves through me, cementing the unbelievable fact that I get to taste the two of us out of what might as well be a golden chalice, and my dick’s quick to react with an appropriate rush of blood.
I swirl inside her, lapping at her tender walls, simultaneously swallowing the heady abundance now steadily dripping out of her. All my senses are going off like a security alarm, so overstimulated that every thought in my head poofs out of existence.
I chance a glance at Cali, more than satisfied with her mouth cutting into a tight-lipped grimace, her head tilted back, the soft curve of her stomach quivering. When I brush over a supposed receptive spot, her pussy begins to strangle my tongue, hips lifting higher into the air, mewls so loud they practically break the sound barrier.
“Ohhh, fuck. Oh, Gage.”
I could spend hours down here, but she’ll probably only last a few more minutes. I speed up my pace with fast flicks, exploring areas that her exes doubtfully ever ventured, using my hands to clamp onto her thighs and prevent myself from melting into a pathetic puddle of goo. She’s fully thrashing now, riding my tongue greedily, clenching fistfuls of sheets between her hands as a multitude of moans make my now-hardening dick pulse.
Devouring her like this—witnessing her as vulnerable as an exposed nerve—causes pods of butterflies to hatch in my belly, salaciousness slithering serpentine through the very structure of my DNA. I never want this to end. I never want to spend a moment not pleasuring Cali. She deserves to have me buried between her thighs twenty-four-seven, and that’s a job I don’t take lightly.
Her orgasm is fast-approaching, courtesy of every lash of my tongue, and I give her an added incentive when I suckle on her slick folds. Her legs, surprisingly, aren’t choking me out like they were the last time. She’s so
exhausted from the pleasure pendulum ride I’ve subjected her to that she doesn’t even bother with saying anything—everything’s either a soft gasp or an animalistic moan that doesn’t bode well for the state of my dick.
Just a little longer, Spitfire.
I retract my tongue the slightest bit from her cunt, looking up at her through her shaking legs, walking on razor-thin wire with the teasing she’s about to make me regret. “Legs up, baby. On my shoulders. Let me see that leaking pussy. Let me remind you who it belongs to.”
Her hand darts out to grip some of my hair, and she pulls harshly, a nonverbal message telling me that I need to put my tongue to better use.
“You’re…killing…me,” she groans, slowly hauling her legs over my shoulders, a desperate attempt to ensure she finishes quickly.
“Considering what you do to me on a daily basis, this is hardly an even playing field.” I delve my tongue right back inside her, not stopping for a breath of air until I’ve swung her all the way to the highest point of her climax.
And finally, after a continuous succession of slurps, she cries out my name, and the sound clatters against my eardrums. A ripe wave of cum slathers my mouth, rushing down into my belly like pressurized water on a waterslide. Her arousal leaks down my chin, but I’m diligent enough this time to guzzle the majority of the excess up, so drunk on the taste of her that I neglect my painfully throbbing erection.
After her orgasm razes her, every tight hold of her muscles liquefies, and she’s a sweaty pile of bones above me, starving for air with urgent gasps that never seem to end. Her legs flatten against the bed, and I drag myself up a few inches, resting my chin on her belly.
“Wow” is all she manages, bringing her hand to her forehead.
“See? Told you I could get two.”
TRICK-OR-TRAUMA
GAGE
“B oo!” Cali shrieks from behind me, jostling my shoulders and relishing in horrifying eldritch laughter when I clutch my imaginary pearls.
Frozen, I’m like a deer trapped in the line of a hunter’s bow, and it takes a few seconds for my brain to reboot and assure me that the only plausible threat in the vicinity is a threat to my manhood.
“Jesus,” I breathe, feeling my poor heart spasm underneath my fingertips. “You can’t keep doing that, Cali.”
“I wouldn’t if you weren’t so easily scared,” she says, reaching for the lollipop she stowed behind her ear and slowly peeling off the red, cellophane wrapper. She nabbed it at the first house we visited, and she’s been secretly plucking a few unsuspecting candies from the bottom of Teague’s pumpkin pail.
I fiddle with the tube on my proton pack, which matches the Ghostbusters group costume Teague has orchestrated for all of us to participate in. I never really partook in trick-or-treating when I was little, partly because the Halloween decorations scared the crap out of me, and partly because my parents never volunteered to take me and my brother. But I’m glad to be here now, with Teague and Cali, facing my irrational fears of kid-friendly jump scares and house-sized animatronics.
Teague’s a fucking trooper. He’s way less afraid than I was when I was a kid. In fact, he’s gone up to every doorstep all on his own and broke out
that pageant-winning smile of his. His pail’s so full that there’s barely any room left for more candy, and we still have a few more blocks to go until we’ve cleared the neighborhood.
Teague’s walking by my side and slowly making a dent in his king-size Hershey’s bar, while Cali’s taking up the front and inadvertently torturing me with the way her ass moves in her tight-fitting uniform.
The streets are overrun with tiny, colorful bodies, and every house is so backed up that we have to maneuver through flocks of first-time parents and disinterested older siblings, all being pulled by children who’ve reached max sugar capacity. A tapestry of darkness swallows the night sky, save for the full moon that hangs above us and casts ribbons of light over sprawling asphalt. Houses are lined with glowing jack-o’-lanterns, seven-foot skeletons and blow-up black cats occupy every lawn in sight, and fog machines exhale a sinister mist over fake gravestones. The skeletal limbs of molting trees sway with the last of autumn’s leaves, causing a few runts to fall to the ground in a flurry of crimson and canary yellow. It’s chilly out tonight, and I’m glad for the coverage of my costume to keep my balls from shriveling into raisins.
When Teague stops at an impressively decorated house—complete with a walk-through scientist’s lab—we stand in a fifteen-minute line full of overstimulated kids and the occasional fussy baby. Teague, however, bounces up and down with unrestrained excitement, which is probably a byproduct of the copious amounts of sugar he’s already ingested.
The line’s stopped moving, allowing my aching feet a rest, and Cali leans against my side, having found a new method of torturing me while she sucks on her lollipop, hollowing her cheeks and flicking her tongue over the semitranslucent candy.
“You know you didn’t have to come with us, right?” Her carmine-stained lips glisten underneath the moonlight, and my saliva glands go into overdrive when I imagine myself cleaning the cherry flavor from her mouth
—getting drunk on the aftertaste of a bad decision.
“I wanted to,” I respond, and to corroborate my statement, I ruck my lips up into a smile, mirroring the inflation of my heart. “There’s really nowhere else I’d rather be.”
I didn’t think I’d ever be trick-or-treating with Cali and her little brother. This feels so…serious. We’re not just hanging out. This could be a core memory for Teague. After his concussion, Cali’s family has been
weighing heavier on me. The more I hang out with Teague, the more I want to be in his life. And tonight isn’t an exception.
Each time he faces his fears and goes up to a house all on his own, pride crystallizes in my veins, and I want nothing more than to pick him up in my arms and tell him how proud I am. There’s always a split second before the door opens that he looks back at me for reassurance, and a supportive thumbs-up galvanizes his confidence.
Don’t get me wrong: a part of me also wants to keep my distance. A part of me doesn’t want Teague to look up at me like I can do no wrong—
because I can, and I have. I’ve convinced myself that I don’t deserve love after the mistake I made with my brother. And would Teague really look at me the same way if he knew his hero wasn’t so perfect?
Cali shoves her lollipop to one side of her cheek, puffing it out like a chipmunk’s. “He’s really happy you’re here, you know,” she whispers to me.
“I’m surprised he hasn’t gotten sick of me,” I joke, but there’s an inkling of truth in there somewhere, and it makes my stomach writhe with the intensity of a washing machine.
“Are you kidding? He’s obsessed with you. Never stops talking about you. It’s always ‘I wonder what Gage is doing today.’ ‘Can we please hang out with Gage?’ ‘Cali, did you know that Gage is the coolest person ever?’”
I smirk. “He’s right. I am the coolest person ever.”
The line shuffles forward the slightest bit, and every so often, I catch a glimpse of the two gigantic tarps over the multipurpose garage pulsing with a plethora of neon-colored lights.
“It amazes me how big your ego is,” she grumbles.
While Teague’s bucket-deep in search of his next treat, I take the stick of Cali’s lollipop between my index and middle finger, slowly easing it out from between her lips. She doesn’t say much apart from a gasp, and I push the lollipop into my own mouth. “If I remember yesterday correctly, you were a fan of something that was big.”
I can tell she wants to retaliate, but since there are little ears present, she settles for an exasperated, “Ugh.”
Chuckles dwindle into the ambience of the night, and I tip my head up to the map of stars, watching as my breath coalesces into thin, gossamer strands, eventually evaporating into the fifty-degree atmosphere. It’s just dawned on me that I’ll never be able to take Trip trick-or-treating now. And
the worst part is, I’ll experience so many things with Teague, and they’ll all remind me of the experiences that were taken from my brother.
Cali must’ve descried my uneasiness because she comes to join me at our quick rest stop, leaning against the fence. “You okay?”
“Huh? Oh, yeah. I’m all good.” I clear my throat in an attempt to reinstate my conviction.
She eyes me like a hawk, and she leans in just slightly, concern seasoning her tone. “Gage, there’s obviously something that’s bothering you.”
The lollipop lodged in my mouth suddenly couldn’t be less appetizing.
“I was just thinking about…”
I can’t even say the words. My guilt’s giving me away like a large, conspicuous, flashing neon sign.
“About?”
“I was worried about coming out tonight,” I admit, somehow feeling claustrophobic in my own skin—feeling like no matter where or how far I run, my past always catches up to me. “I was worried that I’d think about…”
And immediately, Cali catches on to my unspoken truth. “Oh, Gage. I’m so sorry. I didn’t even think about how tonight would affect you after your brother.”
“No. It’s okay. I’m glad I get to be here with you and Teague. It, uh, it doesn’t hurt as much as I thought it would. You guys make it a lot less painful.”
“Are you sure?”
I angle my chin so I can kiss the crown of her head, smiling when her curls tickle my nose and I get a whiff of that heavenly cinnamon scent.
“Yeah, I’m sure. Seeing how excited Teague is…it just reminds me of how excited Trip used to be when Halloween came around.”
She looks up at me through her lashes, and I transfer the lollipop from my mouth into hers. She jumbles it around so she can speak. “I take it he loved Halloween?”
“Big fan. Our parents never took us trick-or-treating, but Trip would always dress up,” I tell her.
“You do know your parents are on my shit list, right?”
“Oh, mine too.”
Laughter boomerangs between us, rich and rumbling like a faraway motor engine, and I feel Cali’s hands hug my arm as she lists closer to me.
“What did Trip like to dress up as?” she asks, nuzzling into me.
My hand comes up to rest over hers, which are freezing to the touch.
“He loved dinosaurs. His favorite movie was The Land Before Time.”
“So one of those blow-up dinosaur costumes?”
“Yeah. One of those ridiculous, blow-up dinosaur costumes.”
It feels really good to talk about Trip without also talking about his death. It feels good to acknowledge him without grieving him. I don’t remember the last time I was able to talk about who he was, truly—the things he was interested in, the memories we made together. And talking about him with Cali gives me a sense of closure I’ve never found anywhere else.
Cali chews the rest of her lollipop before discarding the stick in Teague’s pail.
“I, um, I hope I’m not upsetting you by saying this, but…” The last of her words are swallowed by a rocky breath, and the way she looks up at me has my heart clenching around a bullet-sized hole of fear.
“But?”
Her fingers absentmindedly squeeze my bicep. “How are you so happy all the time? I mean, I know you aren’t, but you seem so put together.”
I was expecting her comment to floor me, but all it does is produce a small smile on my lips and generate a newfound warmth between our hands
—one that travels all the way to my cheeks and scorches a presumable blush. “It’s not always easy,” I admit with a hollow chuckle. “When Trip died, I had a choice: either I could let his death drown me and take me under, or I could let his death strengthen me. It was then that I realized I didn’t want to live the rest of my life in sorrow. I wanted to find a reason to be happy again, and the more I presented myself that way, the more it tricked my brain into believing I was truly happy.”
“You don’t always have to put on a happy face,” Cali says quietly. “It’s okay to break down every once in a while.”
“I know that now, thanks to you. One reason I’ve always been so happy-go-lucky is because I’d suppressed Trip’s memory. I refused to revisit it or even think about it. It was easier to be blissfully ignorant than confront my past. But ever since I met Teague, he’s helped me come to the conclusion that my brother’s memory is always going to be there, no matter how hard I
try to ignore it. And it would be a shame for Trip’s memory to disappear all because I was too cowardly to share it.”
Cali doesn’t say anything before she rises to her tiptoes and presses a kiss to my cheek, the stickiness of her lip gloss gluing down the faint stubble starting to crop up. “I’m so proud of you, Gage. I know you don’t talk about your brother with anyone.”
“You’re not just anyone, Cali,” I whisper.
Suddenly, I feel a tug on my sleeve, and Teague’s looking up at me with huge, glossy eyes, his lower lip trembling like a leaf in the wind. “Gage, I’m scared,” he says quietly, to the point where I nearly don’t hear him over the background chatter.
His gaze cuts briefly to the ominous-sounding garage, and I follow his line of sight to find that only a few people stand between us and the haunted house. The exaggerated, eardrum-blasting noise of evil scientist laughter can be heard from our spot, and there’s a pre-recorded mess of clanking machinery that acts as white noise beneath well-rehearsed dialogue.
And all my worries disappear to make room for his. I hunker down to a squat so I’m level with him, and I give his shoulder a comforting rub. “Hey, Little Man. It’s alright. We can turn around right now.”
Teague shakes his mop of ginger hair, mouth set in a thin, hard line. “I don’t want to turn around. I want to go in. But I’m…scared.”
“You know, I’m kind of scared too. Maybe if we hold hands, it’ll be less scary, yeah?”
I can tell he’s skeptical as he glances between me and the foreboding garage, but he eventually nods his head in agreement, clinging to my hand so tightly that he cracks my knuckles. Am I scared? Hell yes, I am. I don’t know what the fuck lies behind those sketchy-ass tarps. Will I punch one of the scare actors if they jump out at me? I’ll try not to.
Teague hands his bucket off to Cali to hold through the haunted house, since she’s the least likely out of all of us to feel any terror walking through it. She’s a horror junkie—which makes sense as to why she’s so scary sometimes.
The tour starts relatively calmly, with our guide dressed in a blood-splattered lab coat and his hair an electrified mess of spikes on top of his head. He leads us through the first room, which consists of a man being bound to an operating table by leather restraints, squirming and thrashing while he screams bloody murder. Another scientist hovers over him with a
drill to his head, complete with fake blood squirting from the realistic-looking wound on the man’s temple. If that wasn’t gross enough, there are tons of glass vials and bottles filled with unidentifiable body parts and murky liquids. Blinding lights flare in my eyes, and a particularly gruesome jump scare thieves my breath and makes Teague grip my clammy hand harder.
I keep him hugged to my leg as we creep through a pitch-black corridor, only illuminated in spurts, timed with the screams from both actors and traumatized kids. I have no idea where I’m going, and I can hear Cali squealing and falling into easy laughter behind me. The fear in my body is palpable now, my heart juddering at an alarming rate, and my stomach relocating to my goddamn esophagus. When we round the corner, a new, disturbing scene is laid out before us: a woman strapped down on a table, but this time, her body has been severed in half, and the scientist is digging through a gory spillover of entrails with his bare hands.
Dear God, this is terrifying. This is definitely not suited for children.
Teague has his face buried against my hip, and I feel for the little guy. Cali’s having a blast behind us, totally unfazed, and I’m beginning to question how unmanly it would be if I grab onto her arm for support. The last room is a sensory nightmare, with the prominent stench of rotten, spoiled food perfuming the musty air. It takes everything in me not to gag. I don’t even want to know how these people replicated that smell.
The final victim is a man who’s getting all these dismembered body parts sewn onto his new body like some twisted Frankenstein retelling—the brain from the first man and the lower body from the second woman. In the background, discarded limbs pile high and soak in a mess of bodily juices and syrup-thick ichor. We get ushered out quickly to accommodate for the conveyer belt of incoming bodies, and I’m thankful, because the stench was overbearing.
When we stumble back into the real world, my chest swells with a much-needed breath of fresh air, and the horrified shrieks of other children detonate like a nuclear blast in that surprisingly large garage.
“Wow, that was incredible!” Cali gushes, already rummaging around for another piece of candy like she didn’t just witness someone’s intestines slopping onto the floor.
“Uh-huh” is all I have the energy to say, trying to shake those creatively morbid images from my brain—which will probably come back to haunt
Poor Teague is quivering against me, and I don’t think he’s opened his eyes yet to notice that we’re safely outside. I rub mollifying circles on his back, trying to coax him to look up at me. “Hey, T. We’re outside. You can look now.”
He hesitates for a moment, as if he’s trying to decide whether or not the coast is clear, and then he glances around, all while keeping his unrelenting grasp on me. “That was scary,” he mumbles under his breath.
“I know. I was terrified,” I agree.
His mouth forms an O shape. “You were?”
“Oh, yeah. But you were being so brave in there that I knew I had to be brave too. I don’t think I would’ve made it without you by my side, Little Man.”
Tears dollop on Teague’s lashes, and I’m not trained enough in kid etiquette to know if they’re good or bad tears. So, I’m about to console him when he charges into me with a lineman-tackle hug, squeezing my legs with his arms. I can hear Cali awwing in the background, and love nestles deep in my heart at how close I’ve grown to Teague in the past month. All the pessimistic thoughts working a full-time shift in my brain—the ones claiming that I’m not good enough to be a role model for him, that he shouldn’t look up at me with hero worship—they’re instantly silenced by the way he smushes his cheek into my thigh.
I was scared of Teague putting me on a pedestal, but seeing him lean on me for support through such a scary event…it feels like maybe I was put on this earth for that exact reason. Put on earth to be someone’s hero. Put on earth to hold shaky hands and calm the tremors.
I want to be in his and Cali’s lives. I want to be a role model who he can look up to. I want to be a father figure to him, especially because he doesn’t have one—and neither did I.
I just…I want to do right by him. By my brother. By Cali.
Careful not to startle him, I scoop him up under his armpits and haul him onto my shoulders, keeping a secure hold on his legs. It hurts my hip a little, but the look on his face is worth every twinge of pain. He’s giggling uncontrollably, and the three of us start walking back to the Reapers’
mansion to turn in for the night.
“Can we have a sleepover at Gage’s house?” Teague asks Cali from above me.
Cali chews off the end of a Twizzler, humming thoughtfully. “That’s up to Gage, kiddo.”
Teague thumps his little legs against my chest. “Pleeeaaaseee, Gage.
Please can we sleep over at your house?” he whines, inspiring laughter to ripple up from my belly and fill the slowly growing silence as we distance ourselves from the main road.
“As long as it’s okay with your sister.”
“Cali, can —”
“Yes, Teague. It’s okay with me,” she chuckles.
“Yay!” Teague squeals with enthusiasm, and I keep his shins clamped in a stranglehold before racing down the street as fast as my hip will allow, leaving behind the encroaching fear and misguided self-blame from my past.
THE NO-ENTRY ZONE
CALISTA
It’s day three, and I’ve been trapped in the bathroom for the past three hours. I don’t know if I’ll survive this time. I don’t remember what the sun feels like on my face or what it feels like to breathe fresh air. Death is a privilege ungranted, condemning me to a weeklong trial run of my own personal hell.
I canceled every dance class I had this week because I’ve barely been able to make it out the door. I haven’t made contact with the outside world at all. I’m beginning to lose my sanity, and soon, I’ll lose all concept of time. The only thing keeping my mind intact is the life-altering sex I had with Gage at the Halloween party. My soul practically ascended over the way he rubbed his ribbed cock inside me, making sure I could feel each and every one of his piercings as he fucked me hard and slow. I’d never admit it to him, but that was the best sex I ever had. And now my body craves him every second of every day, throwing a tantrum whenever I can’t mount him like a bonobo monkey.
God, and if he wasn’t already irresistible enough, the way he was with Teague on Halloween made my heart soar. He acted like he was meant to be a role model…a father figure. It was like he was meant to be in our lives, if that even makes any sense. Am I making sense? I don’t know.
Everything hurts. This isn’t some painkiller-fix type of hurt, either. It’s the kind of hurt that has you sweating like a pig, on the verge of passing out every few minutes, praying to whatever higher power there is for relief, and
making your body so feeble that you can barely unscrew the cap of a pill bottle.
I slump on the floor of my bathroom, resting my head against the cool porcelain of the toilet, waiting for the nausea to run its course. Teague’s knocked a few times to ask if he can help me with anything, but I’ve barely had the energy to answer him. My mother’s still recovering in the hospital, so in a sick turn of events, I guess Teague’s technically my caretaker now.
The fluorescents burn my eyes, but if I turn off the lights, it might put me in some weird pain-sleep coma. So my retinas suffer through the blinding laser treatment as my equilibrium attempts to right itself from the constant dizzy spells jumbling my brain.
Exhaustion pulls at my limbs like strings on a marionette, and my lower stomach cramps and twists, as if there’s barbed wire shredding my womb into bloodied ribbons. Not to mention that the overpowering stench of copper is everywhere, only worsening the headache in my skull.
Every single month it’s the same old torture—bleeding, cramps, sometimes puke, crying, and damning my female anatomy for having to shed my stupid uterine lining. Granted, the alternative is being pregnant, so it’s a lose-lose situation.
I’m so dehydrated that my eyes are beginning to droop shut, despite tap water being just out of reach. I’m too afraid to move in fear of passing out.
Thankfully, that possibility doesn’t look like it’ll be happening any time soon. My pain receptors are working overtime, alerting me to the pins and needles in my legs, to the staccato beat of my heart, to the heat sprawling throughout my body like a gradual forest fire, and to the periodic contractions in my belly.
But I don’t get a second of peace before there’s an incessant knock on the door that seems forceful enough to bust the entire partition down.
“Teague, go away,” I groan, curling into a fetal position in the delusional hope that it’ll allow me some magical reprieve.
A low and growly baritone rumbles from the other side, far too mature to belong to Teague, and far too angry to successfully fit in my baby brother’s four-foot-seven body. “Calista, open the door.”
Shit. Shit. Shit. It’s Gage. Why is Gage here? How did he get in? How did he know I was even here?
Conjuring the tiniest scrap of energy, I unfold from my pathetic position, scrambling and pressing my back against the thick stump of the
toilet. I stare down at my bloated belly protruding over the jeans I failed to button, and I nearly fall victim to another snot-filled crying session. Gage can’t see me like this.
“Don’t come in here!” I scream, staring at the little piece of metal keeping me from feeling Gage’s full wrath. I need to make him leave. I need to think of the most disgusting excuse in the world so that he’ll never be turned on by me ever again.
“I have…uh…explosive diarrhea. Yeah. It’s terrible!”
“I don’t care if it’s coming out of both ends, open the fucking door, or I’ll force it open myself.”
I don’t doubt that Gage is more than capable, given his mountain of man muscles. He’ll rip that door right off its hinges or pull a Jack Torrance and axe it down.
I’m too weak to get up and barricade the door. I’m too weak to keep arguing with him. All I want to do is fall asleep on this cold bathroom floor
—probably teeming with germs and the possibility of pink eye—and drift into a weeklong hibernation until The Crimson Wave has receded back into the depths of hell from which it came.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock-knock-knock-knock.
BUT I CAN’T. Because Gage is determined to play a goddamn drum solo on the door until I let him in.
“Gage, please go away,” I whimper, feeling the beginnings of a fever start to work its way through me like a slow-acting poison. And now the rhythm of Gage’s knocking has somehow bolstered my run-of-the-mill headache into a fully powered migraine.
I expect another curse to fall on my ears, but to my surprise, Gage’s shadow moves from under the door and his footfalls shallow down the hallway.
Did he just listen to me? I can’t tell if this is a good or bad thing. For any regular person, when someone does what you say, it’s a good thing. But for me, when Gage does what I say (usually stubbornly), it means that hell’s waiting to break loose. Is he going to the store to get a battering ram? I don’t think stores sell battering rams. Where does one even acquire a battering ram?
With this newfound silence, I try to focus on the cold of the ceramic tile as it scares away the heat nesting deep inside me, reverting it to nothing but an infant flame.
And when peace is just a grab away, levitating outside of my arm’s reach, a strange, tinny noise sideswipes my attention. It’s like this grating, scratchy sound, as if someone’s trying to insert something into a hole.
This bitch.
My eyes cut toward the commotion to confirm my suspicions, and of course, the doorknob is jiggling all over the place. Gage is picking the lock.
I probably have approximately fifteen seconds before he gets the door open, so I’m pretty much helpless at this point. Fifteen seconds is nowhere near enough time to make myself look presentable. This is it. He’s going to see me in a sweaty puddle on the floor, get disgusted by me, then probably never want to speak to me again. I mean, I’m bleeding out of my pussy. My pussy! That’s the furthest thing from sexy.
When the lock makes this little plink sound, I hear the doorknob turn, and then I come to a staring impasse with Gage, who’s huffing and panting and looking a tad bit homicidal.
“Why”—wheeze—“didn’t”—wheeze—“you”—wheeze—“open”—
wheeze—“the door?”
“Um, maybe because I didn’t want you to come in here!” I snip, doing my best to cover the bulge of my belly with my arms. Embarrassment paints my face in shades of pink, and all I want to do is sink into the floor, have it absorb my pathetic body, and die a peaceful death underneath the crawl space of my apartment.
It takes me a few seconds to register the heaping pile of plastic bags next to Gage’s feet.
“Gage, what are —”
“Do you know how worried I was, Cali? I was fucking sick to my stomach after not hearing from you for three days. I had to ask Aeris if she knew what was going on with you, and when she told me you hadn’t been in class, I lost my goddamn mind.”
I worry my bottom lip, swallowing around the thickness in my throat. I feel like an even bigger bitch for not telling him I was sick. I just didn’t want him to, well, do what he’s doing right now. I didn’t want him to drop everything to come take care of me. And hearing myself say that in my head
reminds me of how good of a guy Gage is. How he’s been there for me like no one else has in my life. How he’ll always be there.
“I’m sorry,” I blubber, face-planting into my palms. “I should’ve told you. I’m not sick, Gage. I’m…”
He’s somehow materialized right next to me, crouching down to my level and brushing snarled strands of hair out of my face. “I just want to take care of you, Spitfire. I need to know I’m taking care of you,” he says softly.
“I’m on my…meriod.” I whisper the last part under my breath, retracting my hands from my face so I can stare at the off-white bottoms of Gage’s shoes.
“What?”
“My…shmeriod.”
A growl sits precariously in the pit of his chest, rumbling outwards though his body. “Cali…”
“I’m on my period!” I exclaim a little too loudly, still evading his eyes as a drop of shame rolls down the bumps of my spine.
The concern on Gage’s face seems to retreat, sated by the news of me not contracting a fatal disease, and it’s replaced with a snort of laughter.
“That’s all?”
“What do you mean ‘that’s all?’”
Gage gently rests his hand on my arm, and my pulse flutters like that of a bird trapped between the maws of a hungry predator. “It’s a period, Cali.”
“It’s disgusting! I look disgusting.”
“Stop,” he snarls. “You do not look disgusting. You’ve never looked disgusting a day in your life. You’re the most beautiful girl in this entire world, and I’ll keep telling you until you get tired of hearing it.”
Normally, I’d have a barb perched on the tip of my tongue for him, but right now, the only response I have for him is…a fountain of tears.
They begin to pour out of me with the complementary hiccups here and there, and sobs break through the seal of my throat, bursting to the scene with enough volume to probably reach the neighboring apartments.
Everything intermingles on my face—tears, snot, sweat—and they form a sticky resin that’ll need a good wiping afterwards.
“Oh, baby,” Gage sympathizes, doing his best to wrangle some of my tears with the soft pads of his fingers.
“I’m s-sorry I’m s-so emotional,” I wail, desperately trying to maintain some picture of calm while my hair looks like it’s been electrocuted, and my face is a teary, acne-ridden mess. My chest racks from the turbulent sobs, and my vision has been indefinitely fogged by my stupid hormones, reducing Gage to a shapeless blob in front of me.
He caresses my cheek. “It’s oka —”
“I’m breaking out, I smell terrible, and I’m on the toilet for hours!”
“Okay, I didn’t need that much informat —”
My lungs empty a breath, only so I can launch into another tangent.
“And my stomach! Oh my God, I look like I’m pregnant,” I whine, grabbing the dome of my rock-hard belly. “I don’t want to look pregnant.”
“Calista,” Gage commands in that hauntingly low voice of his, picking my attention up by the goddamn scruff and forcing it to behave. His eyes are a slate-colored tone, every chiseled line on his face making an appearance, and I’ve never seen him look so serious before—so darkened by the frivolity of my self-deprecating comments.
Calista. My full name. I never liked it growing up as a kid—because a lot of people didn’t know how to pronounce it—but when Gage says it, it’s a sweet-sounding melody designed just for me.
“I don’t care what you look like. I’ve seen you at your lowest when you were bawling your eyes out, I’ve seen you at your highest when you were nonstop smiling. I’ve seen you in a stained hoodie, I’ve seen you in that black romper that drives me crazy, I’ve seen you in my goddamn jersey.
The bottom line is—each time, you were nothing less than stunning. And that doesn’t change now,” he tells me, soaking up the rest of my tears with the built-in tissue he calls his hand.
A sigh exits me, and I blink the last of the moisture from my bleary eyes, now feeling the full extent of the burning taking place there. My whole body feels drained—not that it was bursting with energy to begin with. The only good thing to come out of my therapeutic crying fit is my precursory humiliation dwindling to a much more manageable size.
A warm smile favors the right corner of Gage’s lips, summoning some of that lopsided charm he has flying out the wazoo. “Plus, you’d look sexy as hell if you were pregnant.”
I glare at him. “Do not get any ideas.”
“Trust me, I want you all to myself before I have to share you with a little demon spawn.”
He rises to a stance, reaching out to help me off the floor. I swipe the snot from under my nose with my forearm before accepting his outstretched hand, and he lifts me effortlessly to my feet.
I forgot how amazing his hand feels in mine. The warmth from his palm, the callouses over still-tanned skin from however he spent his summer, the protective cradle of his fingers.
“Thanks,” I murmur, nearly forgetting that we’re still holding each other’s hands.
But I think Gage remembers.
That smile of his has evolved into a full beam, the crepuscule shadows in his eyes lifting to reveal the first glimmer of sun encroaching on the horizon. He’s staring at me like I’ve bewitched him.
“I’m always going to be here for you, Cali. Even when you don’t want me to be.”
My eyebrows shoot up. “How did you even get in the house?”
“Teague let me in, and I didn’t even have to threaten him. He’s such a nice kid. I have no idea how you two are related,” Gage ribs, a chuckle of amusement building at the base of his throat.
I honestly don’t, either.
I prepare my elbow for a Gage-directed jab, but then a stabbing pain flares up in my stomach, forcing me to keel over at my midsection and clutch the source of the unabating cramping. I hiss through my teeth as another tidal wave of heat crashes over me, and I mentally plead for this to be a normal cramp and not one calling for the assistance of the porcelain throne right in front of me.
“Shit, Cali. Is it cramps?” Gage’s disembodied voice asks from somewhere beside me.
“It hurts,” I whimper pitifully, apparently not having said farewell to my tears because they’re rallying in my bloodshot eyes.
“I know, baby. We’re gonna get you in bed and get you some painkillers. I’m gonna be right here. It’s okay. You’re gonna be okay.”
With a weak nod on my part, Gage scoops me up in his arms and carries me bridal-style to my room, choosing me over his injured hip. I close my eyes to placate the blistering sting in my corneas, and the unevenness of his gait bumps me against the hard planes of his chest. I loop my arms around his neck, burrowing my face into the clean linen of his shirt as I
simultaneously breathe in his unadulterated musk. I don’t know when we make it to my bed, but I never let go of him.