Page 14

Chapter 14

I Still Hate You

Gabe

I’m drunk with power.

And about to make a mess on Wade Boehner’s couch from the way he stalks toward me. On all fours. Like an animal. Sinewy muscles flex and strain through his clothes with every stride. My confidence surges, soaring at the renewed sense of control. He’s gonna pay.

How dare he put together a thoughtful party and make me feel like a fool?

I straighten when he nears, letting his nose brush against my soaked panties, then grab a handful of the messy waves atop his head to force him to look up.

“Now eat.”

His eyes, those annoyingly pretty browns, gleam as he groans. He’s enjoying this. I know I am.

I shove his face harder, grinding against his mouth. The combination of his moans and the friction of lace on my clit sparks jolts of pleasure.

“Is this your way of punishing me for ruining your birthday?”

I glower at his interruption.

“Because it’s not much of a punish?—”

“Goddamn it, Wade. Can you still breathe?”

“Yes.”

“Then you’re not trying hard enough. I’ll accept whatever apology you come up with if you can make me come.”

A determined wrinkle in his brow forms as he laps at the fabric, matching the speed of my rocking hips and shallow exhales.

“Take them off.”

One of his large hands lifts to grab it, but I nudge him away with my knees.

“With your teeth.”

The black mesh bunches in his mouth, his head shifting side to side to slip them off, scratching my thighs along the way. Buttons loosen on his shirt, the shine of sweat glinting across his chest and up his neck. My eyes stretch to take it in.

This might be better than having a puppy.

He adorns each ankle with a tender kiss when I lift my heels out of the thong, and I almost feel guilty. But there’s no time for guilt because his lips— how are they so soft? —course up my calf and inner thigh, tightening my skin with goosebumps.

“Should I keep going?” he murmurs, closing into where I desperately want him again, fingering through those thick brown wisps and tugging him closer.

“Until I finish.”

Swipe after swipe, he sucks and licks and sucks and licks. He eats like he kisses. It’s greedy, thirsty.

My pussy throbs, aching for release. I reach for my shoulder and drop a strap, baring a hard and needy nipple.

Wade groans, eyes sagging with lust while watching me tweak and play with it, but his tongue doesn’t stop. I half expect one of his hands to join. Instead, he strokes himself over his slacks with a grumble, then unbuttons them to reach inside.

The knot of pleasure deep within my core threatens to unravel.

“Did I say you could touch yourself?”

His hand returns to the floor with a whimper, mouth still at the soaked cleft of my legs. “Gabe, please. I need to come.”

“Me first.”

He goes back to noisily eating me out, the attention to my clit sending me in a spiral, barreling toward a blinding orgasm. My head tosses back with a whine, legs clenching around him as I reach the peak. The orgasm bursts, and I let go of everything.

My vision, my hearing. His hair. My control.

My balance, too, because I fall back.

Wade catches me by the nape, drawing me into a swarmy kiss. Aftershocks shiver through me as I taste my cum on him.

The high keeps me in a haze, relishing his wandering hands on my torso and warm mouth down my neck. I almost don’t realize he’s lifted me around him and walked us to his room.

He cradles me with the gentlest placement on his bed.

“Can I lick your tits now? Please?” He waits for my agreement before lashing at a peak. “Tell me you want me to.”

My sigh comes out frustrated and impatient. “I want you to.”

A satisfied sound follows, his eyes rolling back with pleasure as he tongues one nipple. The light graze of his teeth makes me shudder and arch from the mattress. “They’re so fucking sensitive.” He suckles the other side, caressing the exposed skin on my hips. “God, I wanna be inside you.”

I moan at how his hard length brushes against my thigh and seethe at how good his hands feel.

The need to punish him returns with a vengeance.

“Do you think you deserve that?”

He answers with a whine. “Please, Gabe? Need to feel you.”

Need? He needs me?

“ Yes ,” I rasp.

I’m a weak woman with an even weaker resolve.

He mutters a fuck before pulling a condom from his back pocket and tearing it open, then undoes his pants entirely to sheath himself with a sigh.

“This doesn’t mean anything,” I remind him, propping up on my elbows.

He freezes. “What?”

“It changes nothing,” I add. “I still hate you.”

Wade chuckles. “You know, I didn’t believe you before, but from the way you’re fucking teasing me, I’m starting to.”

“Good. Now you know where we stand.” My foot docks at the hard plane of his torso, maintaining distance and dominance.

He submits, gently holding it, kissing the inner ankle, and toys with the heel strap. Something softens in my chest, and I hate that, too.

I push myself away. “Shirt. Off.”

His compliance is eager and swift, and we keep our eyes locked.

“On your back.”

“Oh, fuck yes —” He practically dives onto the top of the bed, pants catching at his knees as he gets in position. Large, grabby hands summon me.

I smirk. “Nope.”

His excitement wanes, and those warm brown eyes round out like a sad puppy. “No?”

The bowtie on my laced-up bodice unravels with a deft tug, naked breasts and stomach on display, leaving the dress pooling around my hips.

“Hands on the headboard.”

“Shit,” Wade laments, baring his frustration by pulling on his hair but ultimately lifts his arms.

It’s a necessary distancing. Because if Wade touches me, I’ll feel…everything. And I’d rather be numb.

My knees climb over to straddle him, the toes of my shoes catching against the sheets. As I roll the dress fabric over itself, the heavy head of his cock sweeps through the seam of my pussy, and a hum escapes me.

Wade intakes a sharp breath when I reach between my thighs to fist his length. Veins in his neck bulge as I spread my legs further to line him up at my entrance.

He makes a tortured noise when my body resists his size, fingertips paling in the grip on the headboard. “Please, Gabe,” he repeats. “Please.”

I relax my walls with a sigh and push him through the wet flesh in a shallow thrust. We both gasp at the delicious stretch.

My hips find a slow rhythm, taking more and more of him with each stroke, hands seeking contact with my hardened nipples, switching between palming them in a rough squeeze and light pinches to their small peaks.

“ Yes ,” Wade encourages. “ Fuck .”

I pick up the pace, wanting more praise, and relish what’s before me.

He’s glorious to watch, twisting with need and want. His defined arms bunch and tense, and his head tips back, panting moan after moan through those pink, bowed lips. Wade writhes as I ride, the speed of his cock hitting my G-spot and the friction on my clit driving the orgasm closer.

Eyes fighting to stay open, he flashes them to me with a warning. “If you keep going…I’m gonna come.”

I stop touching myself to lean forward and cup his chin. “No. You’ll come when I say you can” —my hips rise before sinking onto him again— “Be a good boy and wait for me.”

“Make yourself come.” He groans. “Use me to make yourself come.”

A simple brush of a finger across my clit has the sensitive bundle throbbing. I moan out.

“Fuck, you take me so well.” Wade squirms, the lowest part of his belly coiling as his knuckles go white and the sinews of his thighs shake under mine. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he chants.

I teeter at the edge, tightening and tremoring around how full I feel. One more intense plunge bubbles my orgasm over, and I bolster myself on his thighs, back arched to its furthest ability.

It sends him bottoming out with a jolt, screaming my name so loudly, his grasp on the headboard so strained he tears it from the wall.

Sweaty, half-clothed, and spent, we crash together in a cloud of dust from the drywall, our hearts racing and chests heaving in the aftermath.

Wade catches my limp body again and rolls us over; his dazed chuckles muted through feathery kisses on my collarbone as my vision returns.

“We broke it.” His smile presses into my skin. “Are you okay?”

Panic settles in. Sex with Playboy wasn’t supposed to be intimate. It wasn’t supposed to be caring or sweet. We’re gonna have to stop all that.

“Of all the professional athletes,” I say through a puffed breath, “I get into bed with one that has no stamina. What shit luck.”

Wade scoffs and stretches my arms in a single hand above my head, pinning my wrists in his grasp.

“Just for that, I’m going to sit in this pretty cunt for a while longer.” He rolls his hips in a sharp drive.

I hiss, still tender. “It’s not my fault you can’t last more than two minutes.”

It was definitely more than two minutes.

“Some women would be flattered.”

“ Ah , yes. I’m beside myself at being another notch in your metaphorical bedpost.”

The dazed, playful smile on Pretty Boy drops. “Don’t ever say anything as stupid as that again.”

My eyes slide to the left. “You expect me to be proud of being one of many?”

“One of many what, Freckles? You think I bring every girl to my bed?”

Doesn’t he?

Wade sputters and shakes his head, releasing me and climbing off the bed to tie off the filled condom.

I cover my face with both hands.

Only you, Gabe Finch, would be insecure after putting a guy like Wade Boehner in his place. Get it together.

When I join him in the washroom, he’s changed into black lounge pants and nothing else.

I shake the distraction away, then pee and clean myself up as he washes his hands.

He studies the sink. “I don’t bring anyone to my home. Only hotels,” he admits. “And they leave once they get what they want.”

There’s an unfamiliar longing in the darks of his eyes. My heart clenches.

“Girls don’t stay here,” he adds.

“I stay here, and I’m a girl.”

Wade denies it, crossing his arms across that broad, chiseled chest and leaning against the doorframe. “Not some girl.”

The edge of my mouth curls into a sneer as cool water rushes over my palms. “Right.”

He doesn’t blink. “Gabe.”

I push past him back to the bedroom and unsuccessfully try to free myself of the lacing on the back of my dress.

“Are you always this defiant?” Wade lightly taps away my hands and loosens the ties. The chiffon falls away. He pulls a soft white shirt out of God-knows-where and fits it over my head, guiding my limbs and covering my sudden nakedness.

“And if I am?”

“That’s too bad,” he murmurs. “No worries, I’ll find new ways to make you succumb.”

“You’re so full of yourself.” It’s aggravating, and somehow, I’m the one climbing into his bed and tucking myself in. What the fuck am I doing?

It’s too late, and I’m too stubborn to back down. I have pride!

Or something.

“Try me.” Wade shimmies below the covers and notches himself into the crook of my neck. He positions me around him, placing my arm over his shoulder and hooking my leg around his. “And don’t lie and say that doesn’t feel good.”

I don’t argue. I don’t fight him. He’s warm and firm. His heartbeat is steady against mine. Those strong fingers thread through my hair and massage hypnotic circles into my scalp.

Good? Yes.

What’s worse is that it feels right .

Stop it. It’s only sex, Gabe. Sex with aftercare.

“I still hate you.”

“Hate me all you want, but don’t move,” he warns. “You accept my apology?”

Our breaths grow long and slow.

“Yeah,” I say selfishly. He has nothing to be sorry for. I should be apologizing for being a dick the whole evening.

Wade hums into my skin. “You’re the only woman who’s ever stayed the night, Gabe Finch.”

I am in the deepest of shit.

Pretending like I didn’t sleep with Wade Boehner again is proving difficult. Pretending I didn’t feel something this time, too? Even more difficult.

Mostly because he wouldn’t stop texting me while we were separated this week, but partially because I just let him eat me out in the backseat of his new SUV.

“You didn’t have to pick me up.”

“What kind of boyfriend would I be if I didn’t?”

Wade didn’t need to know I was relieved by not having to drive the hour-and-half from Toronto to Kitchener alone after a long flight from Florida. Or that I kinda felt bad that he came down from Ottawa simply to get me.

“A fake one,” I sniped back, chewing on a hangnail.

“You keep saying that, but the way you took my cock last week was very real.”

I slapped his arm. “Shut up!”

“Make me.”

My hand lifted to smother his pretty mouth, but he swerved the car, turning onto the exit ramp and parking at the far end of the visitor center.

“What the hell are you doing?”

He grabbed my throat with a firm but tender hold. “It’s been a week since I’ve tasted you. Now make me shut up.”

First, I shut him up with a kiss.

Then, with my crotch.

Wade firecrackers into a smile when he catches me staring. I roll my eyes.

“Trying to make a good first impression with my dad, are ya?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re wearing a cable knit.” It makes me want to wrap myself in him, and I’m not sure which I hate more: myself, him, or the fact that I don’t own that cute sweater. “And driving a Range Rover.”

“So?”

“What happened to the Lambo?”

“Got rid of it.”

“What! Why?”

He shrugs. “Saw Radek’s and felt inspired. And I’ll have you know, Jaeg made this for me.”

“Jaeg? As in Derrick Jaeger?”

“Yep.” A proud grin brightens his face.

“Huh.”

“He’s crocheted for years but took up knitting over the summer. Really bearing down on the whole ancient veteran player.”

My nose wrinkles. “He’s only a couple of years older than me. You calling me ancient, too?”

“No. You’re perfect.”

I fake-vomit and shove his shoulder, breaking his doe-eyed look. He giggles with his tongue caught between his teeth.

“ Ew. Stop trying to be cute. It’s nasty.”

“Going down on you once wasn’t enough, huh? I can get nasty again, really quick?—”

“Shut up.”

We reach the outskirts of Kitchener and pass the nursery sign on the road.

“Terra Bella,” Wade reads.

The shared gravel driveway leads to the house I grew up in, now a faded purple. The paint on the white shutters is cracked and peeling from the weather.

Porch creaky, yard lawn overgrown, I frown at the state of the small farmhouse. Maybe it’s because I’m not alone this time, but I’m embarrassed.

Kurt had only visited once during university and only dropped in for a short while before heading to his parents for Christmas. He didn’t seem to care, but I doubt he even noticed.

A tall planter sits beside the door, a lone bamboo cane sticking out from its soil. Left behind, months after Gudi Padwa. At least he remembered to take in the gudi and kalash this time.

“What’s that?” Wade asks.

I shush him, then knock and twist the door open.

“Dad?”

Sandalwood incense pours out, sweet and woody, the background recording of “Sukh Karta Dukh Harta” and the ringing ganthi signals his evening routine is well underway.

A tinge of anger sparks within me. Dad loved my mother— loves her so much —that years after she’s gone, he’s still upholding her faith, her traditions, her culture.

And she couldn’t bear to stay.

When I was young, he did it for me so that I would know who I was. Who she was. But the grief was too great, and I rebelled. Accepting the part of my identity that was hers had been a lifelong battle. It was easier to ignore it and fit in.

Only after rooming with Indi at university did I even admit to anyone that my mom was Maharashtrian.

Poor Dad hasn’t given up. He shares a soft smile and brings the thali to us, welcoming us by drawing three circles around us. “Go on. Take the Aarti.”

My hands hover over the lit diya and pull its warmth to my eyes and over the crown of my head.

Dad offers it to Wade as well, who imitates me to near perfection. He returns it to the platform in front of Bappa’s murti and bows with joined hands.

“Bala.” His eyes brighten as long, open arms extend for an embrace. I step into it, absorbing his loving kisses on my forehead and cheek. “I’ve missed you. It’s already been two months since Ganeshotsav.”

“I missed you, too.”

Wade clears his throat.

“Sorry,” Dad says through a nervous laugh, letting me go. “Come on, bala. Introduce us.”

“Oh, right.” I usher Boehner forward. “This is Wade Boehner, my?—”

Fake boyfriend. Who ate me out for thirty minutes roadside.

“Boyfriend,” Wade fills in the blank for me, holding his hand out to shake.

“And this is my dad, Terry.”

“Terry Fink,” Dad adds.

“Nice meeting you, sir.”

Wade’s reply is curt, sparkle suddenly muted, all charisma, dimpled smiles, and social butterfly tendencies nowhere to be found. His free hand quickly clasps my hand and squeezes.

What is up with him?

“Please. Everyone calls me Tez. Good to finally meet you,” he says with a toothy grin. “Wow. You athletes are always bigger in person than on TV.” He waves us in, pointing where to take off our shoes and detouring through the kitchen to turn off the oven. “Sorry, didn’t want to burn the butternut squash.”

Dad leads the way to the back of the house, passing a wall of framed family pictures from over the years.

Baby pictures, various basketball rosters, graduation pictures. Every important milestone. The absence of Aai glares back.

My father stalls at the garlanded headshot of his late wife, plastic pink and white flowers circling her face. His fingers rest on his lips before pressing them against her encased cheek. He exhales.

I seek Wade’s attention, but he’s busy, silently studying the various trophies and medals on display in a glass case.

“I’ll leave you two to get situated,” Dad says, moving his eyes between me and Wade. “Meanwhile, I’ll get dinner ready.”

Without another glance, Wade leaves to get our overnight bags and my hand goes cold from the loss of his grasp.

I enter the kitchen and hug Dad from behind. He pats my hand on his chest.

“Soup okay, kiddo?”

“Always.”

Not much of a cook, he made various soups and stews when I was younger, experimenting with various veggies and lentils. Now, it’s become a Thanksgiving tradition.

“Things going well between you and Mr. Hotshot Goalie?”

You mean how they’re not going at all as planned?

I don’t intend to, but I flush. “Yeah.” Instinct has me scratching my nose as if checking it didn’t grow from the lie.

“He’s quiet.”

“I’m not sure why; he’s usually not.”

“Maybe he’s nervous,” Dad suggests, lifting a shoulder. “I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but there’s something special about him.”

There is, isn’t there? A small voice inside my head agrees.

The front door opens and closes with a whine. I motion with my thumb and Dad nods in understanding.

“I got it.” Wade denies me my suitcase. “Where do you want me to put it?”

I may not like him, but I don’t like him subdued, either.

“Upstairs, second door to the right.”

“Mine, too?”

“Unless you want to share a bed with my dad.”

Wade’s lips stifle a smirk, and I’m almost disappointed at the lack of retort.

In the time I set the table and Dad brings out soup, salad, and a basket of bread, our guest approaches the dining area.

He politely answers Dad’s questions about the upcoming season and makes small talk over dinner.

Totally natural, normal for most, but not Wade. It’s unnerving.

Pretty Boy even washes up, thanking my Dad for dinner and banning us from the kitchen.

I recline on the couch, doom-scrolling on my phone until they both simultaneously reappear. Dad has an album under his arm.

Oh, no.

“It’s that time again.”

“ Dad ,” I complain.

“Don’t ‘Dad’ me. It’s tradition.”

“We don’t have to.”

“Don’t have to what?” Wade asks, settling down next to me.

Dad mirrors him on my other side and plops open the photo album in my lap. “A trip down memory lane.”

My heart seizes within its cage.

“That’s Bela,” he taps. “Love of my life.” Light brown eyes peek from their corners at the camera, the young image of my mom donning a nauvari sari and embellished with traditional Maharashtrian jewelry: a bejeweled brahmani nath, thushi necklace, heavy jhumka and gold bangles, a giant dhol strapped to her torso. “Gabe’s mother.”

Wade’s eyes narrow in question. “You’re Indian?”

“Half.”

“You look like her,” he deadpans.

“Doesn’t she?” Dad nudges his knee into mine.

“The freckles,” Wade whispers.

Goosebumps rise across my arms.

“She led dhol tasha every chance she got.” Dad’s smile wanes. “Her parents cut contact when she immigrated here to pursue a Master’s against their will. We met at an ISKCON event on campus. She was vibrant, a burst of light in the darkness I was escaping.” His hand sweeps over a series of their wedding pictures. “My relationship with my family was already strained from leaving the church. Swedish Lutherans. They were so tightly wound, and there was so much life I wanted to experience. They completely severed ties when I told them I was going to marry her.”

He pauses over a photo of their joint hands. “We only had each other, but it was enough.” Images of her gardening with others appear. “Our community understood our search for love and acceptance. To belong.”

A few faded snaps of the original greenhouse and farm come up. Rows of potted hibiscus, gardenia bushes, frangipani trees, jasmine, tiger lilies. None of them beam as Aai does.

“She was so naturally nurturing, spent hours caring for her plants. Friends and community, too. Always dropping off meals and herbal remedies to anyone who got sick or needed a little help. Never put herself first.” He turns to another page. “And then…”

Welcome to the world, Gargi Bela Fink announces my birth on a banner at the top. Scrapbook style, there’s a card with my height and weight next to a pink, swaddled newborn in her arms. Aai’s face glows despite the weariness in her eyes.

Wade lowers his head and squints. “Who’s…Gar-gi Be-la?” The enunciation cracks a smile.

“That’s me.”

“We named her after the great intellectual Sage Gargi and kept her middle name Bela after her mother, but she wanted to change it in high school, right before the prospects of playing university basketball came around.”

I’d had enough of being called Gaggy and Gargle Fink Rat. The name change ultimately worked in my favor professionally and severed cultural roots in one fell swoop.

“Where did Finch come from?”

My father points to himself. “My last name, Fink. It’s the Swedish word for finch.” Dad sighs, melancholy and nostalgic, showing off photos of some of my milestones. First steps, first tricycle, first day of preschool. Aai blows out candles on a cake with me on my fourth birthday.

“We lost her shortly after.” There’s a guilty tremor in his voice as he keeps flipping pages, revealing more and more pictures without her. “She wasn’t taking care of herself. And maybe I didn’t take good enough care of her. It was a tough year.”

Tears trickle down his face, slow and steady. He sniffles and wipes them away with the collar of his shirt.

My heart rate drops, blood retreats from my face, sending a shiver up my spine.

We do it every year, but I don’t want to. Not today, not in front of Wade.

“Dad,” I warn. “Please.”

“It’s okay, bala,” he murmurs. “You never let yourself…it’s okay to miss her. I miss her every day.”

I hate the irrational feeling of missing her. I didn’t even know her. I don’t remember her. How can I miss someone I don’t remember?

Any memories have been fed by these pictures.

Stymied grief regrows like a lizard’s severed tail. It’s heavy, threatening to suffocate and crush me under its weight.

Wade reaches across my back to palm my shoulder and pulls me to his chest, a silent invite to curl into him and let out every pent-up emotion. I shoot off a pleading look, but it’s no use. His Adam’s apple wobbles. Water clouds his eyes, too.

If I don’t stand in the next three seconds, I’m going to come apart, and not in the way he’s seen before. I fight the collapse.

A shallow sob exits my mouth, and I leap upright, excusing myself to the washroom.

I fumble to turn the venting fan on before slamming the toilet cover shut and plopping down. My head finds its place between my knees in an attempt to steady the sharp, gasping breaths.

A soft rap on the door cuts through.

Even softer is his tone. “Gabe, let me in.”

I know Wade means the washroom, but I’m not ready to show him the worst part of me. The part I’ve sliced away, wanting to forget. Like an untreated wound, it festers, the infection too deep for the covering bandage to aid in its healing.

Feet shuffling to the door, I press my cheek to the wood and speak through it. “Just gimme a minute, okay?”

He sighs, vibrating the door. “Okay.”

Tears dabbed away and fake toilet flush complete, I emerge to Wade’s weak, concerned smile.

“Your dad wants to go to the greenhouse.”