Page 134 of Hate Me Like You Mean It

Unfortunately for him, Mom was well accustomed to his deviant streak. To Adrien, she said, “I want to talk to the chef when we get there. And let their management know I’ll double whatever bribe their employees might be offered in exchange for sneaking red meat or whiskey to the old man wearing a sweater vest if they bring it to me instead.”

All of a sudden, Gampy didn’t even want to go to dinner. What was the point when his own daughter wouldn’t allow him to enjoy “what little time he had left on the planet after coming so close to death”?

His words.

This argument persisted until he’d been unhooked from the drips and beeping machines, signed his name across the last couple of forms, and was leading the pack out of the hospital, cane in hand.

“You might as well have let me die in there,” he argued theatrically as Mom reread the list of no-no foods the nurses hadprovided. “What’s the point of getting out of bed if I can’t have a cup of coffee to help me through another day in this prison?”

“Where’s Maxwell?” Ria asked. This was her third attempt at changing the topic to something slightly less argumentative. Poor thing still didn’t know better. “Do we need to go pick him up?”

“He’s with a friend,” Gampy grumbled. “And I’ll take care of it myself. Right now, in fact. I’ll go grab him while you’re all at dinner since I’d rather poke a needle through my eyeballs than watch you all eat steak while I try to keep down unseasoned gruel.”

“Dad, stop being so dramatic. You can have grilled salmon with a side of…”

I didn’t hear the rest, my attention gravitating toward the sleek Bugatti parked on the other side of the lot, where Dominic told me he’d be waiting.

It’d been six hours. The sun had already set, and while I’d managed to sneak off a few times to an area with reception to give him updates, he still didn’t know Gampy was going to be okay.

“…Hey.” I jolted when Adrien nudged my shoulder. He frowned. “What’s with you? You’ve barely said a word since you got here.”

I shrugged, pretending like I’d been in the middle of admiring the general vibe of the sad, gray parking lot instead of fixating on one particular, very hard-to-miss vehicle. “Just processing. But I’ll, uh… I can meet you guys at Torrent in a bit. I’m not exactly dressed appropriately for dinner, so I’ll run home and change first.”

It was a valid excuse. I wouldn’t normally be caught dead in this outfit and had only worn it so Dominic could maintain his focus on my master plan instead of dragging me back into bed.

“We’ll be in a private dining room. Who cares?”

“It’s a million degrees out, and I have stains on my sweatpants. I’ll meet you there in like forty-five minutes. It’s not a big deal.”

“I have some spare clothes in the car, if you want,” Ria chimed in. “Jeans and a T-shirt.”

How helpful.

I cleared my throat. “I’m not sure they’ll fit. I’ve gained a few…”

I trailed off, losing steam.

I really didn’t have it in me anymore. I didn’t have the energy, the will, or the desire to lie or to keep more secrets. I just didn’t.

Not after everything that had happened.

Not while Dominic was sitting alone in his car, waiting for me to give him another update. I couldn’t leave him behind without checking to make sure he was okay.

Because someone had to.

The whole time we’d been waiting for Gampy’s test results to come back, I’d been sitting there, torturing myself by running through every possible worst-case scenario. I couldn’t stop. Those few hours of not knowing were pure hell.

Except I hadn’t been alone.

The doctor hadn’t walked back into the room wearing a somber expression. She hadn’t shut the door, asked us to sit down, or handed us a small stack of folded pamphlets stuffed with numbers to call and support groups to join.

We were leaving the hospital feeling light as a breeze, knowing Gampy was going to be okay. As far as my family was concerned, the biggest decision to be made tonight was what each of them would order when we got to the restaurant.

Dominic, on the other hand, had left bearing the weight of his mother’s life on his shoulders, forced to make decisions that the vast majority of people much older than him would have struggled with.

I couldn’t imagine what he must have been feeling.

How much anger. Fear. Anxiety.