Page 76 of Hate Me Like You Mean It

Ms. Rivers says it has to be an invention that helps at least one of us achieve a goal that we have, but every time I ask Loch Ness to sit down and brainstorm she calls me a nerd for wanting to start on it now instead of the night before it’s due.

I’m going to train Maxwell to poop in her cereal.

“Alice.Alice.”

I marched out of the bar without slowing down, fists tight.

“At least let me drive you home.”

“I’d rather be skinned alive than get in a car with you,” I spat, parroting the nonsense he’d decided to spew earlier instead of just fucking apologizing.

Most people would have taken the hint and backed the hell off. Dominic doubled down and picked up his pace until he’d slotted himself to my side.

“We weren’t finished talking.”

“I have nothing more to say to you right now.”

“Great, then just listen.”

I veered off to the edge of the sidewalk, searching the street for an empty cab.

“I’m sorry. For what happened in there.”

I snorted, craning my neck to peer over the thinning traffic. “And I’m the liar.”

“You don’t have to believe me, but I am. I overstepped, and I regret it.”

My teeth clenched, and I crossed my arms, pausing my search to fix him with a flat glare. “Would you do it again?” I held up a hand when his mouth opened. “If you didn’t know about him and Darius. Would you do it again?”

The split-second hesitation was all I needed. Rolling my eyes, I returned my attention to the moving row of bright headlights.

“Do you remember what you said to me after Jaxton’s party? The week before you framed my mom?”

Wow, he really was dead set on making this exponentially worse, wasn’t he? “For the last time?—”

“You said, and I quote, ‘I hate you, Dominic. I hate you so much, it’s suffocating,’” he recited slowly, methodically, as though the words had been permanently seared into the very fiber of his soul. “‘You are, without question, the worst thing about my life—the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. I wish I’d never met you. I wish you’d fucking leave. The thought of being stuck with you for another four years makes me want to crawl out of my skin. You keep saying the reason you’re turning downfucking Princetonand following me to UVic is because you’ve always wanted to see where your dad grew up, but we both know it’s also so you can keep torturing me, you pathetic, miserable fuck. I don’t ever want to see or speak to you ever again, so leave methe fuckalone!’”

Something thick and sour lodged itself in my throat, sealing it shut. I ground my teeth, keeping my attention fixed on the cars.

“Then you stormed off,” he finished with terrifying calm, as though his flawless recitation of my speech was perfectly normal. “Did I miss anything?”

Not really, no.

Other than, of course, the fact that not one hour before this, he’d humiliated me in front of almost every single one of our classmates. The entire soccer team had laughed and jeered, and when it was my turn to spin the bottle, it’d landed on their goalie, who’d thrown one swift glance in Dominic’s direction and said, “I’ll also take the cricket.”

They’d all snickered again. And after Jaxton had gagged through the experience and downed an entire bottle of beer, he’d glared at me and said, “Worth it.”

It was, to this day, one of the most scarring and mortifying experiences of my life.

Given that I’d been about to burst into tears, Rachel and I had gotten up, walked away, and called my driver to come pickus up. And since the party wasn’t fun if he didn’t have me to pick on, Dominic had followed.

Oh, and this was two, maybe three weeks after he’d asked me out to prom as a “prank.”

So excuse me if I, an eighteen-year-old kid whose heart had been shredded to confetti by the guy she’d been in love with since before she knew what that even meant, had finally blown up and said a thing or two she may not have meant out of sheer, gut-wrenching heartbreak.

“You couldn’t have made yourself any more clear.” He stepped forward, crowding me. “Between that and how you reacted to my letter, you could not have possibly made your revulsion for me any more clear. You might feel some physical attraction to me now, but back then… We didn’t accidentally invent a sex game, Alice. I came up with the initial idea because I wanted an excuse, any excuse, to kiss you, and I was too scared to voice it, or ask, because I thought you’d laugh in my face. And the thought of you playing it with some other guy is…”

He took another step forward. “It hasn’t stopped. I left, just like you wanted, and it still hasn’t fucking stopped. You framed my mother for theft because of how badly you wanted me gone, and itstillhasn’t fucking stopped, Alice.”