Stuck with You (The STEMinist Novellas #2) by Ali Hazelwood

            He laughs silently and my breath hitches high in my chest. “Where do you live?” he asks softly.

            “Farthest reaches of Staten Island,” I lie.

            It’s supposed to be my revenge, but he just says, “Good.”

            “Good?”

            “Good.”

            I frown. “It’s a toll of seventeen dollars, my friend.”

            He shrugs.

            “One-way, Erik.”

            “It’s fine.”

            “How is it fine?”

            He shrugs again. “At least it’ll take a while to get there.”

            My heart skips a beat. And then another. And then they all catch up at once, a mess of overlapping thumps, a small, wild animal caged in my chest, trying to escape.

            I have no idea what I’m doing here. Not a clue. But Erik is standing right in front of me, the streetlight a soft glow behind his head, the warm spring breeze blowing softly between us, and something clicks within me.

            Yes. Okay.

            “Actually,” I say, and even though my cheeks are burning, even though I cannot look him in the eye, even though I’m shifting on my toes and contemplating running away, this is the bravest moment of my life. Braver than moving here without Mara and Hannah. Braver than the time I megged that midfielder from the UCLA. Just brave. “Actually, if you don’t mind, I’d rather skip Staten Island and just go to your place.”

            He studies me for a long moment, and I wonder if maybe he cannot quite believe what I just said, if his brain is also struggling to catch up, if maybe this feels as extraordinary to him as it does to me. Then he nods once, decided. “Very well,” he says.

            Before we start to walk, I see his throat bob.





Chapter 7


            Present

            On paper, I should be pleased.

            After weeks of sometimes-murderous, often-mopey, intense rage, I finally told Erik that I’d rather take my chances and fall down an elevator shaft—Return of the Jedi Emperor Palpatine style—than spend one more minute with him. I told him, and from the way his lips pressed together, he really hated hearing it. Now his eyes are closed and he’s leaning his head back against the wall. Which, given his reserved Nordic genes, is likely the equivalent of a regular person going on his knees and bellowing in pain.

            Good. I stare at the line of his jaw and the column of his throat, forbid myself from remembering how fun it was to bite into his scratchy, unshaven skin, and think, a little savagely, Good. It’s good that he feels bad about what he’s done, because what he did was bad.

            Really, I should be pleased. And I am, except for this heavy, twisted feeling at the bottom of my stomach, which I don’t immediately recognize, but has me thinking back to something Mara said to me the evening after my night at Erik’s. Hannah’s end of the call had gone dark, presumably when a falling icicle severed whatever Internet cable connects Norway to the rest of the world, and it was just the two of us on the line.

            “He tried to call me,” I said. “And he texted me asking if we could get dinner tonight. Like nothing happened. Like I’m too stupid to realize what he did.”

            “The fucking audacity.” Mara was incensed, her cheeks red with anger, almost as bright as her hair. “Do you want to talk to him?”

            “I . . .” I wiped the tears off with the back of my hand. “No. I don’t know.”

            “You could yell at him. Rip him a new asshole. Threaten him with a lawsuit, maybe? Is what he did illegal? If so, Liam’s a lawyer. He’ll represent you for free.”

            “Doesn’t he do weird tax corporation stuff?”

            “Eh. I’m sure the law’s the law.”

            I laughed wetly. “Shouldn’t you ask him first?”

            “Don’t worry, he seems to be physically incapable of saying no to me. Last week he let me hang up wind chimes on the porch. The question is, do you want to talk with Erik? Or would you rather forget about him and pretend he never existed?”