Hate You Still by Lyssa Lemire
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
KNOX
I try to control myself, but, fuck, natural reactions are out of my hands.
The second that door shuts and I’m alone with Emma, my cock swells so much that if Emma looked down at my lap she’d probably think I just got finished shoplifting from a baguette store.
If only my cock would listen to my brain. I might not know a lot, but I know one thing for damn sure: for me, Emma Willows is nothing but trouble.
Whether it’s breaking my heart as a teenager or getting me benched and slapped with a community service charge, when I spend time around Emma Willows, life starts to kick my ass.
Okay. I know neither of those things are her fault. She didn’t do anything. Especially the first one – she didn’t break my heart. If anything, I broke hers.
But leaving her did break my heart, back in high school when I was forced to uproot my whole life and move into another foster home out of the blue.
And if I had been with anyone other than Emma at the time, I wouldn’t have felt anything like that. I can be sure of that, because no one has ever made me feel what Emma made me feel back then. Not even close.
I’ve been trying to forget how I felt back then. Forget about those feelings. Forget how much someone can mean to me – how good it can feel to mean so much to someone else.
I had done a pretty damn good job of forgetting it, too. Until about a month ago, Emma barged back into my life, more beautiful than ever, and awakened feelings and memories I’ve tried so hard to bury with booze and easy, meaningless sex.
And remembering those feelings fucked me up.
It screwed with my mind so much, in fact, that I screwed up the whole beginning of my junior year, on and off the field. Screwed it up bad.
The bottom line is, I shouldn’t want to have anything to do with Emma Willows. I can’t afford to.
But try telling that to my cock. That son of a bitch hardly ever listens to reason: there’s zero chance it’ll listen to reason when I’m sitting right next to Emma. That’s for damn sure.
I have to admit, though, I’m grateful for the ride, especially as the dark, cloudy sky explodes in a flash of light and earth-shaking thunder shakes the frame of the car. This storm came out of nowhere, and it came with a vengeance.
Emma’s radio is playing, but we’re sitting together in the midst of a heavy silence that’s far louder than any song. The lyrics and melodies flowing from the speakers don’t even register with me; but I can hear and sense her deep, slow breaths with perfect clarity.
“So, how’s it coming with the football team?” Emma breaks the silence. I was expecting that she’d try to ride out the awkward silence until we got home, having picked me up in this weather out of the goodness of her heart, but hardly wanting anything more to do with me.
I nod my head, reflecting on the progress I’ve made over the last several weeks. “Not too bad, I guess. Some of the kids are definitely improving.”
“I notice it in class,” she says.
“Really?” I ask, my interest piqued.
“Yeah. You know Bryce?”
I laugh, unable to help it. “Do I know Bryce? Yeah, I know Bryce.” The kid was a nightmare when he started at the beginning of the year. He had promise, but zero technique – and couldn’t listen to someone long enough to actually learn what the right technique is.
He was exactly like me at that age. Which is why I didn’t give up on him. He’s still rough around the edges, and he still makes me want to pull my hair out sometimes, but he’s taking big strides both in his playing and in his attitude.
“He’s been doing so much better in class lately,” she continues. “A lot more motivated. More focused. Actually listens to directions.”
“That’s good to hear. Maybe I’ll make him run one less lap next practice as a reward.”
She laughs. Emma Willow, laughing at one of my jokes. That sure as shit isn’t something I expected to experience today.
And her laugh is every bit as sweet and sonorous as I remember. Not only do my ears take notice of its lovely melody, but my cock takes notice as well. I have to shift in my seat so that it doesn’t form a flagpole in my pants that would be impossible to ignore.
For just a moment the mood in the car is lightened, but it doesn’t last long. Something changes in Emma’s disposition. It’s subtle, but impossible not to sense. Her shoulders stiffen. The rhythm of her breathing changes. She reaches to the knob on her dashboard and turns down the music, so the speakers only produce a low murmur.
“Why did you …” she begins a question but stops herself.
I look out the window. I feel like I know how that question was going to end. It’s still raining so hard that I can barely see ten feet out the windows in any direction. This means that we’re driving very, very slowly and cautiously. The drive that normally takes around ten minutes is on track to take more like twenty-five.
Which is plenty of time for that unfinished question to hang heavily and loudly in the still air, silent except for the nearly imperceptible low music coming from the speakers, and the dull, monotone sound of the rain pelting the roof of the car.
“Why did you leave?” Like ripping off a Band-Aid that’s been on too long, the question surges from her mouth, no hesitation once the first sound is pronounced. It hits me like a defensive blitz.
Seconds after the words leave her throat, I’m still trying to make sure I actually heard her right.
“What?” I need to make sure she said that I thought she just said.
She takes a deep breath and steadiest herself. We’re stopped at a red light. “Why did you leave? Back in high school. You were there one day, gone the next. No notice. No explanation. You just … left, and never looked back. Why?”
Her voice starts to falter pronouncing those last couple words. There’s a hurt etched in her voice. A hurt I never expected to be there. I assumed that she’d long since written off our past – that she was, if anything, happy to have gotten rid of me back then, now fully aware that someone like her dating someone like me was the mistake that her family, teachers, and everyone else who had her best interests at heart told her it was at the time.
But that’s not the attitude that her question exudes.
The rain starts to let up. It’s no longer pounding on the roof of the car with vicious force, but tapping on it lightly, a soothing, smooth noise.
I search my mind for possible answers. More plausible answers than the true one. But I realize I wouldn’t be able to pronounce the words of a lie right now.
So, I opt for the truth.
“I wanted you to hate me,” I say. Pronouncing the sentence feels like relieving myself of a tremendous weight.
“What?” She asks after several seconds of silence. I can only imagine how it sounds to her, how little sense it makes.
I take a deep breath, preparing myself to try and explain something that I’ve never talked about with anyone. Something that I’ve never put into words, a truth that’s only existed in the reaches of mind and heart, unspoken and unexpressed.
“Back then, you remember my … situation?” I ask.
“Yes,” she answers tenderly.
The situation being that I didn’t have parents. I didn’t have a family. I lived in the system, moving from foster home to foster home, group home to group home – though, in all cases, the word home is a misnomer. I’ve never known a home: not even now.
“By that time in my life, I’d been in a lot of different … placements. With a lot of different families. Lived with a lot of different people. Had to leave a lot of different people.”
I let the picture I paint with those words sit to dry before continuing. “Some were easier to leave than others. The hardest ones to leave were the ones who were good to me. The ones I liked. The ones I’d miss. The easiest to leave were the ones I hated. The ones who hurt me.”
I clench my jaw, trying not to get sucked down the rabbit hole of memories that are better left forgotten, of which I have many.
“Shit, even if I didn’t necessarily like a family I was staying with, just not hating them made it hard to leave, because I knew I could be trading a good situation for a bad one, something that happened too many times to count. But if I hated the foster parents, or hated a particular group home, either because of the people in charge or the other kids … it was always easy to leave. Always easier to get over it and move on again.”
“So that’s why you just started ignoring me and dumped me with half a dozen words, turning your back on me like it didn’t matter and walking out without looking back?” Shit, the way she describes the scenario cuts me, the words and the feelings behind them sharp and slicing.
“Yeah,” I answer, feelings like I’m pleading guilty in a court of law – something I do have a little bit of experience with lately, after all. “I wanted it to be easy for you.”
I now notice we’re right in front of both of our houses. I hardly even noticed the course of the drive for the last several minutes as we’ve been talking about this. I couldn’t tell you how much time has passed since Emma first asked the question.
The car slows to a stop by the curb. Without my noticing, the rain has almost stopped as well. A fine drizzle still rasps against the metal roof and makes itself apparent in the twinkling of water puddles on the road
The sky is no longer an expanse of menacing gray, but now some clouds break to reveal the still-blue sky, and here and there rays of sunlight begin to penetrate.
“It didn’t work,” Emma says, her hands still firm on the steering wheel, so firm that I can see her knuckles pale on her delicate hands, despite the car being at a stop. “It wasn’t easier,” she finishes.
It feels like the tight hands of hers are squeezing my heart rather than the wheel when she utters those words.
“Are you sure you weren’t just trying to make it easier for yourself?” she asks.
Fuck, if I thought she squeezed my heart with her last statement, that question is more like her putting on a pair of sharp high heels and stomping on it.
“No. There was no way to make leaving you easier for myself.” I shock myself with my response. Did I really say those words?
She seems as stunned with them as I do. After all that I’ve already said during this car ride, things I never dreamed I’d say out loud, I’m scared of what I might spill my guts with next if I stay any longer.
“Thanks for the ride, Emma.” I open the passenger side door and get out. When I glance over my shoulder while walking to my front door, I notice Emma still hasn’t left her car.
Opening my front door, I almost have a heart attack as a girl barges into me. She squeals and takes a step back. I’m surprised to notice it’s Emma’s roommate.
“Oh, sorry, Knox,” she says, audibly and visibly flustered, her voice a jumble of words and her face red and seemingly embarrassed.
“Uh, no problem. Katie, right?”
She laughs nervously and nods her head. “Yep. Well, I gotta get going … see ya!” She hurries past me. Wondering if she snuck in for some kind of follow-up prank arranged with Emma – which seems absurd – I glance from side to side as I step in my house and close the door behind me.
Gavin is in the living room. Unless I’m mistaken, he also has an awkward, flustered look on his face – though, right now, my brain is so rattled after that car ride with Emma that I can hardly trust any of my senses or my intuition.
“Katie just stopped over to borrow some, uh, milk,” he explains.
“Oh. Okay.” I answer, though I’m pretty sure she wasn’t holding anything in her hands as she passed me. And I’m pretty sure the only milk in our fridge expired about a week ago.
Whatever. Those inconsistencies fall out of my mind as soon as I note them. I don’t have any cognitive space to process anything right now – except for the conversation Emma and I just had.