Hate You Still by Lyssa Lemire

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

KNOX

I sit up straight in my bed, in a cold sweat, breathing so hard I’m almost hyperventilating.

Another one of those fucking dreams.

It’s been a while since I’ve had one. I thought they might have finally been done with. But I guess not.

It’s always the same thing. No matter how many times I have this dream, it doesn’t get any less scary. It never feels any less real.

The worst part is, the dream starts with me waking up. I’m a kid again, waking up in bed. It’s always in a room I don’t recognize, in a bed I know I’ve never slept in.

And not only is the room somewhere I’ve never been – the feeling is something I’ve never experienced. I wake up feeling … at home. Warm. Comfortable. Safe. The beginning of this dream is the only time I’ve ever felt this way.

But it doesn’t last long.

A dark figure suddenly flings the door open. I can’t make out any features of this figure. I can’t see its face, I can’t see if it’s a man or a woman, I can’t even see if it’s human. I only know that it’s much bigger than me, and much stronger – far too big and strong for the young child that I am in the dream to resist.

The figure grabs me by the arm and drags me out of the bed. It starts pulling me away. Away from the room, away from my bed – away from the happiness, the safety, the belonging that I felt when I woke up in this dream.

I struggle and struggle, but I can’t overcome it. The figure drags me away, and the further I get from the bed, the room I woke up in starts to fade darker and darker. The happy, content feelings that filled my chest when I woke up in the dream are gone, and in the dream, deep in my heart and mind, I know those feelings will never return, that I’ve lost them forever …

And at that point, I always wake up.

That’s where I am now.

I took at the phone on my bedside table. 1:35. Shit.

It takes me a couple moments to calm down, to get my heartbeat and breathing back to normal. I lay back down in my bed and look up at the ceiling.

There’s no way I’m getting back to sleep anytime soon.

I throw off my covers. I put on an Alton Eagles t-shirt and pull on a pair of sweatpants – I always sleep naked – and head outside. I need some fresh air, and I need to be under the open sky. The worst thing after a dream like that is to feel confined – the very worst thing is to stay in my bedroom itself, a bedroom being the very scene of the dream.

I walk outside and inhale the air. It’s a beautiful night. Cool and calm. Not many stars visible in the sky – can’t expect that living in a highly populated town like Alton in a major metropolitan area. But at least our street is dimly lit. No one else is out at this hour, not on a Tuesday night.

Once my thoughts clear, however, I realize that it isn’t silent outside, despite the stillness of the air – there’s a sound, and it’s close by. The sound of … crying? From next door?

I step out onto the lawn, the soles of my feet luxuriating in the cool, damp grass. I look to my right, towards Emma’s house next door. My breath hitches.

Emma’s sitting on her front porch, hunched over, the unmistakable sound of sobs coming from her.

A surge of worry grabs me. Is she okay?

I slowly walk over our lawns. Her head is hunched low, buried in her arms that rest on her knees. Her sobs are deep and sad. What could have happened to her? The thought that another man – that son of a bitch she went out with the other night – could be responsible for her sorrow crosses my mind, and the level of rage that thought generates surprises even myself.

“Emma?” I ask tenderly, cautiously, not wanting to startle her.

Mission failed, though. Her head jolts up and when she sees it’s me, she lets out a shocked gasp. “Knox! What are you doing here?”

“Had to get some fresh air,” I answer, apologetically. “Are you okay?”

She sniffles and wipes a string of tears from her eyes. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

“You sure?”

She shakes her head. “Maybe I’m not.”

“Want to talk about it?” When she remains silent, staring out into the empty expanse of darkness above us, I try to lighten the mood with a joke, “After all, we’ve got a pretty good track record of calming, relieving conversations today, don’t we?”

She snorts a laugh. I have to chuckle myself. The conversation we had in her car was the furthest thing from calming and relieving, for either of us. But I’m glad my joke worked to lift her mood, however lightly and temporarily.

“Actually, that was yesterday,” she comments. I can tell she’s trying to suppress a smile, but it peeks through just for a moment, the edges of her luscious lips perking up not for long, but long enough for me to notice.

And long enough for my cock to notice. I switch my stance to hide the beginnings of a hard-on that I try to think less sexy thoughts to avoid. Shit, if I knew I’d be seeing Emma out here, sweatpants are the last things I’d have chosen to wear.

“Shit, you’re right,” I reply. “Well, it’s a new day. New day, new beginnings. That means we have a clean slate and can have non-awkward conversations, right?”

She laughs again, this time a real laugh and not just the snort of one.

And, fuck, that sends more blood to my cock. I’m afraid that sitting down next to her would be too forward right now, that it might be encroaching on personal space she might need in the mood she’s in, but if I don’t sit down there’s no way I’ll be able to hide the huge bulge that threatens to rise in my pants any second.

So, I take a step closer to her and ease myself down on her stoop next to her. Even though being next to her just made my cock that much bigger and harder, at least sitting down with my legs spread, these baggy sweatpants afford enough room for my cock to stiffen without anyone but me noticing.

I recall a memory from our time together in high school and start to laugh. Wow, this is the first time I’ve ever been able to think of those times without a pang of heartache – instead, I’m able to enjoy this memory for what it was.

“I remember what I used to do to cheer you up when you were feeling down or stressed out,” I say. “Do you remember?”

I see her lips spread in a wider smile. Her cheeks scrunch up and take on a rosy shade of red. Fuck is she beautiful. This is the first time I’ve seen her smile, really smile, since we got reacquainted this year.

“I remember,” she says. Her voice has a trace of happy wistfulness to it, telling me that maybe she doesn’t regret her past with me too much. Or, maybe, not at all. “You used to take me for ice cream.”

I smile, too. “That’s right. Whenever you had a meltdown because you got less than an A on a test or quiz, treating you to Mint Chocolate Chip at Hank’s put a smile back on your face in a hurry.”

She looks at me with an amused frown. “I did not freak out when I got less than an A,” she protests.

I laugh hardily. “Yeah, you did. I remember once you were inconsolable because you got a seventy-nine percent on an essay.”

“Duh! That’s a seventy-nine percent! A seventy-nine percent isn’t just less than an A,” she puts on a mocking tone as she repeats my words back to me, “it’s a C!”

“Well, even then, that Mint Chocolate Chip got you to forget that crisis that so clearly ruined your life.”

“You actually remember my favorite flavor?” she asks with a chuckle of disbelief.

“I remember it all,” I say directly, my tone serious. I am serious. I remember everything about our time together.

The animated look on her face, her smile and her cheeks and nose scrunched up with laughter, slowly tightens and becomes more serious as she takes in my words. Our eyes are locked together, her chocolatey brown orbs warm and vivid in the darkness. She turns her shoulders in my direction, her body inclining slightly towards me.

“All of it?” she asks in a small, soft voice.

“All of it,” I reply.

I notice her tongue, for a split second, peek out from behind her lips as she lightly licks them. My nostrils flare and my heartbeat speeds up like a piston, my cock stiffening more than it already was.

When I mean everything, I mean everything – especially the taste of those lips and the feel of that tongue. That’s something I could never forget, not for as long as I live.

We’re locked in a trance momentarily. My eyes break from her gaze to find and focus on her lips. Even in the darkness they’re so red, so plump, so inviting. Her scent wafts to my nose, enticing me further. I’m on the edge of making a decision we might both regret.

She averts it though, turning her head and shifting her body to angle away from me. “This is something that Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream can’t fix, though,” she says with a sigh.

“Still don’t want to talk about it? You sure?”

She shakes her head. “No. Not now at least.” I can tell that she means it, and that trying to pry more information out of her about what’s bothering her isn’t going to help her right now.

“Well, if Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream won’t fix it, I’m sure it’ll at least help,” I say, trying my best to force an upbeat, optimistic voice.

She chortles. “You know what, I think you’re right about that. But I don’t have any in the freezer right now.”

“Well, let’s make it like the old days. Let’s take a walk to get some.”

She looks at me like I’m nuts. “We’re not going to walk from here to Hank’s Ice Cream Shop seventy miles away.”

“There’s the Big Bag three blocks away,” I say, referring to the local grocery store. “They’re open twenty-four seven.”

“You’re really proposing we walk to the grocery store at,” she glances at her phone, “after two in the morning to buy Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream?”

I nod my head. “Absolutely.”

“You’re serious?” She tilts her head toward me as if the idea is actually enticing her.

“I’ve never been more serious,” I say.

She looks like she’s thinking about it for a minute, and then finally responds, in a tone that sounds as if she herself is surprised she’s saying it, “Alright, let’s go.”

“Just give me a minute to put a pair of jeans on,” I say.