“Stop.” My throat caught on a sob. “Maks, I can’t. I can’t.”
“One day…” His voice lowered. “A boy met a girl… realized she was cooler than insects and asked her to be his friend…”
Tears came so hard, I couldn’t see the screen of the stupid show.
“He told his dad that same day he found the girl he was going to marry.” His voice caught again. “And he swore it with a blood oath to prove that he was serious.” Maksim took a breath. “He was eleven.”
I lowered my head into my hands. “Maks…”
“Imagine finding the love of your life at eleven.” His chuckle was sad. “And then to grow up and realize that love was so much bigger than you realized, more complicated, scary. Not that it stopped him. Sometimes the only thing that kept him from destroying the love shared was to push it away, to reject it, to fake a smile in the wrong direction, to keep a certain someone’s heart intact when his was breaking.”
I couldn’t do this. I moved to get up, but hands came down on my shoulders.
“I don’t have much time,” he rasped. “So, with the time I have left, I want you to know, it’s always been you. The only reason I made you think otherwise…” He winced, cursed. “I wanted you to remember the hateful things so that when you were reminded of me, you’d think of how awful it was, then move on. It’s so much easier to hate than to love. When you love someone and experience a memory, you fucking chew on it like a bone. You hold on and refuse to let go even though it hurts like fuck, you dig in, and you dig in again and again until you’re exhausted until you have no tears left, and then you repeat the process and wonder why you can’t move on. I don’t want that for you.”
“Wh-why are you talking about dying?” I asked.
“I didn’t want that for you,” he said, ignoring my question. “All I wanted was for you to hate me.”
“And all I wanted was for you to love me,” I snapped.
“Love?” He chuckled. “Izzy, it’s so easy to love you. It’s easier than working my ass off to get you to hate me… I’d prefer it, but right now, I need your hate; in order to wake up tomorrow morning, I need you hateful, so I have no regrets. I need you to promise me.”
“What?” I tried to turn, but he kept me staring straight ahead, keeping his hands pinned on either side of my head. “What’s going on?”
“Until my heart stops beating,” he whispered. “Hate me until my heart stops beating. Promise.”
“No!”
“Promise!” He roared. “Please! Promise!”
“Why!”
“Because!” He swore. “I need you, Izzy. I need you to say it, please say it, I need to know you’ll hate me. I need it. Let me be selfish, please.”
Tears stream down my cheeks as I lied. “I’ll hate you… until your heart stops beating.”
He let out a sigh of relief and dropped his hands, his head pressed against my back. “Until my heart stops beating.”
“Maks.”
He was gone before I could get another word out.
Chapter Fifteen
“The man is a success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much.” —Robert Louis Stevenson
Maksim
I leave the theater room and numbly walk toward the backyard, where I know Nikolai is waiting.
Phoenix is with him. Of course, he is; you can’t take a shit without Phoenix knowing everything. Did that mean Chase had any clue?
The girl I love, her father, would never forgive me.
I don’t hang my head. I walk straight. I walk with purpose toward my future, certain death.
“Nice night.” I joke, forcing a chuckle.
It’s fucking raining like crazy, and we’re the idiots standing out in the dark, under the rain, breaths coming out in front of us in the cold fall weather.
“Funny.” Nikolai looks at Phoenix, who then looks at me, truly stares me down with his creepy blue eyes and face full of secrets.
“Out with it,” I say.
Phoenix is the first to break eye contact.
Neither of them is looking at me.
“Twelve hours,” Nikolai says. “Maybe less. It’s all I can give you before it completely…” He doesn’t need to finish his sentence.
“Until you stick me with a needle that makes me go night-night?” I release a harsh laugh.
“It’s not funny,” Phoenix says with a stern voice. “Your father’s not going to take this well.”
I snort out a humorless laugh. “Who would take this well? I mean, really?”
“Why?” Phoenix asks, his expression pissed the hell off. “Why would you do this? Why would you ask Nikolai to do this?”
I am silent. “It’s for me to know. It was my second choice after Chase sent me away for a week.”
Phoenix’s head snaps up. “What did you just say?”
“You know a lot, Phoenix, and I really respect you, but when it comes to this? My reasons and what I was forced to do in the name of the Abandonato family, kindly fuck the hell off.”