Make Me Hate You

by Kandi Steiner

“So, we could just hang out in the same room and be silent together.” “Sounds thrilling,” Morgan teased, patting her brother’s chest.

We were the past, the present, the future. We were other worlds and other universes, too. No matter what we did, it would always come back to this.

“But what I thought about most?” he whispered. “Was how you said you loved me. I replayed it a million times — the way your lips formed around the words, the way your eyes were glossed with tears and pain that I’d caused you, the way I felt that declaration so deep inside me that it might as well have been a tattoo on my soul.”

“So, what now?” Tyler grinned, pulling back to look me in the eyes. “I was thinking we could spend the rest of our lives making up for lost time.” “Oh yeah?” I asked, feigning nonchalance as my heart galloped in my chest. “Yeah. What do you think about that?” “I think the rest of our lives won’t even be enough.” At that, Tyler kissed me, slow and soft and sure, and then he whispered, “Then let’s stay together forever after that, too.”