diff --git a/adafruit_requests.py b/adafruit_requests.py
index 771bfcc..d6730c9 100644
--- a/adafruit_requests.py
+++ b/adafruit_requests.py
@@ -86,11 +86,14 @@ class Response:
 
     encoding = None
 
-    def __init__(self, sock: SocketType, session: "Session") -> None:
+    def __init__(
+        self, sock: SocketType, session: "Session", fast_close: bool = False
+    ) -> None:
         self.socket = sock
         self.encoding = "utf-8"
         self._cached = None
         self._headers = {}
+        self._fast_close = fast_close
 
         # _start_index and _receive_buffer are used when parsing headers.
         # _receive_buffer will grow by 32 bytes everytime it is too small.
@@ -231,17 +234,18 @@ def close(self) -> None:
         if not self.socket:
             return
         # Make sure we've read all of our response.
-        if self._cached is None:
+        if self._cached is None and not self._fast_close:
             if self._remaining and self._remaining > 0:
                 self._throw_away(self._remaining)
             elif self._chunked:
                 while True:
                     chunk_header = bytes(self._readto(b"\r\n")).split(b";", 1)[0]
+                    if not chunk_header:
+                        break
                     chunk_size = int(bytes(chunk_header), 16)
                     if chunk_size == 0:
                         break
                     self._throw_away(chunk_size + 2)
-                self._parse_headers()
         if self._session:
             # pylint: disable=protected-access
             self._session._connection_manager.free_socket(self.socket)
@@ -361,11 +365,13 @@ def __init__(
         socket_pool: SocketpoolModuleType,
         ssl_context: Optional[SSLContextType] = None,
         session_id: Optional[str] = None,
+        fast_close: Optional[bool] = False,
     ) -> None:
         self._connection_manager = get_connection_manager(socket_pool)
         self._ssl_context = ssl_context
         self._session_id = session_id
         self._last_response = None
+        self._fast_close = fast_close
 
     @staticmethod
     def _check_headers(headers: Dict[str, str]):
@@ -560,7 +566,7 @@ def request(
         if not socket:
             raise OutOfRetries("Repeated socket failures") from last_exc
 
-        resp = Response(socket, self)  # our response
+        resp = Response(socket, self, fast_close=self._fast_close)  # our response
         if allow_redirects:
             if "location" in resp.headers and 300 <= resp.status_code <= 399:
                 # a naive handler for redirects