Hate You Not: An Enemies to Lovers Romance

by Ella James

  “They make curvy Barbie,” MH hisses.

  I shrug. “I didn’t even think about it, but it’s true—I didn’t notice any Barbies when we packed their house up.”

  She widens her eyes and looks up at the ceiling, like she’s asking Sutton why. Then she waves me toward the hallway. “Let’s go get the rest.”

  We unload a plastic seesaw, a toy kitchen MH found at the Goodwill, and a basket of superhero figurines. Then we hear the screaming.

  I rush off first and nearly collide with Margot as she bursts into the living room—in tears.

  “Oh no, honey.” I clutch her shoulders. “What’s the matter?”

  “Jack!” She wails. “He says my mommy is a zombie!”

  “What the hellfire?” I crouch down beside her as the other kids spill into the room. “Your parents are angels, Margot. In heaven with God.”

  “Heaven isn’t real.” I look up. Oliver.

  “Heaven is real,” I say. “We will talk about that. Jack—”

  MH strides over to him and snatches him into the kitchen. Good riddance.

  “Jack asked if we saw our Mom and Dad…and if they looked like zombies.” His voice cracks on the word.

  My blood pressure shoots up. “Of course they didn’t. They are angels, watching over you two.”

  “I want my mommy and daddy to come back from heaven!” Margot shoots off toward her bedroom. Oliver follows.

  Jack loses his Nintendo Switch gaming system for the week—apparently he forewarned his mom that he might ask about the zombies, and she pre-threatened him—so MH and her kids run to their house to get it; Margot and Oliver will borrow it as part of Jack’s apology.

  I tell Margot and Oliver that sometimes life includes some really awful things along with really great things, and assure them the great things will come. And that their parents will be watching them forever, waiting for them when they die—which I remind them involves superpowers and being happy forever. (Fingers crossed.)

  It’s going okay until the conversation’s almost over and Oliver says, “I’m ready to die now. Georgia is boring.”

  Margot says, “I want more Barbies.”

  I’m wearing my pearl necklace. I clutch it. Does that really help?

  What helps is wine. Box wine, at 9:00 PM, after I get my two sad sacks to sleep. My bestie Leah brings it over, along with a giant bath bomb—“from Lush at the Perimeter Mall; there’s some kind of fancy jewel inside.”

  I take the thing from her. “I hope it’s the swallowable, pharmaceutical kind.”

  She arches her perfect eyebrows. “That bad?”

  “Oliver wants to die like mom and dad because Georgia is boring. Margot wants her Mommy’s smell back. Then she got the idea that maybe I could smell like Sutton, and—hear this shit—you know what Sutt’s perfume was?”

  I cackle maniacally, and Leah widens her eyes.

  “That Joy stuff!”

  “What?” Leah tilts her head, not understanding.

  “It’s called Joy by Jean Patou, and it’s made of—I don’t know, like a whole bouquet of roses or something. Anyway, I can’t smell like their mom because their mommy smelled like money. That stuff costs a thousand dollars.”

  Leah whips out her phone to search it, and her eyes widen anew. “Oh. Yikes. Yeah, it’s six hundred. Who even was your sister?”

  “Right?”

  “Use the life insurance money, Juney.”

  “How do I know when to use it? What will actually improve their lives? Margot doesn’t really want me to smell like her mom. Even if I did, I still won’t be Sutt. No one ever will be.” My eyes fill with tears that fall down my cheeks. I wipe at them.

  “Shit, June. I’m so sorry.”

  Leah hugs me, and I hug her. “I’m not good at this.”

  “Yes you are.”

  “I’m going to mess them up, I know it.”

  “How so?”

  “I don’t know. I already un-vegan-ized them at the Steak ‘n Shake.”

  She laughs. “Good. Didn’t you go there with Sutton last time she came home? Because she wanted it?”

  “Yeah, but still. Her husband was a devout vegan.”

  “California people.” I can hear her eye roll even though I can’t see it; we’re still hugging.

  “They were weird,” I admit. “His whole family. Sutt said they were real cold fish, especially the dad. Not Asher—okay, maybe Asher; I barely knew the guy—but I’m meaning Asher’s dad. Their mom was dead for a long time, and his brother—Burke? Icy cold stunner. That guy didn’t even show up for the funerals.”

  “Geez. That’s harsh.”

  “Oh, and by the way. Jack the Brat told Margot today that her mother is a zombie now.”

  Leah howls. “Oh dear baby Jesus in the manger! Are you shitting me?”

  I fumble with the wine box spout in reply. When I get it open, it sprays on the floor, and I lean under it with my mouth open—mostly to offer amusement to Leah. I start choking, and she grabs the box and flips it on its back.

  “You’ll go zombie, too, if you’re not careful, you goose.”

  I hear a gasp, followed by a yelped, “No!”

  Then Margot is streaking through the living room. From behind the couch. Where she’s been listening to every word.

  Chapter 3

  Burke

  Three Weeks Later

  I look up from the gas pump, running my hand into my hair as a warm breeze tries to toss it around. As I do, a man across the way, filling a huge black truck, gives me a nod, as if he’s…saying hi?

  I can’t bring myself to nod back, so I return my gaze to the pump. Gasoline is so damn cheap here. The pump clicks, signaling the tank of my rented Porsche is full, and I’m charged only $38.03.

  Albany, Georgia—Where Everything Has Less Value. They should put it on the welcome sign at the city limits. It’s the nearest pseudo-metropolitan area to Heat Springs, my ultimate destination, and the place does not impress, I’m sorry to say.

  I feel like I stepped back into 1994. The number of the strip malls, run-down fast food joints, pickup truck dealerships, and Walmarts is off-putting. When I first stepped out of the Porsche at the gas station just now, I swear I could smell cow shit in the humid breeze.

  Yeah, it’s humid here. In February.

  I don’t know what I’ll find when I get to Heat Springs—Molly only dug up one photo of June, my 26-year-old, GED-toting, food-assistance-getting, bank-loan-defaulting nemesis, and in that photo, she was twelve—but I know I can’t let Oliver and Margot grow up here with her.

  It’s not about the sour grapes. Although…did Asher and Sutton really choose this over my place? Sure, I’m not the poster boy for guided meditation, karmic healing, and talk therapy like my brother was. I’m not taking apart my inner feelings and analyzing my true self and all that other intangible shit. I’m the type that puts everything into my job. But I’m an adult, and my home base is San Francisco.

  This is about quality of life, and quality of education. Hell, even quality of food. I haven’t seen a Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, or even a Natural Grocers since I stepped off the plane in Georgia.

  There’s no private school in Heat Springs, so June Lawler either plans to send them to the Heat Springs public school or, more likely, I guess, drive or bus them here to Albany to go to one of these private schools. Molly checked them all out, and they’re shitty. There’s nothing this far from Atlanta that would ever prepare them for a quality college. Assuming she plans for them to go to college.

  Asher had specific college funds for both of them, so surely she does. It doesn’t matter, though. I’ll be there by nightfall, and I’m not leaving unless they’re with me. I touch my wallet, resting in the passenger seat, and give myself a fake grin in the rear view.

  Everybody can be bought for the right price, and thanks to Molly’s research, I know June’s. The girl is irrationally devoted to her family’s sad husk of a farm. It’s only eighty acres now—in the last
ten years, they sold a lot of acreage to the neighbors—and if the paperwork is any indication, the land isn’t fertile. Every year for the last five, June has operated at a loss. Somehow Molly even found a PDF file showing crops June planted versus what she harvested. I don’t know anything about farming, but the numbers looked like shit.

  Unless the paperwork is way off, it looks like she’s only got nine cows and one horse. She’s selling crop-planting and harvesting equipment for way less than it’s worth on two farm websites, and she’s taken out two new small business loans in the last year—both at near-predatory interest rates. The farm itself is financed through her brother’s trucking company, which is probably struggling like a lot of trucking companies are right now.

  This is why she took my brother’s kids. She wants them for the life insurance money. Move them to the farm, then use the money intended to pay for private school, French tutors, and riding lessons to float her crappy family farm.

  I went against my MO with my piece of shit father and contacted him to give him hell for letting Asher’s kids get taken. The motherfucker actually laughed. I shouldn’t have been surprised. He put on a good front for Ash over the years because he wanted an heir to his empire, but my father is poison. Just because I’m the only person alive who knows it doesn’t make it untrue.

  I blow out a breath and turn onto a skinny, asphalt-cracked highway.

  The trees around here are unnerving. They’re too tall, too thick. I feel like I’ve been sucked into some other dimension—one where maybe it’s fifty years in the past. Fields fan out around the narrow road, spreading in between dark swaths of Southern pine forest. I tap the steering wheel and check my cell phone. No service—not a surprise.

  Finally I reach the city limits, marked with a small plastic sign that looks like someone made it in their basement. This is even worse than I feared; Heat Springs is barely a shit smudge on the map. I check the paper maps I printed off, but some of the roads I’m seeing through the windshield aren’t on paper. A minute later, I pull over at a diner sort of place. It’s got a brick façade, but there’s a front porch with wooden rocking chairs.

  I look down at my most casual pair of Salvatore Ferragamos—some black leather drivers I’ve got on with black jeans I thought might be appropriate for a rural area—and feel awkward as I pull the creaky wooden door open.

  Country Western music fills my ears, and my eyes fix on a tall woman standing behind what looks like a podium. She’s got a maroon apron on. Her white-blonde hair is in a net, and she’s wearing a lot of very red lipstick. When she sees me, she leans forward with a confused expression on her wrinkled face, like she dropped her glasses and can’t see me properly. She continues looking at me that way until I’m right beside the podium—which I can tell is an actual podium because there’s a hole on the front for electrical cords.

  Then she says, loudly, as if she means to alert someone through the kitchen doors behind her with her tone, “Can I help you, darlin’?”

  It takes some restraint not to laugh at her slow, stretched-out vowels. Not out of meanness. I just haven’t ever heard that sort of accent outside parody. I bite on the inside of my cheek and try to look like this is business as usual.

  “Yes.” I nod once. “I’m looking for June Lawler.”

  “JOLENE!” My gaze moves to the hallway to the right of the kitchen doors, where I think the shout came from. I hear a crashing sound, and then a woman says, “Goddamn it!”

  The woman before me—Jolene?—turns around, and I spot her bra straps sticking out above the collar of her floral blouse. For some reason, the straps are held together by…a bread tie?

  “If you’re looking for that other pan, it’s in the washer! Like I told you!”

  She turns back to me and rolls her pale blue eyes, a look of disgust twisting her red lips. “Doesn’t know how to find a damn thing, that one.” She pronounces doesn’t like dut-uhn.

  I nod, for a second not sure what I’m even nodding at.

  “You said—”

  “It’s not in there!”

  Jolene’s eyes pop open wide, like someone just grabbed her ass. “What the Sam Hill!” She storms off, leaving me to look around the little entry space. I turn back toward the door and spot a deer head.

  Is that a deer? It’s not a moose. So it’s a deer. A deer’s head. It’s got horns, only I think on deer, they’re called “antlers.” I count them. Twelve. Seems like a lot to me.

  “Yes, sir.” I turn back toward the podium. It’s her again. What was her name? Jolene. “What can I help you with?” she sighs. “You selling somethin’?”

  “I just need to find June Lawler. Had some issues with my GPS.”

  She dabs her sweating forehead with a napkin. “Who?”

  “I’m looking for the Lawler Farm. June Lawler.”

  “Oh, you mean the Hinson place. Ain’t never been Lawler.” She says it with disdain that I don’t understand—or maybe she’s just bitchy because of the woman who’s yelling at her down the hall.

  I nod. “Her mother’s maiden name was Hinson. Do you know June?”

  “June Bug?” She gives me a no-shit look. “Everybody ’round here knows June Bug. Got herself a niece and nephew from out in Californ-i-aye. Sutton’s babies. I heard the little girl’s real pretty.” She says that gently, like it’s a consolation prize for losing both of one’s parents. But that’s not what bothers me the most.

  “Did you say June…bug?”

  “Born early, with them big ole eyes. You know how them preemies look, a little alien.” She widens her eyes, and I nod like I’ve seen a hundred preemies.

  “I need directions to the farm. Please.”

  She frowns, giving me an exaggerated-looking suspicious frown. “Who’re you again?”

  I’m wearing a white button-up and a gray wool vest, like I might if I was meeting with investors. It’s important that June see me as her ticket to a nice payday—which I intend to give her.

  “I’m an old friend. From college.” Shit. “When I went to college, I knew her,” I clarify.

  “Smart enough to run that college, June is. Didn’t go, though.” She frowns, and I can see a cartoon thought bubble over her head. “Too much going on out at the farm…and with her mama. You know that.”

  The woman draws directions for me on a napkin. “Before you get back moving, let me get you an iced tea. We’ve got cornbread, too. Why don’t you take June Bug some cornbread for them sweet kids? The little Yankees need to get acquainted with the finer things.”

  I open my mouth to say “I don’t think so,” but what comes out instead is, “Sure.”

  I climb back into the Porsche with a to-go box of what I’m told is cornbread—it looks like a soft, yellow brick of cake and smells like butter—and a large iced tea in a Styrofoam cup. I ran out of water in my bottle a few miles ago, and I’m fucking thirsty. I bring the straw to my face and sniff…then take a small test sip.

  Damn. It’s not bad. Very sweet. I take another sip…and then another as I roll down the quaint Main Street. It looks like something out of a movie. Lots of brick, a bunch of striped awnings, even a little fountain at an intersection. The place has an abandoned feel, like small towns often do, but I see a few people. A woman pushing a kid in a stroller. A tall guy wearing a ball cap, overalls, and boots. There’s a hardware store, a tiny library, a women’s clothing store called The Southern Belle. I’m surprised they’re still embracing all that Old South stuff. Better to re-brand, I would think.

  On one corner, there’s a vacuum cleaner repair store—really?— with a handwritten cardboard sign in the window that says “Fix Your Stuff!!” I count three antique stores, and I bet they’ve got the goods. There’s a bakery. I wouldn’t try their stuff. No self-respecting pastry chef would make their home here.

  I inhale the butter smell that’s filled the car now. Maybe I should try that bread the woman gave me. Shit, I should have paid her for it. I didn’t think about it, but that was stupid.
Maybe the stuff’s poison. Why else would she give it to me without running my card?

  I’m through the little downtown in no time. The napkin map and my GPS agree: I should veer right at the next light. I pass a leafy playground, an insurance agency, a big—I mean really big—tree with moss dangling from its branches. Then a shady cemetery framed in by a tall, iron fence. There’s a Confederate flag emblem stamped into the iron gate, meaning that it’s old as hell.

  Another block, and things feel more industrial. I pass a dry cleaners, a Dollar Tree, a DVD rental place—didn’t know those guys were still in business—and a secondhand electronics store. Then fast food. There are several fast food joints here, including one I’ve never seen called Hardee’s. There’s a burger on the sign that looks like a cardiologist’s wet dream.

  Past the Taco Bell, there’s a bank and then a Walmart—I guess every little country town has gotta have a Walmart—and something called Piggly Wiggly that looks like a grocery store. Just beyond the store, right there on the main drag, is a brick sign that says PINE HILLS in a cursive script. I frown at it. Half a second later, houses start to line the roadside. A few big, columned homes with porches that I figure have got to be pre-war, or from around that era. Then some little brick ones.

  Finally, there’s nothing more for me to gawk at except two gas stations and a tire shop, and then a car dealer. Then just forest. The sun is going down, and I can’t see it for the treetops. The pines are tall and thin, their tips swaying gently in a breeze I couldn’t feel when I stepped out into the humidity back at the restaurant.

  I follow the highway down past a shack that’s got a neon BBQ sign. Then I hang a right onto a smaller road and start into the sticks. Ponds and fields, sometimes barbed wire fences wrapped around ordinary-looking woods, with “No Trespassing” signs mounted to trees as if someone would want to trespass in that patch of forest. Maybe hunters. I wonder what they hunt here. There’s no big game—at least I don’t think so. Maybe wild boars? I wouldn’t want to face off with a boar, that’s for damn sure. I read once that they can eat an entire human body, bones and all.