Hate You Not: An Enemies to Lovers Romance

by Ella James

  “I like your hair.” I don’t know why I say it. What is this, the fucking salon?

  “I care a whole awful lot.”

  I swallow. Guess I asked for that. But I can turn the tides again. Fuck, I’ve gotta try a little harder, but I still think maybe I can charm her. “You a Seuss fan?”

  “What?”

  “Well you said the phrase ‘a whole awful lot.’”

  “Yes, as a descriptor of how much I care what you think about my hair. That was sarcasm, by the way. I don’t even give one shit.” She’s whisper-hissing so the kids don’t hear.

  “What did I do to earn this kind of ire? I can’t even compliment your hair?”

  “Are you gay or a cosmetologist?” she chirps.

  “Uh, no. Why?” Inwardly, I’m cringing, though. It really was a weird comment for me to make.

  “If you’re not, then that was a come-on. Even if it was reflexive. I don’t want a come-on from you. Ever. I don’t even want to ride in this car with you right now. I wish you would drop us off and not come to the rodeo. Just go back to where you came from. But you’re not going to do that, are you?”

  I swallow. “I’m not.”

  “So we’re not friends. And I don’t care if you think my hair is nice—which it is. When I was a kid, a model scout in the mall tried to get me to try out for a shampoo commercial.”

  Holy shit—I knew it! It’s shampoo commercial hair. I smirk to myself at my prescience. Or postscience. Whatever that would be called.

  “You think that’s funny?” she demands. “That a farm girl like me—a farmer—could be scouted as a model?”

  “No. Why would I think it’s funny?”

  “You were smirking.”

  “No I wasn’t.” I stop at a red light and give her a look that says “I’m innocent.”

  “You’re so full of crud,” she says.

  “Full of crud?”

  “I can tell you’re lying or at least uncomfortable right now because your nostrils are flaring.”

  “What?” Oliver leans between our seats. “Did you say no drills? Do we have to see a dentist before we go to the rodeo?”

  June laughs. “What? No, you silly goose.” She ruffles his hair—dark like mine…and like my brother’s. “No dentist. I said Burke had something in his nostril. A booger.”

  I make a pshh sound. “I did not. That’s crazy talk.”

  “Sit back, Oliver sweetie. I don’t want that booster seat sliding around or your buckle coming undone.”

  “Is that what happened to my Mom and Dad? Did they come out of their buckles?”

  June leans into the back seat, and I’m amazed at how her bitchy tone gentles for the kids. “What do you mean, darlin’?”

  “I heard someone at the visitation say they had a vibe on impact. What’s a vibe?”

  I swallow hard. I sense more than feel June’s body tense beside me.

  “Oh, a vibe? Um…like a feeling. So your parents were in the car when it happened,” she babbles. “Something happened to the car.”

  “What happened?”

  “Oliver, she said already,” Margot snaps. “Mom and Daddy’s car got broken. That’s what hurt them.”

  “Did they have their seatbelts on?” Oliver asks in a small voice.

  “I think they did, sweetheart.”

  “Why didn’t they work?”

  “The seat belts?” June says gently.

  In the rear view, I can see him nodding. Poor kid.

  “Well…sometimes something happens to the car that is a different kind of thing.”

  “Did it get crunched?”

  June’s shoulders rise and fall as she inhales and exhales. “It didn’t get crunched.”

  “Can I see it?” Oliver asks after a minute.

  “I’ll see if I can get the pictures.”

  Damn. Now that’s a bad fucking idea.

  “It was their time to go to heaven, Oliver,” Margot tells him.

  “Shut up, Margot.”

  I turn onto the county road that points us toward the farm and then pull over. “I’ve got an idea. Why don’t you guys help me drive?”

  June sits back in her seat, her eyes nearly popping out of her head. “What?” she hisses.

  “It’s a rural road. We can poke along.” I turn to look at the kids in the back seat; they both look hopeful and distracted, as intended. “You guys can sit in my lap. What do you think?”

  If June had superpowers, the look she’s giving me right now would definitely kill me.

  “You do see the irony of this?” she murmurs. “And not in the funny, cool way.”

  “There’s a funny, cool kind of irony?”

  “I don’t know that we should do that,” she says, projecting her voice toward the back seat.

  But the kids protest, and she gives in when Margot’s lower lip trembles.

  “We can do it on the dirt road,” she snips. “Not the highway.”

  “This is hardly a highway. Isn’t it a county road?”

  She gives me another glare.

  I need to talk to her about giving in when the kids protest. Not that it will matter since I’m taking them home.

  When we reach the dirt road, June squeezes into the back seat and Oliver sits in my lap.

  “I can really steer the wheel?” He looks so happy.

  “For sure.” I give him some instructions, put my foot on the pedal just a little, and he starts giggling.

  That gets me laughing, too. I push the pedal more, and he screams—okay, really more a squeal.

  “You’re doing it! You’re driving!”

  I’m afraid one of the kids will ask which of their parents was driving at the time of the wreck, but thankfully neither of them does, and Margot is just as gleeful when it’s her turn.

  I let her help me steer down the driveway. By the time I park, both kids are in better spirits than I’ve seen them yet, I think, and June is clearly furious. She won’t even lift her eyes in my direction.

  She and the kids head toward the house; she’s walking in short, angry strides. I don’t know why I follow. I’m walking so slowly that by the time I get to the second porch door—the one that opens into the living room—June is heading back out to the yard with the puppies.

  I’m directly in her path. She stops and blinks up at me. “Could you please move?” I do, and she steps around me. “And maybe could you go now?”

  I follow her onto the lawn, where the puppies dance around her feet. I drop down, petting Peach’s head.

  “Don’t bond with them,” she snaps. “You’re not getting them.”

  I look up and see she’s folded her arms.

  “No?”

  “You should go home. The kids saw you. They had fun. Now you’re interfering with their progress here.”

  I stand slowly. “Am I?”

  “Yes. You are. And you’re throwing me off, too.”

  It’s such an easy in—I can’t help myself. “What about me throws you off?”

  I fold my arms like hers and tilt my head to one side. I know I’m not too tough on the eyes. Never had trouble getting girls or anything. I also know I’m good at being a prick—and I’m channeling that now.

  I give her a grin, and she gives me a glare, and I can feel my cock twitch behind my fly.

  “What?” I goad her. “Puppy got your tongue?”

  “You’re throwing me off because you’re impulsive and you put the kids at risk, and you undermined me by saying they could do that without asking me first. Not to mention the fact that their parents just died in a car wreck so, you know…”

  She swirls her finger around her ear, the way kids in middle school used to do to mime ‘crazy.’ “Also you’re rude. You hurt my friend’s feelings. And you’re insensitive e.g. the autistic children.”

  I frown. “Did you just say ‘e.g.’ in a sentence?”

  “Don’t you dare insult my grammar right now. Don’t you even think about it.”

  “Actually,
I think you used it correctly. A lot of people say i.e., but e.g. is probably more appropriate in that sentence.”

  “I’m sorry, are you an English teacher?”

  I run a hand through my hair. “English was one of my college majors.”

  “Oh, I fuckin’ bet it was.” She whirls on her heel and stalks inside. Even the puppies must be able to feel the rage that’s rolling off her. They scamper after her, leaving me alone in the yard.

  Chapter 9

  June

  I hate him. More than tights under cutoff shorts and socks with sandals. More than bad highlights and bowl-cut bangs and people who use the word “moist” to describe…well, I guess anything. I hate him more than the line in that Justin Timberlake song where he asks, “how’d they get that pretty little head on that pretty little frame,” like the woman he’s singing about is nothing more than a doll. I hate him more than oatmeal and house flies you can’t kill no matter how big a fly swatter you’ve got. I hate him more than being outside when it’s more than a hundred degrees and so humid your contacts are shriveling off your eyeballs. I think I even hate him more than roaches, and I don’t hate anything as much as those evil, hideous creatures; one fell from the ceiling down onto me once when I was peeing, and I’ve never been the same, nor have my lady parts.

  He’s a prick, and that’s the beginning and the end of that sad tale. It’s getting sadder, too, because he ain’t leaving with my kids. Isn’t leaving, I correct myself. Even in my head, I have to do that, because he thinks my way of speaking means I’m stupid—or he would, if he heard me get Southern. I’ve been trying not to around him.

  I can’t believe I let him spend even one minute with us today. That was my bad, my mistake. That was me being naive and weak, just trying to please everybody—mostly Oliver and Margot.

  I sit on a bar stool in the kitchen and hold my head in my hands. It’s aching. I’ve always had allergies at all times of the year. Winter is no exception. I get up and grab myself a Zyrtec. Then I check on the kids, who are in the bathtub with two blankets, pretending like they’re Pokemons or something.

  “Do you want us to get out?” Margot asks me with wide eyes and a cautious face.

  I almost smile, because I know her mama wouldn’t let them play in a bathtub. My sister was a germophobe. She used to clean our bathroom twice a week sometimes when she was back in high school, especially if something else in life was making her nervous.

  “Nah. You stay in there and play. That tub is clean enough. I’m going in the den to drink some tea and read a magazine.”

  I sound so much like my mom when I say that. Makes my throat lock up a little bit.

  Instead of doing what Mama would do, I text Leah and Mary Helen—Today sucked. If you see that prick tonight, AVOID.

  Then I give my big pups a bone each and spend some time on the laundry room floor playing with the newbies. It feels good to cuddle them. When I think that he only gave them to me so he could take them away—he was so confident two puppies would break me—fury fills my chest and tightens my throat.

  After tonight, he will leave. Somehow, I’ll make sure of it.

  BURKE

  One of my friends from MIT hailed from Dallas. One Christmas, he brought a couple of us home with him, and on Christmas Day there was a rodeo. It was nothing like this.

  The people here are…rougher. Their accents are thicker, their skin more tanned, as if they spend all day outside plowing fields or something. The women are dressed up in ruffled blouses, legging jeans, and expensive-looking leather boots. They’re carrying designer purses and wearing their hair not just in the classic cowgirl braids—as one might expect—but also curled and in elaborate updos. Their lipstick is red, their fingernails are freshly manicured, and most of them have got on lots of eye makeup. As a group, they’re curvy and vivacious, reminding me a little of the women in Brazil, where I spent a college summer helping install solar panels in an economically depressed neighborhood.

  The men are dressed like they’re going somewhere completely different. Ratty T-shirts, mud-stained jeans, and big work boots that are caked with red mud. One dude’s got some vines around his ankle, like he just tromped through the kudzu on his way here. I know he didn’t walk here, though, because no one seems to walk in Georgia. Most people rolled up tonight in big trucks with hulking off-road tires.

  Including Shawn—June’s brother—whom the kids and I encountered at the ticket stand.

  Shawn is six-foot-five, with big bones and a beer belly, kind brown eyes, and a receding hairline he keeps covered by a Georgia Dawgs ball cap. He’s wearing a white undershirt, dark, stiff-looking jeans, and what I think are work boots. When we first encounter him, he gets down on one knee and holds his arms open for the kids.

  “Hey there, aces,” he says as he hugs them.

  “What’s an ace?” Margot asks.

  “You know, a flying ace!”

  “What’s a flying ace?” Oliver asks.

  “A brave fighter pilot!”

  “Who is he fighting?”

  “It’s a she,” Margot says.

  Shawn throws his head back and laughs like they’re the funniest things he’s ever seen. Then he stands up, holding his hand out for me. “Hey there. I’m the brother.” He grins, and I notice he’s got freckles on his face.

  Turns out, Shawn got all the friendly genes that skipped June. The dude’s just fun. He walks the kids and me all around the bleachers, which are cased in by white-washed concrete blocks and covered with a tin roof. He introduces us to what feels like must be everyone in Heat Springs. The men shake my hand or slap my back, and some of the women look me over when they think I’m not looking. Everyone is excessively friendly. It’s a shock, after the reception I got from June. I remind myself that was my fault, though.

  Since my new strategy involves winning her over, I play nice with everyone I meet. Thirty minutes in, we’ve played horseshoes plus that game where you swing a ball bat and bash a machine that lights up at the top if you hit it hard enough. I won a stuffed beaver, of all damn things, and Oliver and Margot are taking turns holding it.

  We find a place to sit on the metal bleachers, and Shawn disappears and then returns holding a Miller Lite for me and two bags of what appear to be wet peanuts for the kids.

  “Oh, and here.” He pulls two juice boxes out of his pocket. “Got y’all some lemonade too.”

  The wet peanuts are, apparently, boiled peanuts. Shawn pushes me to try one, and to my shock, I like them. He’s so entertained by my enthusiasm that he gets me my own bag.

  “You’re a great date, man.”

  He gives me a funny look for half a second before we’re both laughing.

  “I got a girlfriend,” he says in his low drawl.

  “Not into me?”

  He gives me another wide-eyed look, and I snicker. “Too taboo to talk about that shit down here below the Mason-Dixon line?”

  “Naw. I’m on board the love is love train.” Margot drops the beaver while jamming the straw in her juice box, and he scoops it off the cement floor and holds it toward me with a shake. “I just want me one of these.”

  A crackling sound comes over the loudspeakers, but then the country music comes back. He shrugs. “It’s pretty backwoods around here,” he says. “Especially with tech shit.” Of course, it sounds like he’s saying ’round here. I try to keep the smile off my lips, and he elbows me like we’re old friends.

  “You laughin’ at our accents, brother?”

  “I’m not laughing.”

  “You appreciating them?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  He snickers. “Sure you are.”

  “I am.”

  “You sound like a guy on…what’s it?” he says, adjusting his cap. “Oh, the NPR.”

  I laugh. The NPR. “You think so?”

  He takes a swig of his beer. “Oh yeah. Nice, clean accent.”

  “Is yours dirty?”

  “You know it.”

  �
��So you’re a trucker?”

  “Naw, I own the trucks. I let other people drive them.”

  “What’s that like?” I ask.

  “I’ve got a few good ones. But some of them are pains in the ass.” He glances down at the kids. “Pain in the rear end.” He nods at Oliver, who looks confused.

  “You have a pain in your rear end?” Margot asks loudly.

  Everyone around us laughs, and Shawn covers his face with his cap.

  As he’s fitting it back atop his head, a tallish dark-haired woman and two well-dressed kids walk up. The woman sits beside me like we know each other, and for a second, I stare at her. There’s something familiar about her, but I can’t say what. Then she leans behind me to give Shawn a half-hug, and I realize she must be June’s other sister, Mary Helen. What were her kids’ names? Charlie and Jack?

  I try to get a peek at them, but then the woman wraps her arm around me. “You must be the wicked interloper.”

  “Is that what you’ve heard about me?” I pretend to be offended.

  “Well, Miss June’s not happy.”

  “Miss June?”

  “That’s what our mama used to call her,” she says, somewhat wistfully. “Miss June. She was that little girl who put on all of Mama’s necklaces and painted her own fingernails when she was…well, about three. You should have seen those red hands. Looked like something from a horror movie.” She smiles and nods at the small arena, where a man in jeans, boots, a white button-up, and a black cowboy hat walks almost to the middle and then gives a bow.

  “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the twenty-seventh annual HEAT. SPRINGS. WINTER. RODEO!”

  The crowd cheers like he just announced the end of world hunger.

  “We’re so happy you came out,” he drawls, “and we want you to know, ten percent of tonight’s proceeds will go to the fundraiser for little Lacy Hammond and her family.”

  Another round of applause goes up.

  “That’s a little girl with cancer,” Mary Helen murmurs behind her program, telling me as if she believes I need and want to know.