Hate You Not: An Enemies to Lovers Romance

by Ella James

  “You want an honest answer on that?” he asks quietly.

  “Yes.”

  “Probably because it’s broken.”

  “I know,” I moan. “I heard it.”

  “Did it make a sound?”

  His palm is cradling the back of my head, thick fingertips pushed into my hair. “Pull it,” I whisper, instead of answering.

  “Pull your hair?”

  “Yeah.”

  He does, and it feels good. I can get a breath without my lungs constricting from the pain.

  “You like that?” His voice is so gentle, it doesn’t even sound like him.

  “Yes,” I breathe.

  “Tell me if you change your mind.”

  I shake my head. His fingers tug my hair again, and my head spins.

  “Are you hanging in there, little sister?” Shawn asks from the front.

  I nod, and Burke says, “She said yeah. I checked her pulse a little while ago. She’s doing okay. How much longer?”

  I’m too lost to track Shawn’s answer. Burke keeps pulling my hair, and I’m panting with relief each time. I can feel my heartbeats in my ankle. Then the car turns sharply. I feel either my leg or Burke’s arm, where it’s propped up, shaking. Then we bounce a little, and I groan. Shawn says, “Sorry, Buggie.”

  His phone rings? I don’t know. It hurts so bad I’m just delirious. Burke and Shawn are talking, and I’m gritting my teeth. Burke is reassuring him. I don’t know why.

  “Are we here?” I’m pretty sure the car’s stopped moving.

  The door opens. I know because I feel a breeze. Someone touches my good leg. Must be Shawn, because he’s by me as I hear him say, “Hey June Bug, listen. I’ve gotta go for just a little bit. Mary Helen called and said Hot Rocket’s got an injury. She’s tried to talk to Dr. Smithson, but you know how she is on shit like that. I want to check it out myself.”

  My heart stops. “What?”

  “I don’t know. She didn’t tell me. Probably so I wouldn’t tell you. I’ll call, okay? In just a little bit.”

  “I’ve got you,” Burke says in a low voice. “I can get you shuffled through the ER, help you get this foot fixed, get you back home.”

  “I’ll be back soon,” Shawn says. “MH has the kids and says they’re doing just fine. Eating ice cream sundaes.”

  “Okay,” I manage.

  Then we’re out of the car and Burke is carrying me. I’m crying because the lights are bright and Hottie is hurt, and I’m afraid I’m going to get sick.

  The smell here reminds me of Mama’s chemo appointments. All my senses blur together. Talking, beeping, other people speaking in tense tones, and then Burke leaning back, maybe against a wall, so I’m cradled more snugly up against him.

  “It’s okay, baby. Don’t be mad at me for saying baby. You hurt yourself, someone should call you baby. That’s the rule there.”

  I smile, somehow, and think: bring back the real Burke. But I’m too tired and cold to say it out loud. Sometime later, I hear: “LAWLER,” and he’s walking again. There’s a woman talking to him.

  “I’m just going to lay you down,” he murmurs to me. Then he does, and the movement hurts so bad I see black spots swimming in front of a pale green curtain. I’ve never felt so bad as when the nurse is messing with me.

  “Painkillers?” I manage.

  “Just a minute, darlin’. We just need to check on one more thing.”

  Hands in my hair…gentle.

  “I like when you pull it,” my voice says without me. I feel like I’m floating.

  “I can do that again. But I’d rather play with it.”

  “You’re gonna feel a little jab,” a woman’s voice says—and I do. “There now. We’ll get her back to X-ray pretty quickly at the look of this. This looks like a nasty one.”

  Then it all goes good and soft and warm.

  ***

  It’s such a weird dream. Burke is with me, and it’s like we’re friends…or lovers. He’s feeding me little, round pieces of ice with a spoon, and I’m grinning, and he’s grinning back. He rubs my hair, and my eyes close. I say, “I like that.”

  He smiles, and I think he looks sad. I don’t know why. I smile to tell him it’s okay, and someone pulls the curtains down.

  ***

  “C’mon, Sleeping Beauty.” I lift my eyelids open and blink until the blurriness congeals into…the inside of a car?

  “We’ve just got to get inside here. Then we can go home.”

  I shut my eyes, and warm hands squeeze my shoulders. “Can you open your eyes, June? Just for a second?”

  Ugh. I do it, and he’s right in front of me. Burke.

  “What are you doing?” I ask—or I try to. Everything sounds like it’s underwater.

  “I’m going to drive you home. Do you remember where we are?”

  I look around. “Outside,” I whisper. Outside at night.

  “They set your ankle. We’re leaving the hospital now.”

  I look down at myself, at the boot on my foot. Then I shiver because…it’s shivery out here.

  “Okay. Here’s what I think—I’m just gonna get you.”

  He pushes the wheelchair back, leans down near me, and then I’m being lifted in his arms. My foot gives a throb, and my stomach feels a little seasick. I smell something good and smile to myself.

  His hand, on my shoulder. His eyes and his concerned face.

  “You smell good,” I whisper.

  “You think so?”

  “Yeah.” I giggle. “Like a man. And Satan,” I add, but he’s not there anymore. He’s climbing into the car. He’s driving.

  “I am fucked up.” I laugh because it’s crazy what those ER folks will do for you.

  Burke’s voice comes, seeming disembodied because my eyes are too heavy to open. “When they were setting it, you weren’t having an easy time. I made them keep trying stuff until you weren’t feeling it so much.”

  “At the dentist office…” I want to explain how I’m such a lightweight that even basic Novocain keeps my mouth numb for like twelve hours. But I can’t seem to form the right words. I laugh again and lean my head back, and he pushes something up against my cheek.

  “This is just a shirt of mine. Thought you might want a pillow.”

  “I’m…high,” I confess.

  “Are you cold?”

  “Yeah. Like a burrito.” I laugh, and it’s a crazy cackle. “I mean an igloo.” It’s so funny that I mixed those two words up. Cracking myself up here.

  I feel him moving over me. I smell him. Something in my belly warms at the cologne smell. Then I feel a blanket settle over me.

  “I can lay your seat back…”

  I blink sometime later, and all I see is the car’s ceiling. We’re in motion; I’m not sure what’s going on. I want to ask, but I’m so sleepy, I don’t care.

  Then I’m bouncing. My whole lower leg hurts like a bitch. I open my eyes, and there’s a road that’s lit by gold beams—headlights.

  I look around. I’m in a car with someone. “Burke?” I don’t know how I know it’s him.

  “Hey there, Juney.”

  I swallow, noting that my head hurts and my foot is throbbing. “Who is Juney?”

  I can hear his smile although my eyes are closed. “That’s you.”

  “No nicknames,” I order.

  “We’re not tight enough for that?”

  “At all.” But my lips twitch, and then I’m smiling against my will.

  “I can take you to your brother’s house, or to your own house. Which one do you want?”

  “Mine.”

  “Good, because we’re almost here. Your brother said you’d want to come home. How ya doing?” he asks. “You in any pain?”

  “You’re not taking them?” My voice cracks as I think of my babes.

  “No.” He lets a breath out. “I’m not.”

  When I open my eyes again, I’m staring at the darkness, with an amber light on my right. It’s the porch light. W
e’re at my house.

  His hand touches my arm. “Hey, June?”

  I blink up at him. It takes some effort, but I hold my eyelids open and try to cling to his gaze.

  “I’m sorry again. For how I acted. I might be a dick, but I know when to say I’m sorry. And I really am. I’m sorry for insulting your education and your ability to be a good guardian to them. And I’m sorry for judging…I don’t even know what. I guess your culture? I’m going to confess something now.”

  My lips twitch. Even though my head feels sort of spinny, I’m sort of enjoying this. His earnest face… “So hit me with it.”

  “I’ve never really spent any time down here in the Southern United States before now. It’s a lot different than where I’m from.”

  “I know,” I slur. “Like…what is Safeway? We went to Trader Joe’s—” When my family was out in California for the funeral. I smile at the memory of the good smells in there. “I like Trader Joe’s.”

  He smiles like he’s amused, and I know I’m still loopy. “Did you?”

  “Good nuts.” That makes me crack up laughing. “Did I say ‘good nuts’?”

  He chuckles. “I think you did.”

  Then he’s scooping me up, shifting so my weight is leaned against his chest. He’s carrying me up the stairs to the screened porch. I feel his arm flex, hear the dogs bark.

  “Maybe you are the prince,” I whisper.

  “Your friend has the puppies,” he says. “Just in case you think I’ve stolen them back.”

  Then we’re in the living room. He starts down the hall with me, and as we near my room, he says, “June?”

  “Mmmhm.”

  “I’m not the prince.” So grave.

  “Why not?”

  My cheek is pressed to his chest, then it’s not because he lays me on my bed and reaches over me, pulling the covers back.

  “Just not the prince,” he says.

  “You’re Slytherin, aren’t you?” I lift my head a little—or try to. “Do you know what that means when I say that?”

  He presses his lips together, the corners of his mouth twitching.

  “You do know! Burke Bug is a Harry Potter nerd.”

  He fluffs my pillow, folds his muscled arms. “What one are you?” His face is neutral, like a poker face.

  My mouth is dry. I lick my lips. “What do you think?” I rasp.

  “Do you really want to know?”

  I snort, then wince because my ankle hurts each time my muscles tense. “I do want to know. Let’s hear your dumb assessment.”

  That makes him chuckle. It’s a soft, rich sound. In the light of my bedside lamp, he looks painfully handsome, chestnut brown hair shining gold-red, framed by a faint amber halo, white teeth flashing as he tilts his head a little. His lips twitch. “I call Slytherin.”

  “Oh I just bet you do.” I snort again, this time more careful not to move my sore leg. “Spoken like a Slytherin himself.”

  “Hey, there’s nothing wrong with Slytherins,” he says.

  “I knew it!”

  “Oh, c’mon. Do I seem like a Slytherin to you?” He arches one brow, and I guffaw.

  “Hiss, hiss, baby.” I smile. “No one is more Slytherin than you.”

  “And I do what for work?” he asks.

  “I don’t know? Start companies? Sounds hissy to me.”

  He chuckles at that. “Do you know where I went to college?”

  “Oh, college! I don’t know, the Golden School of Yuppie Asswipes?”

  He lets out a guffaw. “What the fuck? You are high.”

  “It’s your fault,” I murmur. “You told them to drug me.”

  “Yes, so they could set your ankle.”

  “Did they set it up real good?” I croon.

  He laughs again. “Oh yeah. Real good.”

  “Don’t make fun of me.” My voice sounds whiny.

  He comes to stand beside me. “Look, I’m going to drag you up onto your pillow. Unless you need to—”

  “To what?”

  “Use the restroom.”

  “Oh you mean to take a pee.” I smile up at him. “Kidding. Southern girls would never, ever say it like that.”

  “Why not?” He looks thoughtful.

  “Classless. Tacky. Crass.”

  “Well, you are none of those things.”

  Then he’s leaning down, wrapping one arm under my back, the other one under my knees. He scoots me up then settles my foot on some pillows.

  “It does hurt like a bitch,” I rasp.

  “You might need more medicine. I got the prescription filled while you were sleeping at the hospital.”

  “What a…Ravenclaw.” I cackle like a moron. “You’re motherfrickin’ Ravenclaw. Who went to MIT.” I snap my fingers. “Real big brains you got there.”

  “Now who’s making fun of whom?”

  I roll my eyes.

  “And you’re Team Gryffindor,” he says.

  “The brave and noble sink with the ship folk,” I manage.

  “That’s how you define yourself? Brave and noble?”

  I open my mouth to retort that yes, I’m plenty brave. But he says, “I’m not surprised by that. At all, actually.” He turns away from me. “I’m going to get some water and your bag out of the car.”

  How rude, I say to myself in my Stephanie Tanner voice. But it wasn’t really. Just abrupt. As if he didn’t know what more to say, he didn’t want to look me in the eye or actually connect, so out he went.

  Chapter 12

  Burke

  The Golden School of Yuppie Asswipes. I chuckle at that as I hustle down the stairs and grab her stuff out of the car. It’s a cool night, cloudless. There’s a not-quite-full moon, and even with its brightness, I can see so many stars when I tilt my head back that it almost makes me dizzy.

  What a place. I think back on the seven hours we spent at the hospital with something that’s akin to wonder. The nurses and doctors moving in and out of our space—first the curtained area behind the doors of the ER and later on, an orthopedic room—were slow-moving, slow-speaking, and had an easy, not-so-urgent pace. Everyone had the same slow, twangy drawl and neighborly manner. Someone even brought me coffee while we waited to be discharged. Just so fucking friendly.

  The nurse who pushed June’s wheelchair outside to my car was asking me about my job, and I was telling her about my work right now. For some reason—I guess the strangeness of the location and my own anonymity—I found myself giving her details about the app’s mission. She wrote the name “Aes” down in her phone so she could look it up later—when we’ve had success. As we were leaving, she said, “Good luck, honey. I hope it make you big ole piles of money.”

  I didn’t see a reason to tell her I don’t need the money. The startup’s success is important to me for other reasons. That’s why I’m going to keep on pushing with it, even if I have to keep working 90-hour weeks. My brother had that wrong, I think—that life should be about balance. What does my health really matter? Who cares if I live until I’m ninety? And why would I even want to?

  I couldn’t help thinking about the app the whole time we were in the hospital. If everything goes right and I can get the app done before I run my own coffers too low, one day, everybody working here might know the name Aes.

  For June’s part, she was fucking furious most of the middle two hours. She bitched and cussed the doctor and the nurses—and me. Especially me. Then they got the painkillers right, and she was laughing and smiling, giving me these looks like she was checking me out. I know it was all just drugs, but it was nice to be on the receiving end of one of her smiles.

  Back in the kitchen at her house, I get her some water and shake a pain pill out into my palm. But by the time I get back to her bedroom, she’s asleep.

  “Hey June…” I shake her shoulder just a little, then again. She lifts her eyelids, looking up at me with glassy eyes.

  “I think you should take this.” I hold the pill up for her. She opens her mo
uth and fixes her wide eyes on mine. I set the pill on her tongue. Then she tips her chin up, takes some water from the straw I’m holding out for her.

  “Thanks, hiss,” she murmurs. She sinks back down into sleep, and I’m alone in her room.

  I’ve laughed at her antics all night, but I know I shouldn’t. If she weren’t drugged, I have no doubt June Lawler would hate everything about this situation.

  I check my phone clock, find it’s 3:40 AM, and text her brother.

  She’s sleeping in her bed. Do u think she has a baby monitor somewhere so I could watch her from another room?

  When he doesn’t answer, I lie on the other side of her queen-sized bed, on top of the covers. I curl over on my side and put a hand over my face, smelling the sanitizer residue that still lingers on my skin.

  My chest tightens, like there’s a black hole inside sucking everything else inward. My mind circles past my mother—as it does at odd times like this—and around to Ash. He hated to be called that when he was a teenager, but in the last few years, he signed all the cards he sent me that way.

  Little Ash. A little boy—just five—on that Tuesday night when I was a stupid little fuck and changed the course of our lives.

  My throat aches and my eyes sting as I think about the box of clothes I found when I was cleaning out my childhood home a few weeks back—shirts, jackets, and shoes from when Asher was in kindergarten. I squeeze my eyes shut, and I see the two of us on the back porch eating those popsicles, the triangle-shaped ones. Minute Maid, I think was the brand. He would always want the red. Everybody wants the red, but I would always take the orange or purple.

  I think of Asher the man, the way he always looked when he was with Margot or Oliver—just total happiness…almost goofiness. I didn’t go to their house much, even though he asked me often. It made me feel…different. Too different from him. Asher was living a real life, while mine was only a facade. It made sense, I guess. Ash had Sutton, and I think she lifted him up. Elevated him above the bullshit we grew up with. But more so than that…Ash was never fucked up like me.

  My eyes ache as I think of what I told him in a fight we had before I left for India.