Hating Him Wanting Him : A Contemporary Romance Collection

by Summer Brooks

  “I know, but think of this as… fuel to help you get through a difficult night. Your family’s going to freak out when they see you’re there. There’s going to be questions.”

  He was right, of course. I hadn’t told my parents I was flying back tonight, because I didn’t want to get them all worked up this late. I hoped that Regina would be able to bring us home, I’d be able to talk to Gene, give him a good hug, tell him that I was going to stay with him as long as it took for him to get better.

  My brother sounded like he was beaten up bad. If it was so bad he needed to be hospitalized, I would never forgive myself if I had chosen to just stay put.

  And I wanted to be the intermediary who would help him deal with Mom and Dad when they inevitably freaked out about what happened to Gene.

  I sighed. “Okay, I’m ready. Give me some champagne.”

  Bryant signaled for a flight attendant to take our order. She came back almost instantly, filling our champagne flutes from a bottle she carried with her.

  “Fancy,” I remarked. “Didn’t think flying home to comfort my brother would be my first business class trip on a plane. Is this what you do often?”

  Bryant shrugged. “Not really. Dad would make me fly business when he wanted me to spend the summer in New York, but I hated it, especially as a kid. He wouldn’t even come pick me up from the airport, instead sending one of his workers to do it for him. They’d all try so hard to impress me, but I never could bring myself to be nice to them.”

  “They’re just doing their jobs,” I said.

  “I know. But my dad is a dick, and any time I spent with him made me feel like it was toxic, I couldn’t handle it. And knowing he had a second family, and that me and my sister were just… after thoughts? That hurt so bad.”

  “Sorry,” I muttered, shaking my head and giving his hand a quick squeeze. “We don’t have to talk about that.”

  “Well, it would be great if I got to see my mom, though. I’d like you to meet her. And Sheryl and Rob and little Carl,” he said. “That’s my sister and her husband, plus their young son.”

  I smiled. “Wow, meeting your family.”

  He looked a little sheepish. “Sorry. Too soon?”

  “No, it’s perfect,” I said. Knowing he wanted me to do that gave me a little bit more hope, even through all this sadness and worrying.

  Bryant was intent on proving to me that he was the real deal, that he didn’t just want to jerk me around, have sex with me then dump me. I still couldn’t figure out if he wanted a girlfriend or something… because this was just too strange. Everything about this made me feel grateful that we turned our relationship around, but I knew I had so many insecurities that kept me from truly letting myself feel free to be who I needed to be.

  “I’m here for you,” I whispered, watching him close his eyes. “And I’d love to meet your family. Little Carl sounds super cute, too. He’s probably littler than Eugene, who’s kinda small for his age.”

  “Well, Carl’s like, five years old. Eugene’s a bit older than that… so he should be bigger, right?” Bryant joked.

  “If only Eugene was a six foot one quarterback,” I replied. “Then nobody would mess with him.”

  Bryant nodded. I was still trying to figure him out. There was a game this weekend, one that would require the team to travel out of state. I worried for him. I didn’t want him to lose his spot just because he felt some obligation to be here.

  I wasn’t going to tell him that now, but tomorrow I’d hint that he should go back to Florida before he did too much damage to the team.

  Handling things here was something I could do by myself.

  But I couldn’t deny that I was feeling so incredibly thankful that Bryant was here with me.

  Part of me was terrified when I made the decision to leave tonight. I knew he couldn’t come with me, even though he offered at once. I wanted to tell him not to go, but that was because I knew he had other things instead of dealing with more stupid drama.

  But in all that time, my heart was telling me to just admit the truth: I wanted Bryant to come.

  And now that Bryant was here with me, sitting next to me in our business class seats, I felt at peace.

  I even missed the in-flight meal, having fallen asleep again. I woke up to Bryant handing me a cinnamon roll, something he saved for me from his meal.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “We’re landing in about ten minutes. Good thing we don’t have any luggage, I guess we can just jump straight out of the plane.”

  I nodded. Glancing at my watch, I saw that we were on time. Regina was waiting for us, and she would take us straight to my house from the airport.

  “This is awkward,” I realized something, “I probably can’t offer you a place to stay. My parents don’t know anything about this. And… to be honest, all they know about you is from all the complaining I used to make about you after school. So brace yourself for that.”

  Bryant smiled, patting his hand over my lap. “I was expecting that. Don’t worry, I’ll be charming as I can be. It can’t be that bad, right?”

  “Well, tears were shed. Lots. But that was in the past. I guess I’ll have to tell them that you’re different now,” I said.

  How was I going to introduce Bryant to my family? Was he my boyfriend? Just a friend? I felt like this was a minefield that would potentially lead to more awkward discussions in the future. If Bryant wanted me to announce to everyone that we were a couple, this might be the best place for me to do so, with people who I could trust would be too distracted by the real drama of Eugene’s problem than to question my choice of words.

  I didn’t know if it was business class or what, but this plane landed smoother than any I had ever been in. I exhaled.

  Planes sometimes made me nervous. I hadn’t taken too many flights in my life, even though I dreamed of being a jet-setting journalist. Growing up, we mostly took road trips for vacations, Dad renting an RV we could all live in for a couple of weeks in the summer. A couple of times we flew to Boston and Toronto, where we had family.

  My flight to Florida on the day I left home to go to university was the first flight I had taken solo.

  Now I was flying back… with a man.

  Not just any man. Bryant Howard. Everyone’s darling at Broad Ripple High School, the star quarterback who was head and shoulders better than everyone else in high school football. I bet people were following his progress, too. With him getting all that attention from his recent performances since breaking into the team, he would be practically a homecoming celebrity.

  “Do you remember my friend Regina?” I asked Bryant as we began to exit into the aisle, waiting for our turn to leave the airplane.

  “Not really. In my head she was always just the girl who wasn’t you or Sam,” Bryant confessed.

  “So you noticed me,” I pointed out.

  He said nothing, but finally offered a smile. “Well, I don’t know if noticing would be the right word. You know I wasn’t exactly the nicest guy to you.”

  “Yeah, oh well,” I shrugged, reaching for his hands. I wanted to feel his grip, the way he behaved so protectively around me. I wanted to feel safe right now.

  My body was all sorts of crazy at this moment. We had just rapidly shifted from flirting to the most intense sex of my life to breaking down in tears over Eugene’s call. I could tell that my body was reacting physically to everything Bryant did.

  When he looked at me, my legs closed shut.

  When he squeezed my hands, I swooned.

  When he patted his big palm on my lap, I felt comforted.

  He was doing everything right.

  “Regina!” I called out as we rushed out to Arrivals. Nobody was really waiting, so spotting her was the easiest thing.

  I remembered her car, the beat-up second hand Japanese make we had driven in over and over most nights in my year in community college.

  Seeing her made me happier in a way that I hadn’t experienced since
, well, seeing Sam.

  I didn’t want to start ranking my friends according to who I liked best at the moment but right now, Regina was exactly who I needed to see.

  “Is that…?” she asked, looking past me.

  “Yeah,” I said, smiling even though I was trying to contain myself.

  Bryant extended a hand, introducing himself. “Hey, I’m Bryant. Thanks for this.”

  “Um, I know exactly who you are,” Regina said, taking a second to shake his hand. She glanced at me, surprised. “I didn’t know this…”

  “Yeah.”

  “Wow.”

  Bryant smirked. “Okay, this is going to get awkward.”

  “Darling,” Regina said, looking up at Bryant, “I think you’re going to have a rerun of this awkwardness every single time you meet someone this trip. And especially since we’re apparently driving straight to the Cowell house.”

  “Yes, please,” I told her. We walked together to her car, parked just outside the exit.

  Bryant got in the back, while I got in the more familiar passenger seat up front with Regina.

  “Tonight isn’t going to be the night I hassle you with questions, but Mia, I have a million questions for you.”

  “Hey, I can answer them too,” Bryant said.

  “But not tonight,” I quickly added.

  “Fine,” Regina pretended to grumble, focusing on the road. Driving at night in Indianapolis was something we had become so accustomed too. We’d pull up somewhere, sit on the hood of the car, Regina would start smoking and I would inevitably talk about all my dreams of being a journalist.

  Tonight, Regina kept mostly quiet, except to update me on people we knew, sometimes people I don’t recall ever meeting. People she worked with at the mall, people from the new steakhouse, even people from school.

  There were a lot of people who chose to stay back in Indianapolis.

  “How’s school going?” she asked me.

  “Well, it’s been pretty drama-heavy,” I simply said. “I’m enjoying my classes. If I could just focus on my classes and nothing else, I’d be over the moon.”

  “Sucks,” Regina replied. “I guess Bryant’s keeping you busy, huh?”

  I gasped at the implication of her words. “Regina!”

  “Hey, I’m just fishing for info. But I get it. Not tonight. Let’s catch up. How long are you staying?”

  I shrugged. “I honestly don’t know.”

  “Bryant gonna stay this long too?”

  “However long Mia needs to be here,” he said, puffing his chest out. I watched him through the rear view mirror.

  “You don’t have to do that, Bryant,” I said. “You have a football game this weekend!”

  “It doesn’t matter, Mia,” he assured me. “Let’s take things one at a time, okay?”

  Well, that was something we were failing to do. I wanted to take things one at a time, but Bryant wanted everything all at once. First he kissed me, then the next thing I knew, he was hugging me in front of a crowd, pushing Fiona back and telling people off for getting in my way. And of course, hours later, he not only took my virginity… he got me to come move in with him.

  “One thing at a time,” I nodded, leaving it at that.

  When we turned into my street, I saw my family’s new house, and despite myself, I felt embarrassed.

  We lived in a small house now, after the insurance payout limited our options for a new home.

  Bryant probably lived in some kind of giant mansion. “Well, home sweet home,” I said, hesitating. “Thanks so much, Regina.”

  “It’s nothing, sweetie,” my friend told me. “I’m gonna be up for a while longer if you want any more help.”

  “Thanks, Regina,” Bryant said, tapping his knuckles against the body of her car as he exited swiftly. He was still holding my backpack.

  I asked Bryant to wait outside for a second before I walked up our driveway and reached into my purse for my keys.

  “Hello? Who’s out there?” I heard as I inserted the key into the front door.

  “Dad, it’s me.”

  The door swung open and my parents stood in front of me, confused. “Mia? What are you doing here?”

  “I’ll explain. Do you mind if I go upstairs and see Eugene right now, first? It’s really important.”

  I watched them hesitate. “Honey, are you in trouble? What’s going on? Please tell us.”

  “It’s not me,” I promised. “But you’re going to be upset all the same.”

  It was my mom who noticed Bryant first. She gasped, looking at me. “Mia… is that the boy who used to bully you?”

  Dad looked over my shoulder, spotting Bryant standing in the distance. “My God, that is Bryant Howard. That douchebag Sergio’s kid. The one who used to make fun of you, that’s right…”

  “It’s… different now,” I said, unable to figure out how to explain. “Can we please come inside?”

  “Fine,” Mom said, making way.

  I turned to Bryant, gesturing for him to come in.

  Walking with him to our small living room, with a few armchairs facing a TV, I offered to get Bryant some water. “Dad, you know Bryant, right?”

  “Well… you’re the Renegades’ star quarterback, hard not to notice you. I love football, used to cheer the high school team on, I got excited when I started catching Florida games and saw that you had moved on there too,” my father said, gushing as he shook Bryant’s hand.

  “Okay, I guess I’ll leave you two to it,” I smiled.

  As I went to the kitchen, my mother confronted me. She was still in her dressing robe. “What’s going on, Mia?”

  “I can explain, but later, please.”

  “Why is he here?”

  I exhaled. “We’re dating, Mom.”

  “I thought he was with your friend Sam.”

  Wincing, I shook my head. “Not anymore.”

  “You’re not in love with this boy, are you? Remember that I told you not to get involved with these kinds of guys before you went to college? Mia, I’m so worried about you.”

  “Mom, please,” I raised my hands, hoping to interrupt her. “I just need to see Eugene, okay? It’s really important.”

  My mother bit back everything else she needed to say, nodding quietly. She even took the glass of water from my hand. “I’ll bring this over to Bryant.”

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  I had to go upstairs and see Eugene. I hoped my heart was ready for this.

  18

  Bryant

  Truth be told, the Cowells were reacting better to me being there than I expected.

  Sure, Mia’s mom was really confused – and suspicious. I understood perfectly. After all, Mia and I had grown up together, and that meant many, many years of nonstop harassment I had given her.

  In hindsight, so much of it was because I liked her, and I didn’t understand why she wouldn’t just warm up to me like everyone else did. Mia was always the suspicious one, always convinced I had a bad side to me, one even worse than the fact that I was an ignorant jock who enjoyed putting people down, yes, bullying.

  Talking football to Mr Cowell was easy. Since Mia had enrolled with Florida, he swapped allegiances from Texas A&M, where he had gone to, to Florida. It helped that we were enjoying a far better season than the Aggies, I supposed.

  “But don’t you have a big game at Missouri this weekend? I’ve been to Columbia once, it’s a nice town. Not the biggest of college towns, but pretty impressive in its own way. And last I checked, they’ve been improving a lot in the last few seasons.”

  “That’s right, probably one of the biggest improvements of any team in our conference,” I said, agreeing with as much courtesy and politeness as I could manage.

  Mia eventually came downstairs. “Bryant, can you come up with me? Eugene wants to say hello.”

  I excused myself with Mr. and Mrs. Cowell, still holding the glass of water she had given me that I had sipped from just once.

  I was dreadi
ng this moment. I thought back about all the kids I had pushed around and slammed into walls. I had never actually beaten anyone up, that seemed like a gross violation of even what most bullies did.

  Hurting people was one thing. This was dangerous. The fact that Eugene got ganged up on by a bunch of other guys made me hate this situation even more.

  I went upstairs, pushing the door to Eugene’s room, left slightly ajar from when Mia went back in there.

  Fuck, Mia’s fourteen year old brother didn’t look good at all. He had bruises all over his face, and a nasty-looking black eye. I could tell from the way that he was nursing his wrist that he had probably tried to punch back, only to sprain it when they effortlessly knocked him away.

  Eugene seemed like a nice kid, a little small, maybe even a bit . He decorated his room tastefully, keeping to posters of video games — none of the violent shooting kind, mostly gentle-looking fantasy posters.

  Fuck, I felt so bad for him. He seemed like he would be an easy target.

  “I’m Bryant,” I said.

  “I know.”

  Exhaling as I took in the sight of his injuries, I sat down on the other side of his bed, since Mia was sitting there. “You doing okay, buddy? Does it hurt a lot still?”

  Eugene shrugged, still holding his wrist close to his chest, resting it against his other arm. “This wasn’t new, they always made fun of me, called me names and slurs… but I never thought they’d ambush me. I didn’t even do anything.”

  “Of course you didn’t,” Mia said. “Nothing you could ever do would justify a hate crime like this.”

  Hate crime. That made my heart sink. That was exactly the truth, too. What happened to Eugene was more than just an act of bullying. This wasn’t boys being boys.

  I was sick with myself for having used that as an excuse before, allowing my father to bail me out from meetings with the principal when I was growing up. He was so callous about everything, shrugging and telling the principal it wasn’t his boy’s fault that they were wimpy little bitches.

  Mia was watching me carefully. “This happened in school, too. Eugene had a free period and went to the bathroom, one of the boys saw him leave, had the other guy wait for him in there… then they both took turns attacking him.”