Love to Hate You

Eli

Since the first day of kindergarten, I have hated Alexandra Hartford.

And twenty-something years later that hasn’t changed.

But she has.

She’s still a tomboy with a chip on her shoulder, but now she’s a hot tomboy with a chip on her tattooed shoulder who can fight like a badass.

I’d still rather have a bath with fire ants than spend ten days in a car with her, but she has something I need.

Once the deal is done, we can go our separate ways.

That is … if I want to.

Alex

Eli Evans is my nemesis.

He blames me for his sister’s death, our parents’ divorces, and probably global warming, too.

Why on Earth would I help him?

Because he’s as easy on the eyes as he is the bane of my existence and I need a hot date to a wedding in San Diego.

Can we drive across the country without me leaving him at a truck stop somewhere? I doubt it.

But, I’m willing to try.

Ten days in a car, a wedding, and a marriage of convenience, then I’m done with him forever.

Right?

Telling a neurosurgeon he could take his price tag and shove it up his scrawny ass was NOT the best way to guarantee he didn’t “slip” and slice your medulla oblongata with his scalpel. So I kept
my mouth shut as I waved goodbye and thanked him for absolutely fucking
nothing. Just like I did every time I came to his office.

I wanted to flip off his
receptionist, too. Tell them all to go fuck themselves.

A guy shouldn’t go broke in order to fucking survive. I shouldn’t go up to my fucking eyebrows in debt in order to
keep my vision.

What the actual fuck?

It’s not their fault. It’s the system’s fault. It’s a broken
system.

Yeah, and my health insurance was nonexistent, so the neurosurgeon had to charge me my monthly rent plus a limb
for a visit and a checkup. And those scans to see how big the tumor was … I
could get a first-class ticket to Bora Bora for that. Well, maybe not first-class, but definitely a window seat in business class.

And don’t even get me started on that surgery price tag. Who besides fucking Elon Musk could afford to pay that
without taking out a second mortgage or raiding their kids’ college fund?

And since I had no kids or their
college funds to raid, or a fucking mortgage, I was really up a fucking creek,
paddleless, with a giant hole in my hull, a bailing bucket the size of a spoon, and rapids up ahead.

Clenching my teeth hard enough I was
probably going to have to spend even more money at the chiro to fix my jaw—or
at the very least the dentist to give me a crown—I shoved open the door to the
clinic and winced when the sun tried to burn my retinas.

I’d say “life wasn’t fair,” but I’d
learned that a long fucking time ago.

Life was shit most of the time.

The world was shit.

And people were shit.

If you were super fucking lucky, once in a while you’d meet a decent human or something good might happen to you. But for me, those moments were rare.

Making my way down the sidewalk of
the business complex, I peered into all the other businesses. I needed something to distract me. Something to take my mind off how just damn hopeless I felt.

I could wake up blind tomorrow thanks to the tumor in my brain, and I wouldn’t be able to get the surgery
because I simply couldn’t afford it.

I lobbed a heavy sigh and shoved my hands into the front pockets of my jeans as I stopped in front of a pet store
to admire the fish swimming around in the tanks, waiting for someone to come buy them and take them to their new forever home.

A couple of elderly women sat in salon chairs getting their white hair coiffed inside the hairdresser next door,
and people—mostly families—sat at booths inside Linda’s Diner on the corner
having lunch.

My stomach grumbled at the thought of lunch.

I threw on my sunglasses but kept looking through the window of the diner. The smell of fried food filled the
air, and my mouth started to water. I’d only lived in Linley Park, Maine, for a
little over a year, but I knew well that Linda’s made really good homemade, thick-cut wedge fries. And with their homemade gravy, they were to die for.

The place was packed like it always was. Which was why I’d had to park so far away from the surgeon’s clinic
because I couldn’t find any parking right out front.

Not in a million years did I think
I’d wind up in a rinky-dink little coastal town like Linley Park, but here I was. And it was all because the specialist who was monitoring Keith, the tumor in my brain, lived here, having left the hustle and bustle of Manhattan in an attempt to ease himself into retirement.

And since no fucking way did I want to live in Connecticut and risk running into my father or his horrific wife, I decided to just move to where the good doctor lived in the event I one day woke up blind, he could just cut into my brain on his lunch hour.

So now, after nearly a decade of being a nomad, I lived here. In this town. That had only four gas stations.

It just made sense. I hadn’t had a place to call home when I got my diagnosis, so it was just easier to set down some temporary roots until I either located the money for the surgery or went blind.

I guess the town wasn’t so bad. I found a job easy enough—not that I enjoyed
roofing, but I was decent at it and the pay was good. My apartment was cheap
and clean, and I could walk to the beach or go off and find some trails to hike. I just hated that everything besides one or two bars shut down by 8 p.m.
There were places in Asia and Europe that didn’t even open until nine or ten o’clock at night. Bars and restaurants opened their doors for the late-night crowd and kept the beer and food flowing until the sky started to get light
again with the threat of a rising sun.

But not here.

Not little ol’ Linley Park.

Some people called it quaint. I just called it inconvenient.

Looking past my own reflection in the window, I watched all the hungry patrons, wishing I was them and sitting down to a big, juicy—

What the fuck?

I took a step back. Was that tumor pressing on my optic nerve starting to make me hallucinate, too?

I blinked and scrubbed at my eyes, then opened them and zeroed in on the couple sitting on the inside booth.

She looked fucking angry.

But then again, she always looked angry.

Even though I hadn’t seen her in over eight years, I would recognize that scowl anywhere. The rest of her had
changed though. The rest of her had changed a lot.

The guy she was with was rolling his eyes and shaking his head, gesturing with his hands while his elbows rested on
the table. He was pleading with her, but the more he did it, the angrier she
got.

With a slam of her palm to the
table, she got up, grabbed her purse, and stalked out.

I hid behind a concrete pillar and watched as she haughtily threw open the diner door, and in dark wash skinny
jeans and a black leather jacket with a white T-shirt underneath, she climbed
up into a big white Jeep parked right out in front of the diner.

Since it was a warm May day on the coast of Maine, the sides and roof of her Jeep were already off, and when she turned over the ignition and backed out, then peeled off into the street, her
dark brown hair with the thick, bright red streaks in it trailed behind her.

Before I knew what I was doing, I scrambled to my truck, climbed in behind the wheel, and was pulling out into
traffic, racing to catch up with her.

I managed to make it to the same light she was stopped at but three vehicles behind.

Even with my windows up, I could hear her music. Some indie alternative rock band I hadn’t heard of.

The light turned green, and she accelerated. I kept the distance between us, because if she saw me, that scowl
would only deepen, and she’d probably try to run me off the road.

For fifteen minutes I followed her.

Did she live here?

When the fuck had she moved to Maine from Connecticut?

I didn’t talk to my dad, so I had no idea what was going on with that side of the family and preferred to stay the
fuck out of the loop as it was.

After four more sets of lights, she pulled into the parking lot of another retail complex, but rather than parking
out front, she swung into the back where staff parked.

I decided to keep my stalker
tendencies to a minimum and pulled up to the curb, then unbuckled my belt and
sat like an imbecile, watching as she climbed out of her Jeep and walked straight into the back door of a veterinarian clinic.

Obviously, she worked there, if she was using the staff entrance.

So she lived here in Maine, then.

Since when?