Hate Story

This time, he’d let me go as soon as he had me in front of him again, but that had done nothing to mollify me.

  “Not safe? I’ll show you not safe.” I shoved his chest, but he didn’t budge. He probably had a hundred pounds on me. The only way I could budge him was if I had a crowbar . . . which right now . . . was not an unappealing notion.

  When I shoved him again, he backed up a step. It wasn’t thanks to my shove though. It was because he was finally figuring out that he’d just pushed me to a breaking point.

  “How do you like that?” I grabbed his wrist, which my small fingers barely curled all the way across, and tugged him with me around the yard. “You like being manhandled like that? You like having someone else control you by force?”

  I gave him another spin around the yard. He went, though I knew if he wanted to, he could have snapped out of my hold easily.

  When we wound up back at the bottom of the stairs, I gave him one more shove. “Don’t you dare put your hands on me again unless I give you permission, you hear me?”

  It was clear from Max’s face that he’d calmed down. It was also clear that something resembling guilt was starting to affect him. When he wet his lips and rubbed at his forehead like he was searching for the right thing to say, nothing came. I couldn’t tell if this was all some act to appease me so he didn’t lose his green card prospects or if he really did feel badly.

  “Nina?” Nathan called from his porch. “You okay?”

  Max’s head whipped toward Nathan’s house. So much for calming down.

  “Yeah, I’m good,” I piped up quickly. “Just a lovers’ quarrel.”

  Nathan stood under his porch lights, his gaze shifting between Max and me. “You two seem to have a lot of those.”

  Max’s jaw locked, his fists curling. Just when I thought he was about to make a break for Nathan, he headed up the stairs instead. When Max reached the top, he waited for me.

  “What can I say, Nathan?” The way he said it sounded like he’d been thinking asshole instead. “We’re real lovers.”

  With that, Max unlocked the door, opened it, and waited for me to go inside before he followed. The lock turned over into place. I heard his sigh, I felt the apology on his lips, but I just kept moving. Storming down the hall, I fired a glare at the pool table stuffed in the living room after I’d experienced a weak moment and agreed to let it go there. Stupid waste of space.

  I rounded into my bedroom and slammed the door. Once inside, I walked circles around the old hardwood, trying not to think about what had happened or why I felt like I was unraveling, one tug at a time.

  I’d spun a hundred circles and five minutes hadn’t passed, so I decided to work off my nervous energy a different way. Riffling through the big bin of home improvement junk stuffed in the corner of my room, I pulled out the caulking gun and decided two in the morning was the perfect time to get those baseboards caulked, which I’d had on my to-do list for months. The thing about living in a house as old as this one was that there was never an end to the to-do list. Ever.

  After changing out of my jeans into a pair of cotton shorts, I tied my hair up into a messy bun and got to work. Even with a caulking gun in my hand and aiming all of my concentration on those baseboards, I couldn’t drown out my thoughts of Max. I couldn’t even shuffle him to the back of the pile. He wouldn’t be shuffled. He wouldn’t be set aside. He wouldn’t take a backseat.

  I’d just finished the first length of baseboard when a soft rap sounded on my door. My chest ached. Not from who I knew was knocking, but because of the way he was. Grandma used to knock like that. A chorus of soft knocks bleeding into one.

  “What do you want, Max?”

  “We don’t have enough time to go over what I want before I have to be at work in the morning.”

  I ground my jaw. “Then good night.”

  “I would, however, like to say something to you. If it’s okay.” What sounded like his forehead thumping into the door sounded next.

  “Well, say it. I, unlike others I know, won’t try to control what other people do and say.” I glared at the line of caulk I’d just drawn. It wasn’t very straight.

  “Can I open the door and say it? I’d rather say it to your face than this giant mass of wood.”

  I glanced around my room, making sure I didn’t have any underwear hanging out or anything else that would pique Max’s attention. All clear.

  “Yes,” I answered, getting back to my caulking. “Just don’t cross the threshold. Or else.”

  The old doorknob whined as he twisted on it, the door doing the same as he opened it. “Or else what?”

  I kept focusing on the baseboards. “Or else. . . stuff will happen.”

  “What kind of stuff?”

  “Stuff, stuff.”

  “Like the kind of stuff that one guy wanted to do to you the night we first met?”

  I bit my cheek. Did he really have to have that good of a memory? “Kind of like that. But the total opposite.”

  Max chuckled from the doorway, not setting a foot inside. “What are you doing?”

  “What does it look like I’m doing?”

  “Manual labor.”

  Sliding down the floor, I kept working. “That’s right. It’s this thing the rest of the world does on a regular basis. You know, the ones who don’t swim in pools of gold coins and wipe our asses with twenties.”

  When I finally glanced back, I found him looking at me with a contemplative expression, his forehead pinched together, his eyes searching.

  “Do you want a hand?”

  I shook my head, trying not to give his exposed forearms more than a passing glance. I hardly ever saw him without his suit jacket on or his sleeves rolled up the way they were now, but Max had some serious forearms. The kind that should not be covered up with clothing, no matter how expensive or custom-tailored it was.

  “No, thanks,” I said when I realized he was still waiting for an answer. “I wouldn’t want to give you a callous or something. Ruin those soft hands. You need those for typing on your computer and making trades.”

  Max smiled, lifting his hands, palms facing me. “I’m good with my hands. I’ve got references should you need them.”

  “I’m sure the only reference who’d give your hands a glowing recommendation is the region south of your belt.” I turned away when I realized what I’d just said. Why was I bringing up Max’s below-the-belt region? Why was I even thinking about it?

  “After eight weeks together, they’re actually kind of sick of each other.” Max’s nose crinkled as he inspected his hands. “Might not be the best reference to attest to the skill of my hands.”

  I’d been just about to draw another line of caulk along the baseboards when his comment totally threw me off. As in, made my body kind of flinch at the same time it made my stomach flutter.

  “You made a mess. Sure you don’t need my help?” Max stared at the blob of caulk I’d just pumped onto the floor.

  “Didn’t you come in here to say something?” I set down the caulking gun and got up to grab a wad of paper towels out of the bin.

  Max had managed to reach into the room without stepping into it and ripped a wad free and held them out for me. I snatched them from him and went to clean up the caulk mess before I had to add resurfacing the floorboards to the to-do list.

  “I’m sorry about all of that. Outside. What I said. What I did.” Max’s voice carried through the room, but he stayed where he was. “This is all so much harder than I thought it would be. Moving in with you and living together . . . I never imagined this would be so difficult.” He watched me clean up the floor with that look on his face again. The brooding one that gave the impression he was being tortured from the inside out. “I had no right to say those things or touch you like that. It won’t happen again.”

  Wiping at the floor, I felt whatever anger I’d had vaporize. Just like that. One heartfelt apology and it was like all was forgiven and forgotten.

  “I know. It’s h
arder than I thought it would be too.” I stopped swiping at the floor once it was clean, then I glanced at him. It didn’t seem like he was blinking with the way he was looking at me. “It’s okay. We’ll figure it out. This is our first day of living together. It’s bound to take some adjustment, especially with our situation being what it is.” I paused, almost like I was waiting for him to fill in the details of what our situation was because I felt like I no longer knew how to define it.

  “But just in case I wasn’t clear outside”—I picked up the caulking gun again and aimed it at his chest—“no more of that grabbing, yelling, chest-pounding stuff, okay? I don’t do that shit.”

  Max took in a breath. “I don’t either. Usually,” he added with a sheepish grin.

  He was smiling at me, and I was smiling back, and I felt the air charging around me. It felt like if I were to put my hand out, I’d be shocked by it.

  This man had too much power over me. Too much sway. I couldn’t risk letting him get any closer. I couldn’t risk letting him take any more of me than I’d already agreed to. I wasn’t sure I had much left to give anyway—I’d already sold him three years of my life for a million dollars.

  The reminder of our arrangement flamed across my cheek like a slap.

  “Good night, Max,” I said, twisting around so my back was to him as I leaned over the spot where I’d left off on the baseboard.

  I heard the door whine closed behind him. “Good night, Nina.”

  When I glanced back, I saw he’d left the door open a crack. He’d left it open just enough.

  What the hell was wrong with me? What. The hell. Was wrong. With me?

  That was what had been playing on repeat in my mind since I’d apologized to Nina and crashed on the couch, trying to get my shit straight. That was an hour ago, and if anything, I’d only managed to get my shit even less straight.

  When I heard her door squeak open, I sat up and listened to her pad down the hall. This was one hell of a house, but it wasn’t exactly quiet. It made more noises than the ones blasting into my office from the busy streets of downtown Portland below.

  “Nina?” I sat up higher when I saw her.

  “Are you still awake?”

  I guessed that was a rhetorical question since, you know, I was sitting up, looking at her.

  “What’s up?” I focused on keeping my eyes lifted because she was wearing the same kind of “pajamas” she’d been wearing this morning after that clusterfuck with Nathan. A paper-thin tank top, boy shorts—which were really just underwear that rode a little lower down the hip—and knee-high socks were not pajamas. That was like some sporty-girl role-play outfit.

  “We need to do something about the Nathan situation.” She held up her new phone, her shoulders falling a little. “He keeps texting me, checking in to make sure I’m okay.”

  My teeth ground together. That doctor was going to need a doctor if he didn’t back off. “So? Just text him back that you’re fine and tell him you’re going to bed and to leave you alone.” That was when I realized what time it was. “And why is he texting you at three a.m. anyway?”

  She waved that off like it wasn’t important. Like hell it wasn’t. “I already did that. It’s the last text I’m worried about.” She licked her lips, her gaze dropping to her phone. “He basically said he knows something’s up and that he wants me to tell him tomorrow. He said he won’t leave me alone until I tell him what’s really going on between you and me.”

  A laugh rolled past my lips. Yeah, he’d leave. When I made him.

  My hands were quivering at the thought of this asshole next door texting Nina late at night with his accusations and suspicions. I wanted to leap off the couch, pound down his front door, and show him what happened to guys who messed with other guys’ girls.

  And then I reminded myself Nina wasn’t really mine. Not where it counted at least. She might have agreed to the whole thing, but her heart wasn’t in it. The most important part of the whole thing was the heart, and if anything, hers was stone where I was concerned.

  “What do you want me to do about it?” I asked, guessing she hadn’t come here just to inform me.

  “Nothing,” she said instantly, her eyes drifting to the spot where she’d found me towering over Nathan earlier. “But I think I have an idea for something we can do.”

  It wasn’t so much what she said, but the way she looked away when she said it. I was instantly intrigued. “What did you have in mind?”

  When she shifted her weight, licking those damn perfect lips again, I felt an issue starting to come up. In that below-the-belt region she had referenced earlier. The way she was dressed—or scantily dressed—the way she seemed unsure—which I didn’t think was possible when it came to Nina Burton—the way she kept working her lips to death . . . I’d follow her through the doors of hell if she crooked her finger.

  “Follow me. I think it would be easier to show you than try explaining it.”

  She didn’t wait for me to stand before she scurried back down the hall. And I might have taken that opportunity to check out her ass because I was starting to accept that I was already damned where Nina Burton was concerned, so I might as well embrace the journey to hell.

  I slid off the couch, adjusted myself so I didn’t further embody the pounding chest beast she was already under the impression I was, and headed for her room.

  The house was dark and her room was the same. I’d been too busy watching Nina wielding her caulking gun earlier to really check it out, but I took that opportunity now. It was simple, understated . . . without trying to fall into that category. Her bed was propped in the middle of a wall where a couple of windows hung above it. Her bedding was all white, and the rest of the room kept in the same spirit of functionality and shades of ivory.

  “Nice room.” I paused in the doorway. “Is it okay for me to cross the threshold now? Or should I still be quivering in fear of ‘stuff’?”

  “You can enter.” She checked her phone when it buzzed in her hand again. Fucking hell. That guy was not going to let up. “Though do so at your own risk.”

  “Consider me warned.” I moved inside the big room, and thankfully she was still focused on her phone, typing in whatever was her reply. Because I wasn’t just checking her out. I was staring.

  The moon was full tonight and glowing through the window she was standing in front of. The silver light seemed to shimmer when it touched her fair skin. It highlighted her curves, shadowing her frame, lighting up her hair so it almost looked like it was burning.

  My throat tightened when I made myself stay where I was, not daring to move any closer for fear of how my body would respond to her being so close. I considered myself a strong man, a civilized one most of the time, but she brought every weakness to the surface at the same time she freed the savage within.

  She brought out the best in me. She brought out the worst. She brought it all out, and I was her willing victim. Her eager student. Her obedient apprentice.

  When she set her phone on the round table beside her bed, she turned around before I could tame my stare.

  “So what’s this great idea?” I glanced away and meandered deeper into the room, keeping my distance. Hopefully without looking like I was trying to. “Because I’ve got some very compelling ones when it comes to putting Nathan in his place.”

  Nina was quiet for a minute. “We make noises.” She cleared her throat, her voice higher than normal. “Loud noises.”

  “Noises?” My forehead creased. “Like you want to get in another fight?”

  She worked her tongue into her cheek. Now she was the one unable to look at me. This must have been one crazy-ass idea if Nina couldn’t make eye contact.

  “No. Like the noises you make after a fight.” A pause. “When you’re making up.” Another pause. “Loudly.” During this pause, she stepped up onto her bed and started fighting with the windows. “With the windows open.”

  When she waved her hands at the open windows that were f
acing Nathan’s house, not even ten feet from his front porch, I thought I was starting to get it.

  “Oh,” I said, still processing.

  Then she glanced at her bed before lifting her eyebrows at me.

  “Oh.” I felt a smirk form as I realized what she was suggesting. Fully understood it. “Ooohh.”

  “The gloat, rein it in. It’s getting messy.”

  I slid my hands into the pockets of my pajama bottoms to hopefully disguise the hard-on I’d just managed to get back under control before she told me about her solution to the Nathan problem. “I like your idea. I’m so on board with your idea.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I figured you’d be obliging.”

  “So this idea . . . is it only the noises we’ll be making? Not the rest of it?”

  Another eye roll, but this one had to be forced. It didn’t come quite as naturally as the first one. “Not unless you want to figure out what ‘stuff’ happens to a guy who fucks with me.” A smile plastered into place. “In all ways, fucks with me.”

  “Figuratively?” I crept closer.

  She nodded.

  “Metaphorically?” Closer still.

  Another nod.

  My head tipped up at her when my shins bumped into the side of her bed. “Literally?”

  Nina backed up a couple of steps, crossing her arms. “Especially that way.”

  She was close enough I could have pulled her to me. She was close enough I could have laid her down, climbed over her, and felt her body form around mine as I pressed my weight into her. She was close enough . . .

  And yet a fucking galaxy away.

  “So how do you want to do this?” I gave myself an imaginary sucker punch to get a grip. “I’ve done a lot, I’ve seen even more . . . but this is a first.”

  She blew out a breath as she dropped onto the mattress, her legs curled beneath her. “I don’t know. I’ve kind of been putting this together on the fly.” She studied me hovering beside her bed, then she patted the mattress like she wasn’t quite sure but was going with it.

  I wasn’t quite sure about it either, but I took a seat, the mattress springs groaning from my presence.