Hate Story

  Like right now, lying in my bed at five in the morning when I should have been asleep. I guessed I’d been lucky to catch the four hours I had with all the tossing and turning and thinking I’d done all night.

  After we moved him in and unpacked most of his stuff, we were both too tired to do much more than crash onto the closest soft surface. I’d fallen onto the couch—Max had fallen into Grandma’s old recliner—so when I woke up in my bed a couple of hours later, that might have been why I spent most of the rest of the night awake.

  I hadn’t gotten in here on my own. I hadn’t tucked the covers around me and pulled off my sneakers. I hadn’t turned off the lights and closed the door.

  Thankfully my clothes were still in place because I didn’t know what I would have done if I woke up to realize Max had stripped me before putting me to bed. That was just as likely to earn him a punch as it was a different form of passion.

  I assured myself that these things I was feeling were normal. Any warm-blooded woman would war with the things I was when it came to a guy like Max. He was attractive . . . intelligent . . . funny even at times. He was pretty much female catnip in a six-foot-three bundle of ego and muscle. Anyone would feel some degree of attraction to him some of the time and given our situation of pretending to be a couple, that made everything that much more complicated.

  The guy I was getting paid to pretend to like was the one I shouldn’t like at all. He was the first one I ever had liked though.

  My life had become one giant cluster of confusion.

  Rolling over in bed, I checked the time. I groaned and beat my pillow with my fist. It still wasn’t quite five, and if Max was still passed out in the living room, I didn’t want to wake him up by going through my morning routine of making coffee and scrambled eggs.

  My overalls were in a heap on the floor from where I’d thrown them after sliding out of them around midnight, but Max had neatly positioned my sneakers up against the wall. The laces were even tucked into the foot openings. He was a details person, someone who seemed to take great care in everything he did . . . including putting away the shoes of the woman he was paying to marry him.

  Just as I was burying my head deep into my pillow, trying to silence my thoughts about one German sleeping a couple of rooms away, I heard a crash. Some shouts followed right after.

  After scrambling out of bed, I sprinted across my room, threw open the bedroom door, and lunged down the hall. This was a sturdy old house. It didn’t shake like I’d just heard it. Not unless there was a big thunderstorm passing overhead or . . .

  Two grown men had crashed to the floor.

  “What the hell, Max?” I rushed up to the scene of the crime, trying to figure out why Nathan was spread out on the hardwood beneath Max, who was pinning him to the floor, his hand at Nathan’s throat.

  Max lifted his arms in the air a second later, but he kept himself braced over Nathan so he couldn’t move. “I caught him sneaking in.”

  “Sneaking in? Are you for real?” Nathan looked like a child in comparison to Max. “I used the key.”

  “What key?” Max snapped.

  “The one your girlfriend gave me.”

  Something in Nathan’s tone when he said the girlfriend part pissed Max off. Actually, it kind of pissed me off too. Kind of sounded like he was challenging the title.

  Max’s head whipped back at me, looking for a confirmation. Before I could answer, his gaze swept down me from neck to toes. The look on his face made my stomach bottom out. His return journey was slower, and when his eyes met mine, there was something dark in them that made me wish I’d taken ten seconds to throw those overalls back on.

  “Mind letting me up? I think your dominance has been sufficiently asserted.” Nathan glared at Max, trying to wiggle free, but it was a feeble effort. Max had half a foot, fifty pounds, and adrenaline on his side.

  “Is that true? He has a key?” Max ignored Nathan, only focused on me.

  I nodded. “Yeah, he’s got a key.”

  Max’s jaw ground, his eyes flashing with something. His silent disapproval was louder than anything he could have yelled at me.

  “Don’t worry. I won’t use it again, Nina.” Nathan lifted himself up, watching Max carefully. “I can see someone feels threatened by my presence.”

  “I think we both know who’s threatened by whose presence,” Max fired back.

  I shook my head, forgetting I was in a tank and boy shorts, and moved between the two before they took it to the ground again. “Nathan, I’m sorry. I’m sure you just startled Max. He probably thought you were an intruder or something.” When I looked at Max to confirm the assumption, he huffed. “I should have told him I’d given you a key. Are you all right?” I smiled at Nathan, giving his arm a light squeeze.

  Max shifted closer, practically riding my damn back.

  Nathan shot a glare over my shoulder, but his face softened when it returned to me. “It’s okay. I should have thought twice before dropping off your breakfast with your new houseguest.” Another glare aimed over my shoulder, but this time when Nathan’s gaze returned, it roamed the area south of my neck for a couple of moments.

  I crossed my arms and stepped back. And this was why those wonderful things known as bras should always be worn by women with obnoxious chests like mine.

  Max angled in front of me, squaring himself in front of Nathan. “Now that everything’s all cleared up, it’s probably time you leave.”

  Nathan was quiet for a second, then he moved toward the door. He paused when he came to a white paper sack. “Sorry, Nina. I think your bagel got a little smashed this morning.”

  When Nathan held it out, Max snatched it out of his hand. “Nina doesn’t like bagels.”

  I sighed behind The Great Wall of Max. I was surprised he’d noticed that I hadn’t eaten the bagel last weekend when I’d ordered a breakfast sandwich on one of our dates.

  “Since when?” Nathan paused at the door.

  I came around behind Max. When he slid back in front of me, I pinched the back of his arm and twisted. Max didn’t even flinch.

  “Since a little while now?” Why I answered Nathan in the form of a question, I didn’t know, but the truth was, I’d never really liked bagels. Nathan had started swinging them by almost every morning after my grandma died, and I didn’t have the heart to tell him that most days, those bagels wound up being crumbled into the backyard for the squirrels.

  “Bye, Nina.” Nathan waved, turning to leave.

  I waved back.

  Max stuck out his hand. “The key.”

  I gave his arm another hard pinch. Nothing. It was like the guy didn’t have nerve endings or something.

  Nathan’s gaze shifted from Max to me, but when I stayed quiet, Nathan pulled it out of his pocket with a sigh. “Good luck, Nina,” he said, dropping the key into Max’s hand. “I’m right next door if you need anything.”

  After that, Nathan skirted through the front door quickly, like he was afraid Max was going to tackle him again.

  Max had barely slammed the door shut and slid the lock over before spinning on me. “What the fuck, Nina?

  My blood rolled to an instant boil. “What the fuck, Max?” I flung back at him, waving at the floor. “What were you thinking going Hulk all over our next-door neighbor?”

  His forehead creased. “I was thinking someone was breaking in and it was my job to keep you safe. That’s ‘what the fuck’ I was thinking.” His voice was so loud, the china rose plates hanging on the wall rattled.

  “It was Nathan.” I managed to keep my volume under control, but my voice was shaking from emotion.

  “It was someone I wasn’t expecting sneaking into the house while we were both asleep. I don’t care who it is or their reason for being here. I will act first and think later when it comes to protecting what’s mine.” Max’s hand curled around the key, stuffing it deep in his pocket.

  “Wouldn’t want something to happen to your precious investment, would you???
? I hadn’t really meant to say that, but with the way he’d just said what he had, looking at me as he’d been . . . it made me feel something I shouldn’t. I needed to remind myself I was an investment to him, nothing more.

  Whatever Max wanted to say back, he swallowed. Backing away from me a few steps, he looked away like he couldn’t stand the sight of me. “What are you even thinking giving some random guy the key to your house he can use at any time he wants? Including when you’re running around in your damn underwear?”

  My groan filled the living room. He’d been living under my roof for twelve hours and was already acting like he owned the place and was about to draw up a whole set of rules and guidelines.

  “Nathan’s not ‘some guy.’ He’s my neighbor. A nice one. Or at least he used to be nice before my ‘boyfriend’ pummeled him to the ground and left a damn indent of his body in the floorboards.” My toes tapped the scene of the crime. There wasn’t really a Nathan-sized impression, but not for lack of trying.

  “Please, that guy’s got it so bad for you, he probably had to take a detour to beat off in the bushes since he couldn’t make it back to his house first.” Max’s head whipped toward the door, glaring at it almost like he was daring it to open again.

  “Oh my god. Gross. You are so out of line and so, so wrong.”

  Max grunted. “I know the way a man looks at a woman when he wants to fuck her.”

  His unabashed word choice kind of hit me like a slap. “Oh yeah? Is that because you have a lot of experience with that look? Giving it to every woman you come in contact with?” Why was I yelling? Why was I even arguing this stupid point with him?

  What was happening to me?

  “Listen, can we just stop arguing about this already? Nathan does not like me in that way, no how, no way.”

  “Just because you want to deny it doesn’t mean he won’t be jacking off again tonight when he watches you through your bedroom window.”

  Letting out a long groan of frustration, I powered over to the corner of the room where a little trampoline I just couldn’t seem to get rid of, old as it was and unused as it went now, was. Grandma used to bounce for five minutes every day when she’d been healthier. She’d read years ago that it was one of the best forms of exercise a person could get, and she’d stayed committed.

  Throwing it on the ground from where it had been leaning into the wall, I stepped up on it. Max had followed me, but once he saw me step up on the trampoline, he froze.

  His arms crossed and his jaw set. “What are you doing?”

  “Proving my point,” I said as I started bouncing. The coils whined with each bounce. “I could be doing this, naked, two feet in front of him, and Nathan wouldn’t notice.” I had to pause to take a breath because I was already getting a little breathless from the bouncing. “Chill out.”

  Max turned so he wasn’t looking at me straight on. Something about his posture seemed wrong, like he was holding himself back. “Thank you, but I won’t chill out,” he said tightly. “And would you stop bouncing over there already? You’ve made your point.”

  I kept bouncing. Squeak. Whine. Squeak. My boobs were kind of hurting from all the up and down, but no way was I going to stop when he was ordering me to.

  “He saw me on the couch, Nina. There’s no way he couldn’t have. How does that look? My first night in my girlfriend’s house and I’m sleeping on the couch?”

  I moved into a side bounce to lessen the impact that was practically making my boobs fly into my face with every jump. “If he knew you, he wouldn’t think twice about you sleeping on the couch. First night here or not.”

  He was still in his dress shirt and slacks from yesterday, but he was barefoot and wrinkled. His hair was messy from sleep and his voice still raspy from it. It was the most disheveled I’d seen him and, combined with the way he was acting so oddly, I found it kind of a relief. To know he was human. That he wasn’t always the pristine suit and commanding aura he exuded all of the time. Maybe he didn’t have every answer to every question and, at times, life threw him a curve just like the rest of us.

  “Would you stop with the fucking bouncing already?!” Max paced in front of me, his eyes flickering my way every few steps.

  My glare fired into position and I only bounced harder. My heels were almost hitting the floor now. “Yeah, I’ll stop bouncing. When I’m damn good and ready to be done.” Squeak, squeak, whine. Squeak, squeak, whine. “I won’t be ordered, commanded, told, or manipulated, Maximilian Sturm. The more you tell me to stop, the longer I’ll keep going.”

  With the next bounce, Max turned into the hall and headed down it. “Do whatever the hell you want. I don’t care.”

  We’d been living together for one day and had already managed to get into three small disagreements, one big argument, ostracize a neighbor, and Max had gotten a glimpse of me in my underwear. If that was any indication of what was to come, I needed drugs. An entire pharmacy’s worth of them.

  Kate wanted to come over and give Max hell for what had happened this morning. It was nice knowing that even though he’d earned the coveted highest screwability rating in the Kate Dixon book of men, she still had my back. After calming her down, I told her I could handle Max on my own and no, I didn’t need her to have her friend “tune him up a little with a baseball bat.” Whatever that meant. I might have appeased her by promising to pour a splash of Imodium in his coffee in the morning, which I had no plans of actually following through on because I’d finished middle school years ago and never wanted to revisit that time period.

  He’d been out of line with the yelling, ordering, tackling thing, but I wasn’t innocent on all counts either. I should have mentioned Nathan’s key. I should have remembered how he liked to drop a bagel off for me before he left for work in the morning. I should have, knowing Max, realized he would lose it if some guy came through the door unannounced early in the morning while we were both asleep.

  So yeah, a whole pile of should have’s were stacked in my corner of not-so-blameless.

  I’d just agreed to the whole Imodium prank before climbing off the bus, and I was sending Kate a quick good night text when I started up the walkway to my house.

  Stuffing my phone in my pocket, I found the driveway empty. Crap. It was almost two in the morning and Max was still working? I knew he worked crazy hours and spent more time in his office than he had at his old apartment, but this went beyond that. He’d left at six-thirty on the dot for his office this morning, which meant he’d put in a cool almost-eighteen-hour day. Or who knew, maybe he was spending the night at his office. He’d told me that he sometimes did that when he’d put in a late night and knew he had an early morning ahead of him.

  That would be good. After last night and this morning, we could both use a cool-off period.

  As I was pulling out my keys, I heard the screech of tires whipping into the driveway. Spinning around, I found Max’s ugly non-German car I couldn’t remember the name of screeching to a stop in the driveway, and I could see its driver’s face. Fuming would have been underemphasizing his expression.

  Shit. I knew what this fight was going to be about. Which was helpful since that gave me the chance to prepare myself.

  His door was thrown open, and he was hollering. “Where the hell were you, Nina?” Max slammed the door behind him, powering around the front of the car and across the yard toward me.

  I swallowed, a little intimidated by the anger I could feel rolling off of him in waves, but I wasn’t going to back away like some creature he could just conquer with an impressive glower.

  “If you expect me to answer that, you better rephrase your question.” I crossed my arms and stood my ground, letting him get as close and in my face as he wanted.

  He came to a sudden stop when we were a couple of body-lengths apart, almost like he’d hit some invisible barrier. “Nina . . .” He blew out a breath, cracking his neck. “Where were you?”

  I gave him a look. “At work. Like I told you thi
s morning.”

  His head shook. “I was just there.”

  “Let me detail this for you since I can see you’re having a tough time with the whole rational thought thing.” I lifted my eyes to the night sky. I should have made a wish while I’d been aimed that way. “I went from work, to the bus stop, to the bus, off at the bus stop, to right here.” I clicked my heels together.

  “I told you I’d pick you up.” He threw his arms back toward his car. “It’s not safe to ride the bus this late.”

  The night had been cool earlier, making me think about digging out my winter jacket and gloves for tomorrow, but thanks to Max, I felt like an inferno was burning around us now, blasting us with waves of heat.

  “And I told you I’d take the bus.” My words came out sounding like they’d been dipped in poison. Why he brought out this side of me, I didn’t know, but it seemed like every side I had, Max brought to the surface at levels I’d never known existed.

  Next door, I heard the screen door slam. If Max heard, he didn’t pay it any attention. With Nathan out on his porch now, listening to every word of our heated debate, the front lawn wasn’t the place to continue this.

  When I turned to head inside, Max’s fingers curled around my wrist and he pulled me back to him. “Nina—”

  Gaping at his hand on me, holding me in place, I watched my hand curl into a fist. When I tugged away, he let my wrist go, but from the look on his face, he didn’t want to.

  “I’m still a little tired from our argument this morning, Max.” I held my hands up and started for the stairs. “I’m tapping out on this.”

  “No, you’re not. We’re talking about this, and we’re talking about this now.” When I kept climbing the stairs, Max lunged forward, snaking his arm around my stomach and lifting me back down to the ground beside him. “It is not safe for you to be walking around these streets late at night, and it’s not safe for you to be riding the bus this late at night, and it’s not fucking safe to be working at that dive of a coffee shop this late at night.”