Page 1 of My Irresistible Enemy

1

Aiden

Welcome to Savannah! Passengers, please stay seated with your seatbelts fastened until the plane has come to a complete stop.

I released my white-knuckle grip on my armrests and exhaled. At twenty-one years old, I’d only been on a plane four times in my life, and I still couldn’t shake the sensation that I was traveling in a rattling, metal coffin whenever I flew.

I pulled out my phone and flicked it out of airplane mode. Now that we were on the ground, I could access the internet without paying for the super-expensive plane Wi-Fi. With a glance at my seatmate—a middle-aged woman who was furiously finishing a crossword puzzle—I opened my CamFans account. I’d only been offline for a night, but I’d learned that my subscribers hated long absences.

Sure enough, I had messages waiting for me.

@Spacegurl4u: Sam, honey, how’re you doing? Haven’t seen your beautiful face for a bit, hope you’re okay!

@JimPawcette1943: Hey Sport, gorgeous sunrise today, would be even better with a pic of your gorgeous ass to go with it.

@ASDFIDGAF: can u send me ur used underwear i’ll pay extra

@Purplecumluvr: I jerked off thinking about fucking that sweet hole of yours last night. I think about you all the time when I cum

@HungTopXL: I’m gonna pound your tight little ass until it’s gaping open permanently and you have to wear adult diapers.

In other words, just another Sunday.

I turned my screen off and decided to look outside instead of answering any of those just yet. Pushing the window shade up, I blinked against the sudden brightness. I’d taken a red-eye from California, and it had been dark when I left LA. Well, as dark as LA ever got. The night sky in the city never got darker than a bruise, the light pollution painting everything a mottled purple-pink.

Here in Savannah, palmettos swayed in the breeze and some sort of pink climbing flower tumbled down the side of a maintenance building that we passed on our way to the gate. I wasn’t even off the plane yet, and things already seemed impossibly twee. How did people live like this?

How did Gabe live like this, specifically? Granted, he didn’t live in Savannah. But I couldn’t imagine that the tiny town of Adair, on Summersea Island, would belessquaint than an international airport.

My brother had moved to south Georgia from Chicago, and he claimed to have fallen in love with it, which I didn’t get. I mean, sure, he’d fallen in love with a guy too, but didn’t being back in a small town remind him of the tiny, flyspeck village we’d grown up in? How could he stand it?

Granted, Gabe’s childhood hadn’t been quite as thoroughly shitty as mine. Our parents probably shouldn’t have had kids, much less stayed married, but at least Gabe only disappointed them by existing. I disappointedandoffended them—by existing, by being gay, by sucking at school, by getting beat up when I came out in high school and expecting my parents to actually give a shit, instead of telling me that maybe I should have stayed in the closet if I didn’t want to get hate-crimed.

Things went further downhill after Gabe left for college. Without my jock of an older brother around to look menacingly at people, the bullying got worse, as did the apathy from my parents, and the whispers and outright slurs from all fifteen-hundred people in our little farming community. I left two days after I graduated high school. I wasn’t good enough at school to get into college, so I’d moved to LA instead.

The plan had been to make it in acting. Being attractive was pretty much my only skill. That, and having a thick skin. I wasn’t glad I’d been targeted so much in high school, but it had at least helped me develop afuck you, I don’t care what you thinkattitude that I figured would help in Hollywood.

Plus, my sophomore-year English teacher, who was also the head of the drama department, had told me she thought I was talented. Unfortunately, she was either wrong, or being talented, hot, and generally impervious to shame wasn’t actually enough to guarantee success, because I’d spent the past three years trying to break into acting while working at a coffee shop, and I’d made a lot more money at Cap & Frap than I ever had from acting.

Given how low my wages were, that was saying something.

Well, with any luck, things would start turning around now. By some absolutely miraculous turn of events, I’d gotten cast on a reality baking competition,A Piece of Cake, which either proved that God existed and was looking out for me, or that God existed and had a twisted sense of humor, because I couldn’t bake for shit.

It wasn’t acting, exactly, but itwasexposure. And if I could make enough of an impression with viewers, maybe it would help me get cast in future roles. I just had to hang on long enough to manage that.

If I were being completely honest, I was pretty much at the end of my rope. Rent was getting more and more expensive, but the money I made as a barista wasn’t rising at the same pace—or at all, really. I wasn’t smart enough for college, strong enough for manual labor, or good at anything other than being a smartass.

But going back to my hometown wasn’t an option. I’d already been a laughingstock there once. I wasn’t going to admit defeat and let it happen again.

I was going to show my parents, the assholes I’d gone to school with, and the whole town that I was more than they’d ever thought I would be. That I was better than them. That I didn’tneedthem.

And, well, if the baking thing didn’t work out, I did haveonebackup plan…

With a sigh, I picked my phone up again. I was going to need to reply to those messages. If you paid me ten dollars a month, you unlocked the ability to private message me. And if I wanted to keep that money rolling in, I needed to respond.

I had no idea who most of my subscribers were, which was just fine with me. For the most part, their usernames were pseudonyms, and it wasn’t like I was going to spend my time looking up the ones who used their real names. Hell, I called myselfSamon my account, which wasn’t even my middle name. I’d just picked it because it sounded generic.

I had gotten to know them a little bit, though, over the past few months. Most of them were sweet, if a little pushy at times. Spacegurl4u, whether she was a girl or not, liked to send me little messages to check in every few days, and JimPawcette1943 always asked for extra pictures, but I figured it came with the territory. Theywerepaying to see me naked, after all.

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