Page 11 of My Ruthless Opponent

But saying so out loud would only encourage her to murder me. Because we don’t do or say mushy shit to each other.

She asked me a question about our destination but I see something else in her eyes.

She caught me staring at the crack on her dashboard and now she’s challenging me to say something about it.

I am smart enough to keep my mouth shut.

Summer Donavan is a force to be reckoned with. She specializes in grabbing the evil son of a bitch called life by the balls and squeezing it until she has her way.

Summer and I grew up together in foster care. I was almost eight back then when I met this fierce girl who was a year younger than me.

I was moved often from one foster home to another until I was eight.

My birth parents had abandoned me without a second thought. I was hardly a week old when someone left me on the footstep of a foster home one night in Santa Barbara.

Little me was always hungry for love. Whenever I was placed in a home, I used to beg my foster siblings for attention.

The idea of familial love was beaten out of me by the time I turned eight.

Then came a day when I met two kids whose souls were battered like mine. Summer and Damian.

Damian was adopted by a wealthy family a year after I moved in. Summer and I were left behind.

Twenty years later, we are still together. Not because we had romantic feelings for each other. It was also not because we didn’t belong.

Some might think it was because we were two lonely kids who always felt empty on the inside. That was only one layer of our relationship.

It was most definitely not because we yearned for a family.

In the initial years, yes, that was the case but it changed when we had to go through situations that I would not wish upon anyone.

We chose to be in each other lives because of our mutual hatred toward the world. We had to grow up way early than we were supposed to.

At the age of cuddling with Mom and sitting on your Dad’s shoulders, we were forced to sleep on an empty stomach.

At the age of participating in skits and dramas in school, we were forced to act cheery in front of authorities who used to visit to check up on us.

Despite going through all this, Summer and I never gave up and that steel will, that hunger for survival bonded us together. For life.

But unlike me, life decided to be extra cruel to her.

While I don’t claim to be a millionaire, I cannot complain about my current circumstances. I have a steady job that pays well. I have my own place. In few words, I am doing well.

Summer, on the other hand, is surviving paycheck to paycheck. Living in a studio apartment and driving a shitty car, she is barely surviving.

She is a quirky woman who always finds a way to smile even in the toughest times, but if you look at her with pity in your eyes, you are done for.

She can survive your taunts or anything you throw her way, but pity is definitely not one of them.

I smile at her. A smile that is unfiltered. One that says, I could never pity a warrior like you. Her shoulders which were stiffened when she caught me staring at her cracked dashboard begin to relax.

“You better tell me where we are heading. I don’t want to waste my Sunday aimlessly driving.” She rolls her eyes, lightning the mood.

I ruffle her hair which is made up in a partial updo.

“Not the hair, Raleigh!” She knocks my hand away. I chuckle at that.

“Come on. I was just trying to style it. This way you look less ugly.”

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