Page 4 of Hate To Love You

“What are you…” This can’t be real. This cannot be darned well fucking real. That word, husband, feels like a kick to the clit. There can’t be anything worse than that, really.

This is worse than the dreaded icicle. It’s worse than those scary movies I watched five years ago that still haunt me and make me want to sleep with the lights on whenever I get to thinking about them.

This is worse than the trashy dark romance novels I secretly love reading.

This is worse than the creepy dolls I love making and have stashed up in my room. I swear that some nights, they’re going to climb the ceiling and start spinning their heads around in different directions, but it hasn’t happened yet.

In real life, you can’t just win a person because you can’t bet a person in a poker game. “But John is…he…why would he want me?” Did I really just say that? Of all the silly, irrational things. I should be pointing out that I’m a person. That I have rights. That the agreement, or whatever, is void because you can’t just give another person away. You can’t force someone to do something like this. A person can’t be used to pay a debt. This isn’t the eighteen hundreds or any year after that. Women aren’t just given away. We’re not property. We’re not things to be traded or to increase one’s standing in society through an advantageous marriage.

“I didn’t lose to John.” Dad abruptly stands up from the table, looking like the hounds of hell are chasing after him, and…well, just…if he thinks he can do something as messed up as this, then maybe those hounds should be nipping and braying and bringing him back to reality and sense. “I lost to Apollo. As of three fourteen this morning, you’re engaged to Apollo Easton.”

CHAPTER 2

Patience

Holy baked beans on toast, that’s Apollo?

There’s no way. He’s gone from being a tall, lithe teenager with streamlined, stringy muscle and a creepy stash that he sometimes refused to shave off because he felt like having a few hairs on the upper lip was something of a conversation piece to a tall, filled out, built, jacked up, muscular man. There are no hairs sprouting here and there that he can laugh about. More like a perma-shadow all over a jaw that looks like it’s been carved out, just like much of the topography of the world was trenched out by icebergs in the past.

Icebergs. Not icicles. Although they both feel equally and terrifyingly awful at the moment.

Apollo didn’t show up when Dad was telling me the straight-up foul and nefarious story about how he got carried away—how he and John both did—and all of a sudden, the company was on the table. Either one of them—once best friends, now enemies—could finally take it all. Then, Apollo stepped in, Mister Ol’ High and Mighty God of Everything, and talked sense into his and my dad. They couldn’t just battle it out between the two of them and wager the company on a single hand. There had to be a third party involved—still a single hand. The winner takes all or names a prize equivalent to the company. Cooler heads obviously didn’t prevail, and the bet was on. The hands were dealt.

And now, I’m standing here, living history.

Apollo won. But he didn’t call the whole thing off. He didn’t say poker games were silly, and he was stepping in to get our dads to see reason. He didn’t laugh the whole thing off.

He didn’t name the company.

No, he named me.

My hand in marriage.

Dad kept insisting he didn’t have a choice. Either I marry Apollo as soon as it can be arranged—within a number of days probably—or he’ll have to give up his company because that was the deal. To Apollo, though, not to his dad, though it’s pretty much the same thing.

Anyway, so yes. There was no random and fated knock on the door right as Dad was explaining himself, wrecking my world, and throwing a wrench into my heart, which I’m sure is never going to beat properly again. I thought things were over when my mom left. When Apollo left. But now he’s back, and my dad gave me a warning when I talked to him hours ago that I had better get packed.

It’s seven now, give or take a few minutes. Who needs time when the rest of one’s life is going to be a wrecked wasteland beyond one’s choosing anyway?

Dad let my once best friend in, and now we’re across the room from each other, staring each other down. I haven’t packed a single thing. I went and brooded in my room while Dad stewed out here until I heard the doorbell. I didn’t want to rush out there. I wanted to throw open my window, climb out, and run. But there were a few problems with that option.

One, my window doesn’t open all the way anymore, and I can’t shove myself through a three-inch gap.

Two, even if I could, I’d probably fall off the steep ass roof with the steep ass pitch, and I don’t need broken limbs adding to my misery.

Three, even if I made it safely to the ground without killing myself, choosing to leave would mean dooming my dad and his whole company. I wouldn’t have a job either. I’d have nowhere to go. I’d be homeless. And maybe my dad would be too.

My dad.

Yes, he made a mistake. Alright, so it was one hell of a mistake multiplied by one million and eighty-two, but he’s looked after me as a single dad. He’s tried to be a good man, and he’s taught me basically everything I know. If the roles were reversed, and it was him who had to give something up for me, he’d do it in a heartbeat. Even if I were the one who messed up, he’d pick up the pieces and find a way to go on.

Sitting in my room wasn’t going to help anything, so here I am.

And here Apollo is.

Taking up the whole freaking house with his real-life presence. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve thought about him over the years, my dad’s company never would have been in trouble in the first place. I hate that my face is getting hot. Cherry red. Glowing like an ancient stovetop element. I also hate that the whole room smells all good and spicy and manly, and it’s all this grown-up, adult man who replaced the fun, funny kid I used to know.

The kid I used to love with my whole freaking heart in that special, wonderful way only children can love.

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