Page 27 of Hate To Love You

“The surprise is in here?” I ask flatly. “Or is this some kind of a joke? Because my capacity for fucked up humor is seriously limited at the moment.”

If there’s one thing I can’t hold up against, it’s compassion, and Apollo’s face gets all soft and understanding. “Our dads are going to be fine. I’ve already talked to them. They both agreed we need a break, and they need time to talk.”

“What? They said that?” I gasp.

“That we need a break?”

“No, that they’d talk.” I can feel my insides crumbling, but it’s a crush of utter joy. Maybe this is the surprise.

“They did say that. They both agreed on me giving you this surprise. They know you’ll love it.”

“They know what it is?”

“They do. It’s not a secret. Just a surprise for you, so you can’t know what it is. But they agreed. That’s the important thing. I think it’s going to be okay. This is the first real glimmer of hope I’ve seen yet.”

I don’t want to feel hopeful. I want to keep holding on to my guardedness because it’s the only thing that keeps my heart from getting totally crushed. A little bit crushed is one thing. Obliterated is another. Mine has been obliterated too many times for me to count, and it’s getting harder and harder to put it back together.

“Will you let me show you what it is?”

This is the Apollo I can’t deal with. The sweet, gentle, happy, caring man. But still. I’m not going to just give in. He doesn’t get to be forgiven just like that and farge on his surprises and his trying to win me over with them. I’m glad our dads finally agreed on at least one thing, but it doesn’t mean I have to cave. It doesn’t mean I have to like this.

When I got really upset, my dad sometimes used to tell me to put things into perspective.

So, to put things in perspective, I’m in the world’s most amazing house. Our parents are under the same roof, and they haven’t ripped each other to shreds yet, verbally or in any other way. No one has made any threats about farting on the other in one’s sleep. I’m kidding. I don’t know why I just thought that. I just remember how, when I was a kid, everyone was saying that and making threats about pink eye. At the time, I thought it was the worst thing I’d ever heard. You don’t want to mess with pink eye. It’s nasty, scary, and appalling. What could be worse than waking up with a gummy eye and having the whole world know that someone night-farted in your general direction?

Anyway, just because the house is my dream brought to life, everything is a work of art, I’m out in the woods in the middle of nowhere, my dad’s company is going to be okay, and I’ve had a bit of a vacation for the first time in a very long time, there are also some serious drawbacks.

I’m married to a man I used to know and love like a brother, and he’s now pretty much a stranger. Plus, there’s the whole bad feelings that are still very much alive and real for me. I’m not a grudge holder, but I don’t have to forgive the shittiness, the leaving, and the forgetting where he came from, either. I don’t have to forgive the fact that he might have been trying to protect me, but this marriage still wasn’t a choice for me. I’m here because it was the lesser of two evils. Well, okay, so I like his not-cat too. I guess that’s another positive.

But there are more negatives too.

And it’s all playing with my head. Plus, our dads. Enough said.

I’m nuttier right now than a squirrel with a big old pile of nuts. Which, ha freaking ha, is exceptionally nutty.

Unfortunately for me, Apollo gets his begging face on—big eyes and everything. They might be kind of absurd, but then, what about this isn’t?

“You can’t make up for all those years with a single surprise,” I grouch. It’s easier to be grouchy and snappy than it is to let my hurt leach out all over the place or melt into a puddle of goopy-goo, which for some reason, I really want to do.

He doesn’t stare blankly at me when he replies, “I know.”

“Do you?”

His mouth parts, and he nods his head. He’s got his dead serious face on right now. “Yes, I know.”

“Because if that’s what you’re trying to do, it’s not going to work.”

“Okay.”

God, I wish he could stop being so nice all the time. It’s really making me hot in all the wrong places. Again. I hate that when I’m around him, my body goes haywire. He brings out the inner cavewoman in my hormones. Not cool. I don’t want to comment on what he does to my panties, but if they vanish in a burning ball of fire, it’s not my fault.

His smile is enough to light up the entire room. Who needs light bulbs? Who needs solar? This man is the sun. Damn it, he’s always been the sun. It would just be so much easier if he weren’t. If he was mean, if he left us to our fate, and if he didn’t have the coolest house, the cutest skunk, and the softest heart. It would be so much easier if he didn’t act like his life goal was to make the world a vastly better place. And if he didn’t act like he wanted to make my life vastly better.

It makes me want to snarl. My guard comes right back up. He can’t possibly not want something. No one does something nice just for the sake of doing it, and if they do, well, I can’t say I’ve ever experienced it.

I step forward and point an angry finger in Apollo’s direction. I have to stop my forward motion since he doesn’t step back, and I’m afraid of what touching him would do to me. Panties going poof would probably be the least of it.

That doesn’t piss me off as much as it used to when I first got here, which is a huge red flag. “You have no idea what it was like when you left. I never had another best friend. I was this unmoored kid who was just…the girl without a mom. The girl with the funny dad. The girl who didn’t fit in and didn’t belong to anyone or anywhere. Do you have any idea how lonely that was? What’s wrong with you that you never called me or wrote me or freaking got online and sent me a message? It was there. It was always there. And you never used it. You just went off and lived a better life and left me to it.

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