At First Hate (Coastal Chronicles)

Hooper waved shyly, a blush forming on his cheeks. He was easily the tallest of the lot—well, they were all tall, but he was a giant. “Sup.”

“I’m Leigh,” Leigh said, jumping in for us. “Danielle and Marley.” She pointed out a few other cheerleaders who had wandered over to find out what was going on.

They all waved, and I heard Christina Arlington whisper in awe, “That’s Derek Ballentine.”

Derek grinned broadly when he realized he had the attention of the entire cheer squad, and again, he invited everyone to his Halloween party tomorrow night. Only I seemed uninterested. Not because he was unattractive, but because I knew his type.

I’d spent long years analyzing people like Derek Ballentine. The ones who wanted sex after the first date, who expected the world but refused to give anything back in turn, who thought they were entitled to respect when they hadn’t earned it. I’d seen them flounder in and out of my mother’s life since I was a baby. One after the other after the other. She’d never been around enough for me to really know their names, but in my mind, they were all the same guy anyway. A placeholder for the real thing. And Mom never saw it, but I certainly did.

“Ladies!” Coach called furiously. “The game is still happening.”

The rest of the girls giggled and headed back into positions. We ran through a few cheers to try to get the crowd into the crippling defeat, but nothing could make them rally. And Derek stood by and watched me.

I’d never felt self-conscious in the tiny blue skirt and crop top before. I’d actually started cheering so that I could wear something other than pants or knee-length skirts. Gran was traditional, and she believed deeply in modesty. I thought she was trying to make up for how Mom had turned out, but I’d only said that once before in her presence and had the shit smacked out of me. So I wasn’t prone to saying that one again.

Either way, cheer wasn’t my passion by a long shot. I preferred dancing and did so at a local studio, but the high school didn’t have a dance team, and Gran wanted me to be “involved”—i.e., she thought it looked good on my transcript. And now, I was strutting around in a skirt that my ass nearly hung out of, and the hottest guy I’d ever met was looking at me like I was a puzzle he wanted to figure out.

A cheer rose from the other side of the stadium. Holy Cross had scored another touchdown. Their quarterback, Ash Talmadge, had run the damn ball in himself. I sighed heavily as they made the extra point, bringing the final score to 49 to 10. Depressing.

“Better luck next week,” Coach called.

I grabbed my cheer bag and slung it over my shoulder, heading for the stands to find Lila and Josie. I hadn’t seen them at all in the stands the second half. That likely meant that Josie had gotten them into trouble. What else was new?

I crossed the fence and squinted for my girls when Derek stepped into my path. He was enormous in person, towering over me with bulk I hadn’t expected from a basketball player. And I hated to admit, he was hotter up close.

“So, you really don’t want to go to the party?” he asked with a quick grin.

It was hard not to look at his lips. They were the kind of lips girls spent money on fillers to achieve. Perfectly pouty and oh-so endearing. I snapped my attention away from those lips.

“Why are you following me? It’s creepy.”

He shrugged. “Public school girls don’t normally say no.”

I rolled my eyes. “To you or your party?”

He shrugged again.

“Well, let me tell you, Derek,” I said, “I’m not like any other girl you’ll ever meet.”

Then I shouldered past him to find Josie flirting with a football player, Kyle Curtis. Lila looked generally miserable.

“Hey,” I said, dropping my bag at Lila’s feet.

“Mars,” she said. “You killed it out there. That high kick put everyone to shame.”

“Obviously,” I joked. I glanced at Josie. “How long will she be like this?”

Lila raised her eyebrows. “How long do we have?”

“Josephine Reynolds,” I called. “Can we keep the flirting to a minimum? I want to go home?”

Josie put her hand on Kyle’s arm and then turned all dramatic to face me. “Marley Nelson, you will wait your turn. I am occupied.”

I rolled my eyes at her. Most days I wished that my last name was Christianson like Gran’s. Nelson was from my father, whoever he was. He’d ditched mom when she found out she was having twins at the ripe old age of eighteen.

“Maddox is going to be picking us up any minute. If we’re late, he’ll drive off without us. I’ve watched him do it.”