Falling Out of Hate with You (The Hate-Love Duet 1)

Feeling thoroughly annoyed, not to mention kind of peopled out, I wander away from the group to fill a plate at a nearby food table. Once I’ve got my meal in hand, I wander to a quiet corner and gratefully take a load off.

After a while, Laila appears, holding her own plate and a glass of wine. “Is this seat taken, fake boyfriend?” she asks.

“I was saving it especially for you, fake girlfriend.”

She sits. “Crazy day, huh?”

“It definitely took an unexpected turn.”

“Are you still mad about the money?”

“Nah. I’m over it. It’s only money. I can always make more.”

“Now, that’s the spirit.” She peers at me. “You still look grumpy.”

I shrug. “That’s just my face.”

She laughs. “I’m the same way. Unless I’m smiling, everyone thinks I’m pissed or angry. The irony is, when I’m smiling, it’s far more likely I’m plotting murder. So never judge my emotions by my face.”

“I think you’ve plotted my murder a time or two.”

“Or a thousand.”

“At least.”

We eat in silence for a bit, until Laila says, “You don’t like parties very much, huh?”

I pick up a chicken wing. “I like parties, as long as I’m not required to speak to anyone I don’t know.”

“Yeah, I picked up on that during the tour. You never once came to a single game night with the crew and staff.”

“They had game nights?”

“Every Thursday night. It was fun.”

“Nobody ever invited me.”

“Would you have come, if they did?”

“No. But it would have been nice to be invited.”

We’re silent again for a while, eating and drinking. Looking at the spectacular view.

After a while, I say, “I don’t think it’s weird to prefer hanging out with my best friends, rather than strangers. Doesn’t everyone prefer that?”

“Yes and no. Sometimes, it’s nice to meet new people. Get to know them. Hear their stories.”

I shudder and she laughs.

“You really hate to mingle, don’t you?”

“I hate it. We have to do it so much in our line of work, so when I’m not ‘on,’ I’d much rather be totally ‘off.’”

“I get that.”

“But it’s not the way you’re wired.”

“Not really. I love being alone to recharge, for sure. But I also love being around people, too.” She takes a long sip of her wine, and I watch the movement of her lips as the fluid passes them, suddenly feeling overwhelmed with the desire to taste them. I remember them wrapped around my cock. The way they were swollen and red when I pulled myself out of her mouth.

“What about Fish?” she asks, pulling me from my reverie.

“What about him?”

“He’s a friend of yours, right?”

“He’s a friend of everyone’s. He’s like Kendrick. Why?”

“I was surprised you seemed kind of standoffish around him, earlier.”

“I wasn’t being standoffish. I was just . . . standing.”

“It seemed like you were upset.”

“Laila, that’s just my face.”

Laila laughs. “Okay.”

“Honestly, I’d probably hang out with Fish a lot more, if he wasn’t always hanging out with his bandmates.”

She furrows her brow. “You don’t like Dax and Colin? How is that possible?”

“I like them. They don’t like me.”

Laila scoffs. “That’s impossible. Dax and Colin like everyone.”

“C-Bomb is a good buddy of mine.” I don’t need to say anything further. Everyone at River Records, and probably in the world, knows the 22 Goats’ smash hit, “Judas,” penned by Dax, is about Dax’s beef with the drummer of Red Card Riot.

Laila nods, apparently buying my explanation. I don’t think it’s the whole truth, though. But there’s no way I’m going to mention I once hit on Dax’s wife and also had a fling with Colin’s ex-girlfriend to the woman I’m hell-bent on sleeping with.

“So, should we talk about our backstory now?” she asks.

Reflexively, my eyes drift to her mouth again. “Yeah.”

“If we go by Nadine’s suggested timeline,” she says, “we got together around the end of the tour.”

“Mm-hmm.” My eyes are on her tits now. I haven’t spent this much time in Laila’s presence in a long time. I’d forgotten how intoxicating her simple presence is to me.

She takes a bite of food before saying, “The only bummer about that timeline is that it makes me out to be a bald-faced liar on Sylvia. Two weeks ago, I swore on national TV there was no truth to the rumors about us. And now, suddenly, it turns out we’re in love and living together? So embarrassing.”

“It serves you right,” I say. “You were a bald-faced liar on Sylvia.”

“No, I wasn’t.”

“Laila, I made you come three times, and during your last orgasm, you saw God. So, saying there was no truth to the rumors was, to put it mildly, not a true statement.”

She pushes a lock of her sandy hair off her face. “Having meaningless sex with you once doesn’t equate to me having an actual relationship with you—which is what Sylvia asked me about.”

“You implied we’d never so much as kissed,” I say. “Which was a lie.”