Page 39 of Meet Hate Love
“Yep.”
“My entire life, my mother has ranked my siblings and me with a magnetic board on the fridge. The highest I’ve ever been is third place…”
Half an hour later, I was convinced that Rent-a-Poo at Blake’s sister’s engagement party wasn’t enough. Her older sister was a self-centered backstabber. Her mother sounded toxic. Even the grandma seemed like a branch off Satan’s family tree—she’d told a five-year-old Blake Santa Claus was a bloodthirsty vampire and the reason he needed cookies and milk was to wash the taste of the naughty children from his mouth. I couldn’t believe it, but Blake seemed sane compared to the rest of her family.
She’d just finished telling me about the time she’d been spit on by a llama at a petting zoo.
“Okay,” I said. “So, you have bad luck.”
“Bad luck,” she tsked. “How many times have birds shit you on?”
“Never.”
“Exactly.” Blake sank back against the bench. “Having a bird poop on you once or twice is bad luck. I’ve lost count of how many times they’ve made my head a bullseye. See. Cursed.”
“Bird’s shitting on you is supposed to be a sign of good luck.”
“Nothing to do with shit is good luck, Vance.” She held up a finger. “Except for Rent-a-Poo.” She took another swig from the almost-empty bottle, then sloppily thrust it toward me.
I finished the wine, then placed the empty bottle by my feet.After a few moments of silence, Blake huffed.
“You know, you were the first guy I almost kissed after Jimbo,” she slurred.
“Is that why you punched me?”
“No. I punched you because you were an asshat.”
“For trying to kiss you?”
She drunkenly rolled her head to the side, her eyes slightly crossing as she deadpanned me. “I punched you because you said, ‘I heard you were easy.’”
Surely to God, in my drunken state, I hadn’t actually taken Theo’s stupid how-to-get-a-girl advice?
I swiped a hand over my jaw, recalling how I’d taken Blake into my room, pressed her against the wall, and told myself as much as I wanted to take it fast, I needed to take it slow because I really liked her. I’d leaned into her neck and… Oh, God. My face heated. Ihadstarted to say it. Halfway through, I panicked and changed course, but before I could finish my sentence, she’d nailed me. “I was trying to say I’ve heard you’re easy to talk to, but by the time I got the ‘to’ out, your fist was in my face.”
Her brow creased, and those pouty lips of hers turned into a frown. “Liar.”
“I’m not lying. I liked you. Why would I insult you?”
She stared at me for a second—well, as far as I could tell, she was staring at me. Thanks to the wine, her eyes kept crossing. Then the furrow in her brow relaxed, and her eyes widened. “Oh, God. You did say to! Shit, Vance. I really needed it to be an insult. It was my life raft in my ‘I really want to fuck you’ sea, and now I can’t even cling to that.” She released a dejected breath and mumbled, “I’m too drunk for this,” then dropped her head to my shoulder. “Just do me a favor, you pulchritudinous asshole. Don’t let me fuck you.”
What idiot man would stop her? I’d wanted the woman since I’d first laid eyes on her on a casual Friday. Somewhere over the course of the past six months, every little encounter we’d had, every ridiculous story I’d overheard her tell Margot, every unnecessary, long-winded word she’d used to insult me, had made me infatuated with her.
I slipped my arm around her, liking the way it felt when I tugged her a little closer to my side. “That is one thing I would never stop you from doing. Unless you were drunk.”
“How chivalrous of you.”
ChapterThirteen
BLAKE
The warm morning sun poured through the floor-to-ceiling hotel window bright and early the next day, and it did absolutely nothing to help my pounding headache. “Why do I do this to myself?” I grumbled, rolling over on the crumpled sheets. Wine was the worst thing for me to get shitfaced on because the hangover was hell.
A muffled snore came from Vance’s alcove, followed by a groan.
A grainy memory surfaced. One of me curling my shitfaced self up on him on a park bench the night before, after he’d told me that what I’d thought had been an insult a few months ago was really nothing more than his having a slow delivery at a really crappy pick-up line and my having a quick temper.
Not only had I lain on him, but I’d also asked him not to let me fuck him, and then I’d come back to the hotel and had a very vivid, explicit dream about fucking him. And if there was one thing I’d learned over the years, when I had dreams like that, I moaned. Loudly. I’d probably moaned his name in my sleep. Kill me now. Stuff my rotting carcass into a burlap sack and hurl it off the top of this building because, oh my God. There was no way I could be around him today.
