Page 5 of Built to Hate You

“Mrs. Clark?” he says. “I’m sorry to interrupt. The boys and I are about to head out. I just wanted to run something by you quickly before we leave.”

“Of course,” says my mom. I stand aside quietly as Axel shows my mom a paper on the clipboard he’s holding and talks about some pricing adjustment or something. She nods and says it’s fine. Then she smiles up at me. “Aren’t you going to say hi, Mia?”

I clear my throat. “Axel and I actually ran into each other outside.”

“Ah,” says my mom. “Well, it’s a funny coincidence, isn’t it? You two knowing each other from high school?”

“Yeah, it’s crazy,” I say, forcing a smile.

“Well, I don’t know if you two want to catch up or anything, but—”

“I actually need to get going,” says Axel. “It was good to see you, though, Mia.”

“You, too,” I say.

After Axel leaves, my mom laughs and shakes her head.

“Maybe it’s just me,” she says. “But the tension between you two—my gosh. Tell me the truth, Mia. Did you have a crush on him in high school?”

“No, Mom.” I draw in a breath. “So, dinner?”

“Oh, fine,” says my mom. “I’ll go get your father from his study and we’ll go.”

To my relief, my mom doesn’t bring up Axel again during dinner. We just have a nice meal, my parents and I, and afterward, I go back to the house with them to enjoy some coffee and slices of my mom’s homemade banana bread.

After a while, my dad gets up, announcing that he’s beat, and gives me a kiss on the cheek before going up to bed. I stay for just a tad longer, talking to my mom, and then I head on home. I spend the rest of the evening getting a head start on some copywriting that I need to get done for a client by the end of the week. I end up crawling into bed just after one in the morning, and set my alarm for nine o’clock.

It’s not my alarm that wakes me up the next morning, though. It’s the sound of ringing. Blearily, I reach for my phone and am confused when I see Axel’s name on the screen.

What the hell is he calling me for at eight thirty in the morning?

“Hello?” I say, my voice cracking.

“Mia,” Axel says, his voice serious. “Your dad just had a stroke.”

Chapter Four

Axel

For what feels like the hundredth time, I press my thumb over a scratch in the arm of the emergency waiting room chair I’m sitting in. I almost expect the mark to be gone when I lift up my thumb again. But of course it’s still there. It’s been just over an hour since I drove Mr. and Mrs. Clark to the hospital, and fifty minutes since I called Mia to tell her about her dad.

I know I don’t actually need to stay here any longer, but I can’t leave.

It felt like an ordinary morning when I arrived to the Clarks’ house to oversee the work being done. Mrs. Clark answered the door and offered me coffee, like she’s done every morning since we started working on the house, and like always, I thanked her but told her that I’d already had some at home. We chatted very briefly about how gorgeous of a day it looked like it might be. And then I continued to walk through the house, heading back to the room we’ve been working on.

I ran into Mr. Clark along the way. We exchanged hellos. But I noticed that he squinted a little as he looked at me. I asked him if everything was okay. He nodded, and smiled, but then when he started talking about everything he had to get done that day, I noticed that his speech was a bit slurred. I asked him another question, to make sure I’d heard right, and then I immediately got Mrs. Clark and told her that I was pretty sure her husband was having a stroke.

I hear a familiar voice and look up. Mia’s finally here. She’s standing up at the reception desk, gripping her bag in one hand and nodding as she talks to the receptionist.

“Mia,” I say, going over to her. She whips her head toward me and looks at me with panic in her eyes.

“What happened?” she says. “How bad is it?”

“I don’t know yet. I haven’t heard anything from your mom yet. She’s back there with him.” I gesture toward the chairs. “Come on. Sit with me. I’m sure we’ll hear something soon.”

It’s obvious in Mia’s face that she doesn’t want to. But she does. We sit, and I tell her about what happened that morning. She nods, taking it all in.

“Thank you. For picking up on the clues, I mean. And for driving them here.”

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