The Hating Season

by Linde, K. A.

  “With a wistful sigh.”

  “Puh-lease,” I drawled. “You’re the one who said you still do it.”

  He laughed, hauling me in for a kiss. “I love when you fight me.”

  I jerked back. “You’re an ass.”

  “Yeah. Nice you caught on.”

  “Why do I even put up with you?”

  “Do you?” he inquired with an arched eyebrow.

  “Hardly. You’re the literal worst.”

  His lips quirked up. “That is not what you were saying earlier.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I think it still was.”

  “Liar,” he teased against my lips. He lifted me over onto his lap. I squeaked as my dress slid high up on my thighs, and his hands covered my ass. “Oh right, I didn’t let you say anything at all.”

  “Yes,” I muttered, currently distracted by the way my panties ground against his growing cock. “Because we were in a public bathroom.”

  “You didn’t seem to mind.”

  “Again. Bad, bad influence.”

  His hands lifted my skirt. “We could try again. Right here.”

  “We’re almost to your apartment.”

  He shrugged. “I can have him drive around the block.”

  I shook my head, slipping off of his lap. “You’re filthy, Court Kensington. Straight filthy.”

  “You bring it out in me,” he said, stealing another kiss.

  I highly doubted that. If anything, he brought it out in me. I’d done stupid things like this in college, but that felt so long ago. Court made me act like an idiot. And worse, he made it so I almost didn’t mind.

  The driver pulled over in front of Court’s building. I insisted that Court tip him extra after our display, which he did with no complaints. Then, he gestured for me to follow him upstairs to his penthouse.

  Even though I’d been here a number of times since that fateful night when this had all started, it still unnerved me. It felt like a decision. One that I wasn’t certain on making. I wanted to be here. I wanted to have sex with him. I couldn’t deny that. But the rest of it… I didn’t know.

  When we strode into his apartment, Court went right for the wet bar. “Drink?”

  I sank into a chair. “I think I’m already drunk enough.”

  He laughed as he poured himself a glass of amber liquid. “You have a pretty high tolerance.”

  “Yeah, well, you don’t even seem drunk.”

  “I have a very high tolerance.”

  I laughed at that and then couldn’t stop laughing. “Court, what are we doing?”

  “Having a drink?”

  “But really?”

  “Why do we have to be doing anything, Anna?” he asked, drawing me off of the chair and into his lap again. I straddled him, wrapping my arms around his neck. “I just got out of a long-term relationship. You’re…” He didn’t finish that statement. We let the unsaid word married float between us. “Can’t we just have amazing sex? Because fuck, it’s amazing sex.”

  “It is,” I admitted softly.

  “Oh yeah?” he asked with that shit-eating grin.

  “I’d tell you it’s the best sex of my life, but it would go straight to your head. And we both know that your ego needs no help.”

  His eyes smoldered. “Best of your life?”

  I mutely nodded once.

  “I like that.”

  “I thought you might,” I told him with a shake of my head. “Fuck, I’m going to need that drink.” I took it out of his hand and forced down a large gulp. I coughed at the scotch as it burned my throat.

  Court took it back from me and finished it. “Going to see if we can make the best sex of your life happen again.”

  Without preamble, he lifted me into the air and carried me into his bedroom.

  Neither of us slept a wink that night.

  16

  Court

  I yawned and stretched on my bed, blinking sleep out of my eyes. English and I had finally crashed around four or maybe five in the morning. I swatted my hand at my phone and saw that it was already noon. We’d slept straight through the morning.

  My eyes drifted over to where she lay, curled up in my sheets. Her blonde hair fanned out across the pillow. Her still-naked frame covered only by the thin sheet, but I could just make out the curves of her breasts, hips, and ass. She had one hand extended toward me as if we’d fallen asleep, reaching for each other.

  Selfishly, I wanted to wake her up with my head buried between her legs and start all over again. But I knew she was sore and needed the sleep. She’d feel me every time she moved for the next day or two at least. A smile touched my features at that thought.

  Another yawn hit me. I probably should just pull her against me and try to get another hour or two of rest, but once I was awake, I was awake. So, I kicked off the covers, yanked on boxers and shorts, swiped my phone off the nightstand, and headed into the kitchen.

  As I brewed a pot of coffee, I went through my messages. There was one from Robert, thanking me for coming to the party. Two from Poppy, insisting we meet up later. One from Camden that made me frown.

  Heard you went to Dawson’s party last night with English?

  Great. So, the news was already circulating. Of course, I could lie. At least to everyone else, I could lie like a champ. She was my publicist. She was there to keep me in line. All that bullshit.

  But to Camden?

  Yeah, the lie would never stand. He’d probably already guessed what I hadn’t said.

  I decided not to text him back. I’d rather talk to him in person. Plus, he was in the Hamptons all weekend with Katherine. And if Penn was back, then the tension must be high between them. Katherine and Penn had had an on-again, off-again thing for years. I still didn’t understand why Camden had married her. Insisted on an arranged marriage at that. But I knew that my little brother’s presence around his wife made him want to blow a gasket. Even if Penn had just come home, married to Natalie. It made me almost glad not to be there to witness that malfunction.

  The last message was from my mother.

  Congratulations, Court! This is just what I’ve always wanted for you!

  I clicked on the attachment with dread knotting my stomach. My mother and I had never seen eye to eye on what the other wanted. She’d had dreams for us, and who we were as people had never mattered much around those dreams.

  The image displayed, and it was a screenshot of Kensington Corporation stocks. They’d skyrocketed overnight. I froze in surprise. This wasn’t what I’d been anticipating. Me joining the company had made the stocks climb? It seemed… unbelievable. But it must have shown investors that the company was headed in the right direction. That it was more certain of the future.

  And for a second, I wondered if that was true. Could I be the future of Kensington Corporation? Sure, it had all been bullshit. English had engineered it. But… this said something else. Not just that it had worked. But that others believed in me. I couldn’t remember ever feeling that before.

  I typed out a quick response to my mother, still shaking out that feeling. Then, I poured a mug of coffee and brought it back into the bedroom where English was still fast asleep. I set it down to cool and then pulled out the book I’d started yesterday—Station Eleven. It was a postapocalyptic novel centered around a traveling Shakespearean theater. Murder, the world ending, and Shakespeare. Really different and engrossing.

  I fell back into the book like through a rabbit hole. Time disappeared when I was reading. As if I’d entered my fantastical world and lived out my time as the main character. Books had a certain kind of magic. An escape like no other.

  Incessant buzzing coming from the other side of the room jolted me out of it. After the third long ring, I finally put the book down next to This Is How You Lose the Time War—a fantastic time travel novel I’d read last week—and went in search of English’s phone.

  It was tucked inside her small black purse, and I pulled it out to silence it. The sc
reen lit up one more time.

  JOSH

  My teeth clenched. Jackass.

  A part of me wanted to answer the phone. Explain in vivid detail exactly what I’d been doing with his wife the night before and tell him to fuck off.

  But I didn’t.

  English would kill me. Literally. She had martial arts skills, and I was certain she’d act out of instinct.

  I silenced the phone and carried it to the nightstand next to where English slept happily, oblivious to her husband’s incessant calls. Just as I set it down, another text came through in all capital letters.

  YOU TALKED TO THE PRESS? TO A TABLOID? WHAT WERE YOU THINKING? CALL ME BACK NOW! WE HAVE TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO FIX THIS!

  I frowned and hastily turned the phone over. I hadn’t meant to snoop. It had just fucking appeared there. But now, I couldn’t shake it.

  She’d talked to a tabloid about Josh? When had that happened? We’d been together every day this week, and she’d never mentioned it. Why the hell would she even do that?

  I sank back into my side of the bed and reached for my phone. I searched her name, and immediately, an article popped up with the click-bait tagline, Josh Hutch’s Wife Tells All His Scandalous Secrets in Exclusive Interview.

  Wife. They didn’t even list her name in the headline. As if she were someone else’s property.

  I clicked on the link. Half out of curiosity and half out of dread. I skimmed the story. It was a tell-all but a carefully constructed one. English had clearly played this journalist. She’d put everything together in such a way that she’d actually revealed very little. But it didn’t matter. The tabloid twisted it and likely outright lied about the facts. It was bad enough that she’d gone on record to say, Yes, Josh cheated with his costar, and yes, we’re getting a divorce.

  Especially if Josh hadn’t known she was doing it.

  A small smile touched my features as I put the article aside. English had gone for the jugular. She was a brilliant fixer… and she could tear someone down just as easily.

  I pulled my book back out and was deeply engrossed again by the time English first began to rouse. Her eyes fluttered, she reached for me, and a small noise escaped her lips.

  Then she looked up at me with those big blue eyes. “Court?”

  “Morning. Or well, afternoon.”

  “What are you doing?” she muttered, rubbing at her eyes.

  “Reading.”

  “Is this a common occurrence?”

  I resisted the urge to brush her hair out of her face. “Pretty regular.”

  “Huh,” she said, fighting another yawn. “I stayed the night.”

  “Well… it’s more like you stayed the morning.”

  She stretched her arm over her head and succumbed to her yawn. She reached for my discarded T-shirt on the floor, pulled it on over her head, and trotted to the bathroom. She returned a minute later, still barely awake but a little more fresh-faced. She ambled to her purse and fished through it.

  “If you’re looking for your phone, it’s over here,” I said, pointing it out. “It kept ringing off the hook.”

  She flushed and reached for it. Her face fell when she saw what I’d already known was displayed on the screen.

  “What?” I asked anyway.

  She shook her head. “Nothing. Just, uh… nothing. I have to… get to work.”

  I put the book down. “We could get breakfast first. Or… lunch?”

  “No. I… fuck.” She ran a hand down her face.

  And just like that, I lost her.

  One second, she’d been here. She’d been Anna. Mine.

  The next… gone. Like a light switch.

  “Don’t do this,” I said automatically.

  Her face closed off. The publicist appeared. “Court, I… we… this…”

  “Stop,” I insisted. “We had a great time.”

  “We did. I mean, I can’t deny that we had a great time.”

  “But…”

  She nodded. “But it’s… wrong on so many levels.”

  “It’s right, English,” I ground out.

  I got out of bed and approached her, but she backed up a step as if I were going to attack her.

  “Last night was amazing.”

  “It was. I don’t disagree, Court. But I’m still married.”

  “Separated.”

  “It’s only been six weeks since I found out about Josh. The divorce won’t be final for like six months.”

  “Long enough for you to be comfortable enough with talking to the press.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Did you read my messages?”

  “I saw one when I turned the phone off. I read the rest in the tabloids this morning.”

  “You know nothing,” she spat at me. “You have no idea how I feel about any of it or even why I fucking did it.”

  “You could just fucking tell me,” I snapped back.

  “This is a rebound.”

  The words cut. They hurt the most because they were true. I knew they were. And yet, we worked. But did we only work because we’d both just been royally fucked over and needed someone? Or was it just the sex? Did it have to fucking matter?

  “Fine,” I said. “It’s a rebound.”

  “Can’t you see that this is going to end poorly?”

  “I’m not really thinking about the end. I’m still stuck on the five hours we spent together last night.”

  She flushed. “It’s my job to think about and anticipate every future.”

  “And how did that work with you and Josh?”

  Her hand whipped out and slapped me across the face. The last time she’d done that, we’d fucked for the first time. This time was different. She was breathing hard. Her anger a living, breathing dragon threatening to rip out of her chest.

  “You have no right to say anything about Josh. You are the playboy of the Upper East Side. I was literally hired to make you look like a good person. Just because I’m fooling everyone else does not mean that you can try to fool me.”

  And there it was.

  Right out in the open.

  The same old shit. Different day.

  “Have you ever seen me with another girl?” I asked her with a cold-edged fierceness. “The months you’ve been working for me, have you ever even seen me flirt with anyone else, except as a joke? Have you had to wake me up with a woman in my bed? Have I missed an appointment because I was getting pussy?”

  She just clenched her jaw.

  “That’s because I haven’t slept with anyone since Jane. Not anyone, except you. And before that, English,” I growled low, “I didn’t sleep with anyone else but Jane. I never cheated on her.”

  She opened her mouth, but I held my hand up. I didn’t want to hear it. I was tired of hearing it from everyone else. I didn’t need it from her, too.

  I stepped away from her. I picked up her discarded dress, her heels, and then finally her purse.

  “So, if you’re so fucking convinced that I’m a horrible person, like your fucking husband, then take your shit,” I said, tossing the bundle of clothes into her unsuspecting hands, “and get the fuck out of my apartment.”

  “Court, I…”

  “I really don’t want to hear it.”

  “Okay,” she said softly.

  She didn’t move for a few seconds. As if she was debating on trying to reason with me anyway. But then she shuffled out of the bedroom, and a minute later, the elevator dinged.

  I loosed a breath.

  Fuck. Just…fuck.

  Part III

  Not Who I Thought

  17

  English

  “Earth to English,” Lark said. She waved a hand in front of my face. “Are you in there?”

  I jolted out of my train of thought. “Yes, sorry.”

  I’d been thinking about Court kicking me out of his apartment. And how I’d been so wrong about him. So many fucking assumptions that had exploded in my face.

  “Are you okay?”

&nbs
p; “Yeah. Yep. Fine. Just tired. I haven’t been sleeping well.”

  That was at least the truth. Ever since what happened with Court, I’d been sleeping like shit. It didn’t help that the night we’d been together was the best night of sleep I’d had in months, maybe years. I’d never been a good sleeper. My stepmom had always said that I had too much going on in my head. My brain wouldn’t shut down. Apparently, it’d only taken five hours of sex with Court Kensington to get my brain to shut up.

  “You never sleep well,” Lark said. “But worse than normal?”

  “Yeah. I don’t know.” I twirled my fork through my pad thai. Lunch with Lark had been postponed last week. So, I hadn’t seen her since she’d gotten back. She’d had too much work to catch up on. “I’m just glad you’re back. I can’t wait until November, when you have more time to be a human.”

  Lark laughed. “Yeah. I get it. But I love campaign season. I honestly can’t even believe we’re in the middle of September. Where did the time go?”

  “No idea.”

  “Have you thought about what you’re going to do after the election is over?” Lark asked. “You won’t have to work with Court anymore. I can’t see you going back to LA.”

  “No, I can’t either. Not after what happened with Josh,” I said, grinding my teeth together. “He’s been a total maniac since I did the interview.”

  “I still can’t believe you did it.”

  “I won’t tell him this, but it was to help the campaign. Some jackass pap took a picture of Court and me leaving the club that night, and I didn’t want it to hurt Leslie.”

  Lark took a sip of her water. “I appreciate that. Though it’s a big sacrifice for a picture.”

  “It was fine. The article barely said anything.”

  “Enough to make Josh go crazy.”

  “Well,” I muttered softly, “he doesn’t want a divorce.”

  “Don’t think he gets a say in that after what he did.”

  “True.” I ate a few bites of my food before speaking again, “He wants to see me when he’s in town next month. He’ll be here, promoting the last Bourne movie. He thinks we should try to go to counseling.”