Hate at First Sight
Penelope Bloom
Contents
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1. Aribella
2. Zach
3. Aribella
4. Zach
5. Aribella
6. Zach
7. Aribella
8. Zach
9. Aribella
10. Zach
11. Aribella
12. Zach
13. Aribella
14. Zach
15. Aribella
16. Zach
17. Aribella
18. Zach
19. Aribella
20. Zach
21. Aribella
22. Zach
23. Aribella
24. Zach
25. Aribella
26. Zach
27. Epilogue - Aribella
28. Epilogue - Zach
29. Please don’t forget to leave a review!
Bonus Book: Savage
1. Lindsey
2. Chris
3. Lindsey
4. Chris
5. Lindsey
6. Chris
7. Lindsey
8. Chris
9. Lindsey
10. Chris
11. Lindsey
12. Chris
13. Lindsey
14. Chris
15. Lindsey
16. Chris
17. Lindsey
18. Chris
19. Lindsey
20. Chris
21. Lindsey
22. Epilogue - Lindsey
23. Epilogue - Chris
Bonus Book: Baby for the Beast
Also By Penelope Bloom
1. Neela
2. Enzo
3. Neela
4. Enzo
5. Neela
6. Enzo
7. Neela
8. Enzo
9. Neela
10. Enzo
11. Neela
12. Enzo
13. Neela
14. Enzo
15. Neela
16. Enzo
17. Neela
18. Enzo
19. Neela
20. Epilogue - Enzo
21. Epilogue - Neela
22. Want Angelo’s story?
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**Important note** Because I’ve included two bonus books, Hate at First Sight will end at around 41% on your kindles, but it’s a full length, 68,000 word novel, and I hope you love it!
1
Aribella
Sometimes I think I’d forget that entire year if I could. Wipe it clean like a dry erase board. Then I’d drown it with rubbing alcohol to make sure not even the shadows of memory were left. Other times I want to hold on to every last detail, to plaster it over in lacquer so no amount of time or decay could ever chip away at those days.
Whether I want to remember or forget, one thing is always the same. No matter how much time has passed, just thinking of his cruel eyes or his name is still enough to make goosebumps race across my skin and fill my stomach with fluttering heat.
Zach Thornwood.
My crush. My nemesis. My tormenter. The boy who single-handedly screwed my entire life up in the span of a few months. Zach. Freaking. Thornwood.
Eight Years Ago
A new year usually meant a new place to live. My junior year of high school was apparently not going to be any different. We'd lived in Florida, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, and even Tennessee. Always somewhere new. Always short notice. Always a mouthful of bitter with none of the sweet. This time, we were moving farther than we ever had. California. Belvedere, California, to be exact. The diamond-encrusted asshole of the state, where trust-fund kids flooded the schools and nose jobs had no age restrictions, as long as you knew which doctors to use.
Home sweet home.
I used to think it was normal to move every year. My parents worked as gardeners for wealthy homeowners, and I never stopped to wonder why they had to find new employers so often. As it turned out, people who employed my parents eventually ended up getting robbed, and the thieves always seemed to know exactly where to find the most expensive, well-hidden treasures. Once word got around and the locals made the connection, we moved, whether it was the middle of the night or if it meant yanking my sister and me out of class.
Belvedere, California would end up like all the other places I'd lived. It would be a pit stop. Just a minor detour on the ever-shortening path between college and me, assuming I landed a scholarship. I'd made my best effort to get the grades for an academic scholarship, but jumping from school to school, often in the middle of the year, meant my grades were shot. My best hope for college was tennis. My parents could never afford lessons, but I'd been teaching myself from Youtube videos and grabbing matches with anyone who would play for as long as I could remember. I didn't care which college I wound up in. I just wanted out. I wanted a one-way ticket away from knowing my social life would self-destruct every time my parents drew the wrong kind of attention.
It was noon in Belvedere, and it was blisteringly hot. The sound of people jumping in the pool and splashing just a few yards away was worse than torture. I was knee-deep in bushes with sweat-streaked dirt caked on my tan skin. I pushed a tangle of wet hair from my forehead and tugged at the floppy safari-style hat my mom had let me borrow. I was mostly worried about trying to keep a deep shadow over my face so no one would recognize me. I'd already learned that being a gardener's daughter wasn't the most prestigious honor, and in a town like Belvedere, it would be worse than a scarlet letter "A" sewn into my clothes.
The house we were working on was the biggest and most expensive house in an area known for huge houses, and, go figure, it was home to the biggest and most offensive jerk at the school.
Zach Thornwood.
I’d only attended Belvedere High for a week so far, and I already knew more than enough about the social hierarchy. It wasn’t rocket science. Money mattered. Looks mattered. That was about it. If you were missing either, you might as well be a janitor, as far as they were concerned. Or a gardener.
Zach was having a party that afternoon. Girls with sleek bodies and designer swimsuits pranced by the poolside, dangling their feet in the water, and flashing bleached-white teeth at the slightest provocation. The boys were all tanned golden and beautiful, as if someone had gathered the most popular guy from every high school within a hundred miles and sent them to the same party. They were like kings, and I might as well have been a servant for all the attention I garnered. Not that I particularly wanted attention. Anything good I built here would turn to ashes in the end, anyway. Eventually, we'd have to run with our tails between our legs.
If I were smart, I'd be more worried about being invisible than being noticed, yet some dumb part of me still craved the satisfaction of showing these assholes they weren't as amazing as everyone thought.
They all had money. They had good looks and perfect bodies. But I’d been around the country enough to know that kids were kids. Every one of them had skeletons in their closet, and none of them could possibly be as happy as they wanted to appear. At least, that was what
my cynical mind wanted to believe. It was easier to cope that way.
I had only caught glimpses of Zach before. I had seen him at the other end of the hall, shoulder-to-shoulder with two guys and followed at a respectable distance by a small swarm of girls, like hungry dogs hoping for scraps of his attention. Even glimpses were enough to know there was something different about him. Something more. In a town full of tanned kings and plastic princesses, Zach Thornwood was a god. But it didn’t take long to learn how cruel a god he was.
I was standing motionless by one of the hedges bordering the pool with clippers held limp in my hands when it happened. I'd been staring with a mixture of envy and disgust at the party and didn't even notice his approach.
He walked right up to the bush, standing tall enough that I could see his face and shoulders over the hedges. Everyone else was topless, but he wore a black polo that looked like it fit far too well to be cheap. Then again, he had the sort of fashion model build that would probably make anything look expensive. Not so much muscle that he was bulky, but enough that he was clearly athletic and in amazing shape. It was the kind of body you saw on rock stars and celebrities. I distantly felt the clippers slip from my fingers and fall into the hedge with a soft crunch when I looked back at him.
He was so perfect it was almost offensive. I'd just been gawking at some of the most gorgeous boys I'd ever seen and Zach managed to make them all look ordinary by comparison. He had dirty blond hair that he wore in the kind of effortlessly messy, yet alluring way only hot guys seemed to have a license to. And he had the most arresting set of eyes I'd ever seen— bluer than the water in the pool behind him and far deeper. No matter what expression he wore, those eyes would always carry a hint of the storm inside him, like dark clouds promising lightning. The world was at this boy's fingertips, but he looked like he'd rather watch it burn down.
It was impossible not to want to fix him. It was that instinct some people are unfortunate enough to have. The tendency to be drawn to the broken things of the world and the temptation to help.
At that moment, I could've believed he was a figment of my imagination, some beautiful, cruel thing I dreamed up to torment myself. I could've almost believed it, except I could just barely catch the way he smelled—like expensive cologne and something sweet and so carnal that it was impossible not let my mind wander to dark, dirty places it wasn’t used to going.
I always had a fondness for poetry, and it was impossible not to feel a quick, stupid poem stir up in me then.
Eyes like storm,
Lips like sin,
Broken boy, broken boy,
Would you let me in?
“Well?” he asked finally. Even his voice was perfect. Smooth as velvet.
“W-what?” I ask.
“This hedge looks like shit. You going to do something about it, or should I just fire you now?”
The heat that had been spreading through me was blasted away by a burst of icy anger. In the space of a moment, Zach went from some distant, far off dreamy thing to a representation of everything that was wrong with my life. He got to exist on the easy side of the fence while people like me had to crawl through the dirt and mud just to get a look through to the other side. He was one of the people holding the reins while my family had to debase ourselves just to put food on the table.
I hated him, but I couldn’t risk my parents’ jobs for my own pride. I picked up the clippers without looking away from him and cut the single branch that was out of place. It made a neat snip sound. I plucked it up from where it fell on top of the hedge and tossed it aside, still locking eyes with him. “That better? Sir?” I asked. Calling him “sir” felt oddly dirty, and I instantly regretted my choice of words.
He watched me for a few moments with a dead, vacant expression, like I didn’t even warrant a reaction, then the corner of his mouth twitched up. “I could get used to you calling me sir.”
“Screw you,” I said, shocking myself and him, if the way his eyebrows crept up his forehead was any indication. To my surprise, his grin only widened until he actually looked amused.
“Yo, Zach,” called a guy with a deep voice. It was Brent Richardson, one of the two other guys who practically ruled the school at Zach’s side. Brent had shaggy brown hair and huge, wide shoulders that were tan and gorgeous. He took me in with a brief flicker of his light brown eyes. I saw a flicker of interest there, but he looked away from me after a moment to speak to Zach. “Claire was asking about you. I think she’s DTF.”
Down to fuck. Classy. I wanted to roll my eyes. To groan. To shout something. It was all so poisonous and horrible and yet a desperate part of me still longed to be part of their world, even if it was just to feel noticed for once. Or maybe it was because some part of me matched what I saw in those stormy eyes of Zach’s. Maybe I just wanted for them to let me in so I could burn it all down.
“Yeah, no shit,” says Zach, who, for some reason, kept watching me as he talked. “She’s been trying to get her hands on my cock all semester.” I saw some kind of idea forming in his eyes as he watched me, and he finally pursed his lips and nodded. “Yeah, okay.” He made sure I was watching him and dragged my eyes up toward the second floor of his house, pointing toward a broad window facing the place I was standing. He spoke to Brent, but didn’t take his eyes off me. “Tell her to meet me there.”
Brent raised an eyebrow. “I’m not your messenger boy, asshole,” said Brent.
Zach turned to face him, finally giving me a reprieve from his icy eyes. “Tell her,” he said, voice so cold and emotionless that it gave me chills.
Brent apparently felt the same way, because he swallowed visibly, looked uncertainly at Zach, and then stalked off toward the pool.
I expected Zach to turn then and say something else to me. Even then, I already understood that he hurt people. It was as natural to him as breathing. He found ways to dig barbs into anyone who made the mistake of getting close to him, even a gardener. He had read me like a book, and he was going to show me why I shouldn’t have disrespected him.
It shouldn’t have meant anything to me. It shouldn’t have mattered at all.
But only ten minutes later, I glanced up toward the window he had pointed to. I’d told myself I wouldn’t look. He was just some entitled, rich, asshole, no matter what he looked or sounded like. Even if I had been silly enough to hope for something to develop between us, I knew I had no chance with a guy like him.
None of that stopped the crazy way my heart was beating every time I thought about those piercing eyes of his and how close he had stood, how good he had smelled.
"No time for breaks, Aribella," my dad said. He had a thick, French accent, even though he had lived here in the States for almost thirty years. "We have two more yards to get to."
I nodded and knelt to yank out a handful of weeds. As soon as my dad moved around the front of the house, I stole a glance back up toward the window Zach had mentioned. It felt dirty, even to look. He was playing a game with me, and it was a game where I didn’t know the rules. All I knew was that he wanted to play. With me.
The sun was at just the right angle so I could see almost perfectly inside the window. I saw two small hands plastered against the glass and a girl’s face clearly in the throes of pleasure—lips parted and eyes squeezed shut. Behind her, I saw him watching me with those glacial eyes, no emotion on his face. I saw his hand between her legs, and hated that I was relieved to see he wasn’t fucking her.
Stupid.
“These kids are out of control.” It was my older sister’s voice at my side. She had followed my eyes up to the window and made a disgusted sigh. Mandy was two years older than me—a senior. People always knew we were sisters right away. I was the weird one—the one who was into poetry and old dusty books just because I liked the way they smelled, the one who couldn’t seem to help drawing the wrong kind of attention. The fact that I was good at tennis didn’t really do me any favors. It wasn’t basketball or volleyball or cheerleading, s
o nobody cared.
Mandy was normal, somehow. She got decent grades, she was athletic, and if we moved to a school at the right time of year, she always seemed to end up on the cheerleading squad. To her credit, she managed to avoid falling into all the cheerleader stereotypes. She just enjoyed the challenge of doing the stunts and the atmosphere at the games, not all the politics and drama that usually came with the pom poms.
“Seriously,” I agreed.
“Isn’t that Zach Thornwood up there?”
“He’s a junior,” I said. “Didn’t think he’d be on your big shot senior radar.”
She snorted. “We’ve only been here a week and I’ve already heard enough about Zach and his band to write a book. A really dirty book,” she added with a grin.
“His band?” Hating Zach had come so naturally that I automatically assumed his music would be a joke. No one around here would have ever told him he wasn’t any good. He probably had no idea. I clung to that for a minute, enjoying the thought that the cruel, perfect boy might not be so perfect after all.
Hate at First Sight Page 1
