Love Between Enemies

by Molly E. Lee

  “Hey,” I said, boldly reaching out to cup her cheek. I needed her to look at me. To see the sincerity in my eyes. “I don’t think that.”

  “Yes, you do.” She shook her head. “You thought I lied to you on purpose. That I went for the scholarship just to take it away from you.”

  “No. I was mixed up. This morning…” I stopped myself before I spilled my guts to her. “I don’t.” I stepped closer, until only an inch of space separated us. “I’ve watched you operate for years, Zoey. I know how your mind functions. I know you stay up late, get up early, and push yourself to the edge every single day because you know that it’ll all amount to something incredibly worth it at the end. Sure, having your father’s last name definitely doesn’t hurt your efforts, but I know you never drop it. Hell, I know the reason you were awarded the scholarship over me was because the app you created—on your own time—was better than mine.”

  It was true. She’d won fair and square.

  Her green eyes flashed in the soft glow of the torch near us, glistening with unshed tears. “Sometimes I can’t tell if you totally hate me, or if you understand me better than anyone else ever has.”

  Finally, an easy answer. “I don’t hate you. I’ve never hated you. We’re the same.” I shrugged. “Well, almost. I don’t have a full-ride to Stanford, and my family business is burgers, not billions, but…where it counts, we’re the same.”

  The reality of that fact hit me like a punch in the chest. Holy hell. I really had been wasting my time fighting her for the last decade instead of connecting with her. She probably was the only woman on the planet who would tolerate my addiction to work, to studying, to bettering myself. And now that I realized that…I didn’t want to waste one more second fighting with her.

  Well, maybe a few seconds. She’s sexy as hell when she’s mad.

  Allowing myself to admit the attraction was like a rush all on its own, but the smile that shaped Zoey’s full lips? That was like a drug, and I immediately wanted to make her smile as often as possible.

  Stepping outside my comfort zone, might as well dive in head first.

  “I never knew you thought that,” she said.

  “I didn’t either.” I chuckled. “Not until recently, anyway.”

  Something hard crossed her eyes, and she jerked her gaze away from me.

  What’d I say?

  After she’d been silent just past the awkward limit, I opened my mouth, totally baffled. “All right, then.” I moved to leave once again. It was clear she still needed her space, and I couldn’t bear the silence a second longer. “I’m going to grab another coffee. Will I see you in there?” I asked, hating how much I could hear the desperation in my voice. It was unavoidable. She was a surprise. A shocking new plot twist in the story of my life. I couldn’t help but want to see how it ended.

  A loud pop crackled in the sky. She spun around to face me. The greens in her eyes glittered the reflection of the firework that sparked way above our heads.

  “Look out!” she gasped, pointing behind me as she squinted like she was bracing for impact. I barely moved to glance behind me before something black and furry and heavy plowed straight through my legs and knocked my ass to the ground. Zoey landed on her back next to me two seconds later, the air whooshing out of her lungs.

  I rolled over, clutching my side as I slid around in the slick earth to check on her. “Are you all right?”

  “No.” She huffed as I slipped my hand behind her head to help her sit up. She gazed down at the mud we sat in. “Gross.”

  I eyed Hendrix, who splashed in the water at the edge of the lake. He dipped his nose in the water over and over again like he was trying to sniff beneath it. I rolled my eyes at him.

  “Thanks a lot, Hendrix!” I yelled.

  He darted his gaze to me for a moment before continuing his hunt.

  “Eww,” Zoey said, swiping at the mud caked in her hair. There was a large streak across her face, too.

  I choked on a laugh. “Yeah, that looks pretty gross,” I teased.

  She gaped at me before she glared. “Really?” She huffed and shoved at my chest with her dirt-covered fingers.

  I gasped. “Hey!” I gave her a warning look. “You don’t want to start a war with me.”

  She slowly gathering herself to stand. “We’re already at war,” she said and lightly tapped my cheek. “This is just a battle.”

  The cold mud stuck to my skin, and I shook my head as I tried to swipe it off.

  “If you say so,” I said and leaped to my feet. I grabbed a handful of mud and reached to plop it on her back, but she took off in a dead sprint. Girl was fast, but I gained momentum and caught up with her, tossing the crud at her and missing her by an inch.

  “Ha!” She laughed, her breaths coming in fast gasps. “Missed me!”

  “I meant to!”

  She whirled to face me, as much distance separating us as a game of cornhole. We faced off, the sound of fireworks popping in the sky above us. “Please.” She rolled her eyes. “You’re not exactly on the varsity baseball team.”

  My jaw dropped at her taunting, and I knelt down to grab another handful of the squelching ground beneath us. “And you’re no head cheerleader,” I teased, quickly throwing the mess at her and pelting her in the leg. Yeah, I’d focused more on books than organized sports. But that didn’t mean I was horrible at throwing a ball around.

  “Gah!” She stomped her foot. “Thank God for that,” she added.

  “Exactly,” I said as a dirt clod flew a centimeter past my face. “Whoa. Aiming at my face? Not cool!” I ran toward her, but she took off again.

  “All is fair in war!” she called over her shoulder, but the effort it took to say the jab made her lose her footing and she stumbled, nearly falling to the ground again. She caught herself, but it slowed her down.

  I skidded to a stop by her side, wrapping my arms around her hips and tossing her over my shoulder. “What was that?”

  “Put me down!” she said, giggling.

  “No, before. You said all was fair, right?” I teased, spinning her around.

  “You’re going to make me sick!” Her words were barely understandable through her laughter, and the sound was sweeter than my favorite song—

  I stopped and shifted her so I could set her on her feet.

  I forced out a laugh as we stood there, catching our breath, our chests rising and falling at the same pace.

  I knew better. Knew. But the question came out anyway.

  “What about love?” I asked.

  Her eyes flew wide. “What?”

  “Isn’t love supposed to be in that quote somewhere?” I tried to pull it from memory, but the roadmaps in my mind were fuzzy and harder to navigate than usual.

  I blamed Zoey and the beer.

  “Oh,” she said, sighing. “Yeah.” She popped her hands on her hips. “All is fair in love and war.” She shrugged. “I think that is how it goes.”

  I nodded, knowing that sounded familiar. “Do you believe it?”

  “Believe what?” she asked.

  I wiped my dirt-caked fingers on my jeans. “That love and war are inseparable? And that being in love means anything goes?”

  She arched an eyebrow at me. “I haven’t ever really thought about it.”

  “No?”

  She shook her head. “Have you?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Probably my dad’s fault.” I smiled at the memory that fleshed out clearly in my head. “He’s a romantic and was madly in love with my mother when she was alive.” I swallowed hard. “I swear she would forgive him like that.” I snapped my fingers. “For anything he ever did wrong. It didn’t happen often, but he could screw up and all it would take was a few words and she’d be in his arms again.” A pang pinched my chest, though it wasn’t unbearable. “I don’t understand it, but I know it’s possible. They had a love that definitely fit the quote. They could fight and still joke. Could get frustrated and yet still be affectionate. Those are t
he kinds of memories that have stayed the sharpest.”

  Zoey touched the back of my hand. “I didn’t know that about them.”

  I smiled, but she took a step away from me, like touching me seared her. “Yeah,” I said. “I don’t talk about it much.”

  “I get that,” she said. “My parents love each other,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. “I know that. Not because they show it…more like it’s just a fact. Some piece of knowledge that was embedded in my head since birth. They don’t argue, though. They are always, annoyingly, on the same page.”

  “Guess that’s what it takes to run a huge corporation together?” I asked.

  “I suppose,” She said. “Either that or they just don’t have the energy to fight over anything.”

  “It is exhausting,” I said, nudging her. “I wanted to sleep for an entire week after we went head-to-head for the science fair in eighth grade.”

  She snorted. “Me, too.”

  “What?” I scoffed. “You won!”

  “So?” She tilted her head. “You think it was easy?”

  “You sure as hell make it look easy.”

  “Good.” Her lips parted open, but she shook her head. “It wasn’t. It isn’t.” She sighed. “Nothing is easy when it comes to you.”

  “Ouch!” I grabbed the center of my chest again, dramatically acting out the internal pain she continued to inflict. “Never one to pull any punches.”

  “I keep telling you that.” The joking had left her completely, leaving nothing but eyes as hard as emeralds.

  “Like I said before, I know better.” I stepped close enough to her to feel the heat coming off her body. “And you should know that even though you’ve beaten me hundreds of different ways, I’m always right.”

  “How does that happen?”

  “It’s a gift.”

  “No.” She laughed. “That makes no sense. If you were always right, I’d never win.”

  “Maybe I’ve let you win all these years? Ever think about that?” I teased.

  “No,” she said again, the corners of her lips turning down. “If that were the truth, you wouldn’t have snapped this morning. If it were true, I wouldn’t have had the ability to hurt you so much that you…” She stopped herself short and shrugged.

  I tipped her chin up. “This morning wasn’t entirely about you,” I said, the reasoning behind my lapse in judgment on the tip of my tongue. I swallowed the excuse down. “I know that doesn’t make sense, either, but it’s true. You need to know that. I’m sorry.”

  She clenched her eyes shut. “You don’t have to keep saying that just because you feel bad.”

  I dropped my hand. “I’m not saying it to make myself feel better.” I stepped away from her. How could she think that after the fun we’d had tonight? Did she think I’d stick around after I apologized if I wasn’t truly sorry?

  “Okay,” she said, her voice barely a whisper.

  The air grew thick around us, the sounds of the party in the distance filling the awkward bubble we’d walked into.

  “I still can’t believe you’d rather read minds than fly.” Zoey finally broke the silence and the air rushed out of my lungs faster than when Hendrix had toppled me over.

  “Seriously?” I furrowed my brow, thinking back to the would you rather…? question. “You’d become a wealth of knowledge.”

  “Yeah, other people’s knowledge. Their most intimate secrets.” She shuddered. “No thanks.” She tossed her hair behind her shoulders. “I’d rather fly anywhere I wanted at a moment’s notice.”

  “Secrets I can handle,” I said. “Having nothing separating me from the ground at thirty-thousand feet? That is something I can live without.”

  “You wouldn’t have to fly that high.” She rolled her eyes upward like she was trying to calculate the ideal height for human flight. I smiled at the way her brain worked, loving that she liked to crunch numbers and probabilities like I did.

  “I think you like fighting with me,” I said, and she snapped her eyes to mine.

  “No, I don’t.”

  “You do,” I said. “That’s why you’ve kept it up all these years. And that’s why you tried to answer opposite of me in the game.”

  “You’re delusional.”

  “Sometimes,” I admitted. The insane roller coaster I was on tonight definitely had my head spinning, but I’d boarded the ride and was trying like hell to enjoy it. “Gives me a vacay from being right all the time.”

  She rolled her eyes. “That must be exhausting.”

  “Almost as exhausting as trying to top you.”

  “Admit it,” she said. “You love the challenge as much as me.”

  “I never said I didn’t.”

  “Then what are we talking about?”

  I laughed. “I have no idea.”

  Her shoulders dropped. “That’s in the past now.”

  She had no idea how right she was.

  “Maybe we’ll find a way to go out for something at Stanford?” she asked, hopeful. “Even if it’s small, like one of your bets. Just to keep the tradition of Branch’s rightful home running.”

  I glanced at the ground, lightly kicking at the mud beneath my shoes. “Yeah,” I said. “Sure. That could be fun.”

  “What’s up?” she asked, stepping into my line of sight so I had to look at her. “Every time I bring up Stanford, you get dark. Is it the scholarship?”

  The truth rang in my head, but I shook it out. “You deserve that scholarship. I said that already.”

  “I know you did, but…”

  I cocked an eyebrow at her, waiting for her to finish.

  “Never mind. I should just stop talking about Stanford. Not really good form when we were so close in the running for it.”

  “It’s not a big deal,” I lied. It was a big deal, but not in the way she thought. It wouldn’t have been nearly as painful if Dad hadn’t dropped the bomb on me about the shop this morning. There were too many emotions tied up in all that had happened today, and maybe that was why I was clinging to the small blips of levity Zoey’s company provided.

  “You’re a mess,” Zoey said, and I was happy for the change of subject. She popped up on her tiptoes, raked her fingers through my hair, and rubbed at the dirt smeared on her thumb.

  “So are you.”

  Hendrix padded up to us, his paws kicking up more of the dirt, and he skidded to a stop at our feet. A bright yellow tennis ball filled his mouth. It was soaking wet.

  “Crazy animal.” I took the ball from him and threw it toward the house. I glanced back down at Zoey. “Come on,” I said, motioning behind me. “Let’s go get cleaned up.”

  Zoey snorted as we made the walk in a more comfortable silence.

  As I led us into the house to search for a safe bathroom, someone tugged on Zoey’s arm, stopping us. “Omigod, Zoey you won’t believe what Gor—” The girl’s eyes widened when I turned around to see who had grabbed her. She had her cell in her free hand, the huge cracked screen filled with a picture of tons of kids crowded together, obviously another party.

  Zoey had frozen, gaping at the girl.

  Tiffany, I think. From that one time I took art back in Freshman year.

  Confusion furrowed Tiffany’s brow. “I thought you were—”

  Zoey busted out the most awfully fake laugh, cutting Tiffany off as she pointed at me.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, utterly confused.

  “Nothing!” Zoey said, laughing again and shaking her head at Tiffany. “Tiff, we’ll totes catch up later, okay?”

  Tiffany continued to stare at me, dumbfounded for a few seconds before she threw up the universal “okay” signal with her fingers. “Got it. Have fun!” She winked twice as Zoey practically shoved me down the hallway to a back bathroom off the kitchen.

  Sometimes I forgot how much money Lennon’s mom had, and how differently he lived from the rest of us. Though his dad’s place was much closer to mine—smaller, more practical—so I su
ppose he lived both lives.

  “What was that about?” I asked when Zoey had stopped in front of the bathroom.

  “Nothing,” she said. “Girl stuff. Don’t worry about it.”

  It was hard not to, with the panicked look in her eyes, but I let it slide. Girl stuff was not my forte.

  Zoey threw the door open, but I didn’t follow her inside, instead hanging back in the entryway. She laughed at herself in the mirror, then cast me a sideways glance. “I’m not going to bite you.”

  I stepped into the room, playfully glaring at her as I closed the door behind me. “You do look like a swamp monster.”

  Her jaw dropped and she swatted at my chest. “And you’re a creature straight out of a werewolf novel.”

  I mock-growled at her, which only made her laugh harder. “Wait,” I said. “Did you just call me hot?”

  “What?” she blurted. “Why on earth would you think that?”

  “Vampire Diaries, Teen Wolf…aren’t all the wolves on those shows typically hot?”

  Her eyes popped. “You watch the Vampire Diaries?”

  “Hell no.” I scoffed. “My dad has to play that stuff on a constant loop at the shop because it’s what the girls want in the background while they eat.”

  “Uh-huh,” she said, eyeing me before she turned toward the sink and switched the faucet on. “I’m betting you’re a closet vampire lover. It’s okay. It happens to the best of us.”

  “Please,” I said, scooching in close to her so I could wet a cloth I pulled off a towel rack behind me. I glanced at myself in the mirror and swiped the cloth over my hair, ridding it of dirt. Another couple of strokes and my face was clean, too. My jeans, well, they would have to suffer the rest of the night. “I barely have time to sit down, let alone binge-watch anything,” I continued, wringing the rag out until the water ran clean from it. I passed it to her, and our fingers touched as she took it from me.