At First Hate by K.A. Linde

Savannah

Present

My heart was heavy as I parked in front of Derek’s house. I stared up at the front door of the three-story brownstone. The door was a soft blue. Everything carefully and meticulously cared for. It was so very Derek. And for a few scant hours, I’d pictured myself in that house. Seen all the what ifs flit through my vision. All the ways we’d make it work this time. As if all the times before hadn’t prepared me for what was to come.

With a deep breath, I popped open the door of my car. I shouldered my purse and walked up to the steps as if I had lead in my shoes. Each step was heavier than the one before it until I was practically dragging my body to the front door. I couldn’t knock. I didn’t want to get to the inevitable any faster. I’d stalled long enough by dropping by Maddox’s place on the way here. I couldn’t put this off any longer.

I knocked on the front door and fiddled with my fingers. I hated this. I hated everything about it. My stomach was in knots. My body ached. All I wanted to do was run. Run and hide and not deal with any of this. But I wasn’t a kid anymore. I couldn’t run away from all of my problems. I had to face them head-on. There was nothing to be done about this one. No solution that I could envision for it. And that made it all the worse.

Derek pulled the door open, a huge welcoming smile coming to his face at the sight of me. “Hey! You’re back early.”

I nodded. “Sort of.”

His eyes drifted past me to my car parked in front of his house. His smile faltered at the sight of the packed backseat. “When I said stay for the weekend, I didn’t know you’d be moving in.” He cracked it as a joke, but I saw the worry on his face. He had to know what my full car meant and wanted to deflect.

I finally met his gaze and shook my head just once. “I’m not.”

He sighed. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Do whatever you’re about to do.”

“I’m sorry, Derek.”

“Don’t be sorry either,” he insisted. “Just come inside and spend the weekend with me, Mars.”

“I wish I could,” I told him honestly. I swallowed around the lump in my throat. “You have no idea how much I want that.”

“Then, forget everything else.” He reached for my hand, and like a weak fool, I let him take it.

I glanced down at our joined hands. If only what I wanted and what I knew to be right were the same thing. But they weren’t. And they couldn’t be. No matter how we rolled the dice, our time was up.

“I’m going back home.”

He tugged me just a little closer. “This is your home.”

I gulped. “Back to Atlanta.”

“Why?” he demanded.

“I can’t lie to you, Derek. I’m way past that. My mom came by to see me.”

He narrowed his eyes at that. “So… what? You’re leaving because she got in your head? What did she say?”

“It’s not so much what she said. Though she tried her best to ruin my life. You should know that Kasey is telling people that you’re still married and that, I guess, I’m your mistress.”

“What?” he practically roared in horror.

I held my hand up. “Do with that information what you will, but I set the record straight with my mom. She both suggested I should date you for your money”—he winced, the hit striking home, as I’d known it would—“or that we were only together so that you could manipulate me to win the case.”

“I would never,” he snarled.

“I know. I’m not accusing you of anything, Derek. I’m letting you know that I don’t believe a word out of her mouth. I never have. She’s rotten and spoiled and festering. I’m smarter than her tricks.”

He breathed a sigh of relief but then realized I was still leaving. “Then why?”

“Because her point was wrong, but the conclusion was the same. We can’t be together.”

“Marley—”

“Please, don’t make this harder than it has to be.”

“Harder than it has to be?” he demanded. “It was hard enough the first time. I don’t want you to go.”

I nodded and bit my lip. “I know. I know, it was. I don’t want it to be like that again. But this just isn’t going to work with the case between us. You know that’s true. It’s why you’ve been avoiding bring it up.”

“We can survive this, Mars.”

I barreled forward, saying all the things I never wanted to say. “We can’t. It wouldn’t be fair of me to ask you to give up the case. You’ve worked all this time to make partner.. It’s your dream. And it’s not fair to me for you to stay on the case. We can’t survive both scenarios. There’s no winning here. There’s only getting out before either of us gets hurt.”

“Too late for that.”

“I know,” I whispered, swiping at a tear.

My heart was being shredded from the inside out, even though I was doing the right thing. I was approaching this as an adult. Looking at it from all sides. I wanted Derek, but it wasn’t that simple. Maybe it never had been.

“We’ve spent fifteen years trying to make this work. If it didn’t work before, it’s definitely not going to work now. Not with this between us. Not like this.”

“So, you’re just going to run?”

“I’m not running,” I told him calmly. I wasn’t. Running would have meant handing the keys to the house to Maddox, getting in the car, and never looking back. This was the sane, rational way to do this. It was the only way to do this. “That’s why I’m here. I’m telling you the truth. It sucks, but it’s still the truth.”

He looked distraught by my words. As if he could make me take them back. Go back to the moment this morning when we’d been pretending like the case didn’t exist. If only I had been able to keep business and personal separate, but that wasn’t realistic. My business was personal, and that was the difference.

“Deep down, you know that I’m right,” I told him. “We were treading water, and as easy as I find it to drown in you, I want to survive this time.”

“What if I don’t want you to go?” he asked, just shy of begging.

I stood on my tiptoes and placed a soft kiss on his perfect lips. “It’s okay.”

“Please,” he breathed against my lips. “We can figure this out.”

“And what happens when I go back to Atlanta at the end of this semester?” I demanded, asking all the hard questions we’d put aside. “What happens then, Derek? Your job and life are here. Mine is four hours away. We can’t do long distance forever. I don’t want to live my life four hours away. It was always going to end. This was just… a summer fling.”

“It’s not the summer.” He brushed a lock of my hair backward, staring down into my eyes. “And it’s not a fling.”

“I’m sorry,” I told him. “I really am. But this is good-bye.”

He reached for me, but I backed up. I had to get out of there, or I was going to start really crying. This was the right thing to do. It was going to save us both a lot of pain. Even if it hurt us more in the short-term.

He took a step after me, but I shook my head. This was it. This was the end. No more back and forth. Fifteen years, and nothing had changed. I could want this so bad, but it didn’t mean it was going to work. We’d been living in a fantasy. In real life, it didn’t work out.

So, I turned away from him and ran back to my car. I pulled out of the street and checked my rearview mirror. He stood on the sidewalk, watching me go. It wasn’t until he disappeared in my mirror that the tears started to fall.