Angsty - Enemies to Lovers - Slow Burn
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Hitch Pepper might've had a stupid name, and a personality that drove me crazy, but that didn't stop her from being gorgeous. Everyone knew it, guys and girls alike.
And my buddy Phil Childre...
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I FOUND OUT in October that Hitch liked to decorate for the holidays when she came home with a whole paycheck's worth of Halloween decorations bundled up in her arms one night.
At first I thought it was groceries she was carrying, so I jumped up from the couch to give her a hand, but stopped short when I saw a plastic jack-o'-lantern staring at me through the bag I grabbed from her.
"The hell is all this?" I grumbled. "Tell me you're not planning on decorating my house."
"Your's and Phil's house," she corrected, "and of course I am. Phil told me you get a lot of trick-or-treaters on this street. I thought it'd be fun to decorate."
I took more bags from her, lightening her load. "Fine," I sighed, "but you're responsible for cleaning all this crap up when Halloween's over." I looked down at the waste of money in my hands. "And don't expect me to help with anything."
I ended up eating my words an hour later when she was struggling to hang paper ghosts from the overhang of the front porch with thumbtacks and fishing line. I'd been watching her from the window, worried she was going to fall from her step ladder.
"I got it," I told her when she was on her third ghost. "I'll hang all this."
She frowned. "I thought you just told me that you're not gonna help."
"Well I want you to hurry up and be done so you can start on dinner," I said, lying.
She scoffed. "You can make your own dinner, you know."
"But the rule about you moving in was that you'd cook dinner for us," I pointed out, smirking. "So, hop down and make me those pork chops I like."
She playfully glared down at me. "You are so annoying."
I put out a hand for her to take. "Please?"
She held my eyes for several seconds before sighing and taking my hand, allowing me to help her down from the step ladder. "I'm not making your pork chops, by the way. You're getting beef stew tonight," she told me. "And make sure you hang those ghosts right—keep them spread out and not too close together."
I brushed the step ladder aside, not needing to use it with my height. "I got it, Hitch. Go make dinner."
She left me with the ghosts, and I hung them in record time, then received more instructions when I went back inside.
"Now go hang those bats I got in the tree out front," she told me as she diced up a potato. "Please."
I sighed and turned around, doing as she told me. Phil came to join me a few minutes later with a cigarette. "Man, she's put you to work, hasn't she?" he asked me, laughing to himself.
I shot him a glare. "I'm only doing this so that she'll start on dinner," I told him.
"Either way, thanks for helping her. She's been excited for this for a while."
