Love Me Or Hate Me

Love Me Or Hate Me [07-I]

When I got to his house, you could only imagine that the last thing I was feeling was happy. My mom had driven me here against my will and is now making me spend not only a few hours, but the entire night with James while she and Mr. Smith went out to go do something. What that something was, I could only imagine. Of course, now that I think about it, it couldn't be anything romantic because that would make James and I step siblings, and I don't think they'd want to marry off step siblings... Right?

Shaking it off, I walked into his house and stood against the door frame that lead into his kitchen. Was I hungry? Of course; I always am. But since I didn't want to do or take anything from him that would make me owe him in any way, shape or form, I'd suffer through it and wait until my mom picked me up. It couldn't take that long—she never did anything that would make her go out of her way and make herself uncomfortable. She was just built that way.

To take my mind off of whatever she was doing, I looked around the house and noticed a bunch of photos of a baby boy and a very pretty blond woman. From what I could tell, they were at the beach, and most likely, the kid was James and his mother. I hadn't ever seen her, but now that I've seen a picture, I know where he gets his looks from. They both had the same pair of gorgeous, green eyes, dirty blond hair and a fair skin tone. Had James' hair been a little bit longer, you would think that they were twins or something like that.

“What are you looking at, Is?”

Looking up at him, I noticed a small purple mark on his neck and I couldn't help but make my face scrunch up in disgust. “Nothing,” I looked away from him and back at the picture, “just this picture of you and your mom.” You could see the innocence in his eyes, and as I looked harder at the picture, I tried harder and harder to place what could have happened that he went from this sweet little boy in the picture, to make him the womanizing douche bag that he is now.

He must have known was thinking because he took the picture and placed it face down on the coffee table. “Don't look through my pictures,” his voice was cold, and when I looked up, so was his facial expression. “I'd really rather not have some stranger looking at me when I was a baby.”

Even the dumbest person would have been able to tell you that that wasn't what was bothering him. Did he and his mom have some kind of disagreement and now he doesn't like her? Or even more morbid, did she die? I could tell by the look on his face that it was the last thing he wanted to talk about, but I was curious, and since all he did was pry into other people's lives, I don't see the problem with me doing it to him—just this once, of course. “What happened to her?”

“None of your business, now stop talking about it.”

I raised an eyebrow and reached for the picture, only to have him grab my arm with a little too much force and give me one of the darkest sneers I've ever seen. I could assure you, if looks could kill, I'd be dead right now. “Let me go, James.”

“Why the hell did your mom even bring you here?”

“Because we're 'engaged', remember?” Rolling my eyes, I pulled my arm out of his grasp and looked at the rest of the picture filled wall. There was only one wall with pictures on it; everything else was a plain, greyish kind of color. At least my rich and over the top mom knew how to decorate... “And by the way,” I continued on, “you still never explained what you wanted to do regarding this little plan of yours.”

As if I had said the dumbest thing ever, he rolled his eyes and walked into the kitchen; me close on his tail. “It's common sense what I want to do. Just pretend we love each other, go along with their dumb ass plan and then get a divorce. It's as simple as that.”

“What if they do something that prevents us from being able to do that?”

Turning to me with a blank look on his face, he shrugged and turned back around. “Whatever happens, happens. All I know is, right now, I'm not engaged and I don't want anything to do with this so-called soon to be marriage. You and I are never going to be anything other than two people who were mistakenly stuck together in a situation that neither of them liked. If you think that I'd ever be serious about dating you, than you really have another thing coming.”