Dare You to Hate Me Read online

  Dare You To Hate Me

  B. Celeste

  Contents

  Other books by B:

  Playlist

  Author’s Note

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  © Copyright 2021 B. Celeste

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Cover Design: Letitia Hasser, RBA Designs

  Editing: KBM Editing

  Formatting: Micalea Smeltzer

  To those who asked me if I’d ever write a sports romance and I told them no.

  Maury detected that was a lie.

  You’re welcome.

  Other books by B:

  The Truth about Heartbreak

  The Truth about Tomorrow

  The Truth about Us

  Underneath the Sycamore Tree

  Where the Little Birds Go

  Where the Little Birds Are

  Into the Clear Water

  Color Me Pretty

  If I Could

  Tell Me When It’s Over

  Playlist

  “Lego House” – Ed Sheeran

  “Little Toy Guns” – Carrie Underwood

  “Bad At Love” – Halsey

  “Get Stoned” – Hinder

  “One Step Closer” – Linkin Park

  “That’s What You Get” – Paramore

  “Love Again” – Dua Lipa

  “Let Me Down Easy” – Billy Currington

  “Lasting Lover” – James Arthur

  “Again” – Sasha Sloan

  Author’s Note

  Trigger Warming: This book deals with self-harm and thoughts of suicide, though neither are graphically shown in this story.

  Prologue

  They say I’m lucky.

  Less than two millimeters to the right and I would have been gone before they found me on the bathroom floor.

  But I’m not lucky at all.

  I have nothing—not a cent to my name, a future to work toward, or a family who knows their daughter nearly bled out on the grubby, cold tiles of a public bathroom at a truck stop.

  The rich-colored haired doctor looking over my chart regards me with questionable caution as he delivers yet another, “You’re very fortunate, Ms. Underwood.” There’s a distant smile on his face—full of curiosity over the eighteen-year-old propped up on the hard stretcher with wrapped wrists and hollow eyes in front of him.

  That girl doesn’t feel like me—she feels distant and cold, lost mentally and emotionally somehow.

  “Out of your head, Underwood,” my best friend always told me when I’d lose myself in it, waiting for the trained, “Head in the game” reply he got from me every time.

  I’m not her anymore though.

  Because I’m not fortunate at all.

  I was two millimeters off.

  Chapter One

  Two Years Later

  Ivy

  The pounding headache in my temples matches the loud thumping of my housemate’s headboard smacking into the wall above me. Covering my face with the stained, flattened, pillow does little to drown out what’s going on upstairs. What’s always going on. That’s what you get when your rent is dirt cheap—four hours of sleep a night in a party house that I heard had a spare room through the grapevine at work.

  I didn’t realize when I showed up with two measly bags and the clothes on my back that I’d be shoved in the dank, musty half-finished basement that smells like old socks and lavender Febreze and brushed off with barely a second look from the six other girls I live with. Or that most of them like to party, drink, and screw, usually in that order, whenever they get the chance to.

  But I’d endure. I have nowhere else to go in this godforsaken town thanks to my spontaneous decision to get my life together and have no room to judge what Sydney is currently doing in the confines of her bedroom. I’ve done far worse, far more times, I’m sure of it.

  Groaning when I drag myself out of bed, I throw on my typical Bea’s Bakery attire, blue jeans and a black long-sleeve shirt that has the business’s cartoon bee logo flying around a cupcake across the chest and slide a brush through my faded blue hair. I’m lucky Beatrice Olsen, the elderly woman who owns the bakery here in Lindon, New York, hasn’t asked me to dye it back to my natural color. The brown copper color my hair used to be had natural red and caramel highlights in the sunlight, a unique mixture my mother used to tell me she envied because it took a lot of money at salons to produce the same results.

  No longer is my hair a mixture of my parents’—my mother’s pretty copper and my father’s chocolate brown. The long locks I desperately need to cut soon are one of the few things I can change about myself. It’s a chance to be someone else even temporarily, an identity of my own, unattached to my past or the people I walked away from.

  It’s barely seven in the morning when I slip upstairs, ignoring the moans coming from the only other door off the kitchen besides mine, and focus on grabbing my Starbucks iced coffee from the fridge and leaving before my housemate and her hookup are done.

  There haven’t been many times where people have bothered me since I moved in back in July. The large white two-story Victorian is well known around campus as the place to party. Unfortunately, that means a lot of guests stay overnight—hookups, people too drunk to drive, and the occasional significant other pop up from time to time when I’m not locked in my room.

  Raine, the only girl here who acts like I don’t have fleas, and her boyfriend Caleb are two people I tolerate. The few times I’ve been hassled by one of my roommate’s hookups it’s always Caleb that gets them to leave me alone.

  The six foot-something running back for Lindon University’s football team has the kind of smile that could charm the socks off the grinch, but the kind of glare that tells everyone not to mess with him either. It’s no wonder Raine is smitten with the local. He’s got the physique of most sports players, but not the personality of the ones I’ve encountered. His laid-back outlook on life makes it easy to get along with him, but his no-nonsense attitude when telling handsy frat boys to buzz off is bonus points in his favor. Since words aren’t my forte, I thank him with homemade baked goods which he takes to his place that’s rumored to house a handful of other football players.

  I never ask for confirmation, and he never remarks on the double batch of desserts I send his way figuring there are other massive men to feed. He simply brings back the clean dishes for the next time he has to fend off some asshole who can’t take no for an answer.

  My shift at the local bakery is like any other when I clock in, tie a small white apron around my waist, and help Bea’s granddaughter, Elena, get the pastries out for the day. T
here are early morning regulars, older couples who love the Sunday specials, that I get to greet and make easy conversation with, and a few grad students who don’t totally piss me off when they hang around using the Wi-Fi.

  In Lindon, everyone knows everyone even though the college brings in over 3,000 students each semester. It’s what I imagine a real-life Stars Hollow from Gilmore Girls would feel like if it were a small city. The customers who come in the bakery always have a new slice of gossip to share, and you’re never safe from being one of the topics.

  The sixteen-year-old sitting on the back counter with her legs dangling over the side in a swinging motion pokes at my hair. “When are you going to redye this?”

  I make a face as I pour myself a cup of coffee since the one I brought didn’t cut it. I’ll need the extra caffeine after the last hour and a half turned into a nonstop morning rush. “I don’t know. I’m not sure what color I want to do next.”

  And I’m broke, I silently add, blowing on the steam billowing from the cup. No matter how hard I save up what little extra money Bea not-so-subtly sneaks into my paychecks each week, it’s still not enough to justify buying pointless little things.

  “I can do it,” she offers, sipping on some disgusting concoction that only she drinks.

  Setting my cup under the counter so I don’t accidently spill it, I say, “I’m good, Lena.”

  Lena is sweet enough. A little too talkative and bubbly for my liking, especially first thing in the morning, but I’ve worked with worse—spoiled teenage brats and older people who are asses. My biggest problem with the social butterfly is how much she reminds me of what could have been before I messed everything up. It’s not her fault that her tender age and obvious naivety to life triggers something dark inside of me that I prefer to bottle up.

  It’s something I have to deal with every time she complains about things like her mother refusing to extend her curfew, let her date, or wear certain types of clothing when she’s out. Her nose always crinkles when I say, “I don’t see why you’re so upset. Your mother loves you, that’s why she’s hard on you.”

  Lena’s about to say something when her eyes get big and she kicks me a little too hard in the back of the thigh with her favorite checkered platform Vans. “He’s back!”

  I know instantly who she’s talking about before I even turn to scope out the entrance. The little bell on the door goes off at the same time every Sunday, and Elena feels the need to point him, and his staring, out each week. He’ll wait to order until the line is down before he gets the same thing as always—a small coffee, no cream or sugar, six milks, and half an everything bagel.

  All the bagels are homemade and probably the best things I’ve ever eaten. Bea makes them herself, never trusting anybody else to get them right. She stays late, makes the dough, bakes them, and leaves them for us to heat whenever they’re ordered the following day. They sell out every time.

  The only reason I don’t raise a fit about the not-so-mystery-man’s order is because I get to eat the other half since nobody in their right mind would only order half of the delicious doughy treat.

  I manage to roll my eyes without the person I’m cashing out seeing. “Calm down. And no kicking. Your excitement gives me bruises.”

  She scoffs behind me, and I’m sure if I glance over my shoulder I’ll see her arms crossed and her pink glossy lips sticking out in a pout. Sure enough, when I steal a look, she’s doing just that. “It’s not hard to make you bruise when you’re barely a shade darker than white.”

  I grin to myself and pass the man his change, coffee, and bag of pastries, before turning to her. “Whatever. And he’s just another customer, so chill.”

  Now she rolls her eyes, disbelief coated in them like they always are when I brush off the appearance of Lindon U’s star tight end. He’s a guy who excels at what he does, I’ll give him that. But he’s still just a guy—a guy who orders half a bagel like some kind of carb-hating demon while still paying full price for it.

  “He’s coming over,” she squeaks, cheeks turning red like they always do in his presence. It’s why, as much as I want to pass him off to her to avoid any conversation, I have to handle it so she doesn’t make a fool of herself.

  I know some of the guys on Lindon’s U football team from my intro classes this semester, making it easier to handle the mostly overbearing team members better than some when they come in. Biological Anthropology is where a lot of athletes wind up because of the professor’s reputation for giving out easy A’s. I guess it makes sense that sports teams would flock to classes like that since their GPA is required to be over a 2.5 to stay on any team here, but their presence makes it harder to concentrate. They’re all stupidly attractive and considering their cocky smiles and flirty winks at the females (and males) who notice, they know they are too.

  I’ve seen some of the players use the attention to their advantage, making me scoff every single time they convince some poor victim to help them with homework, papers, or buy them something here at Bea’s.

  Maybe if I were any other person, with any other experience, I’d succumb to their looks as well—give them free things when they approach me at the counter, agree to study and wind up with my shirt up and jeans down in the stacks at the library or pinned between a wall and bulky body in the locker room. Attractive people make you do stupid things out of human need, but it’s the ones who have the whole package that are the most dangerous.

  Especially the one stopping in front of the cash register right now.

  According to ESPN, the man towering over my five-nine stature is close to six-six. Tall. Powerful. Authoritative. I’ll never forget the day he walked into Bea’s with his normal group of friends all bellowing over something stupid. His head was down, his shoulders hunched, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his red Lindon U sweatshirt like he didn’t want anybody to bother him, but somehow I knew.

  I knew I’d be met with electric blue eyes when he looked up—the kind that’s impossible not to be enamored with. And if I looked close enough, I’d see a formation of freckles on the right side of his face that resemble the big dipper.

  What I didn’t expect was how defined his jaw had become, slightly squared and clean of any scruff most of the time, a patrician nose free from any breaks despite his aggressive sport, and a set of lips that are enviously fuller than mine.

  He’s the perfect type of football player in my eyes. Tanner from the summer sun, built but not overly so despite all the training he does, and a smile that’s so white I hear Crest reached out to him on his Instagram to be featured. Whether that’s true or not, I don’t know. I don’t have social media these days, just housemates who love to gossip. Especially about the football players who have made a splash on ESPN and local news stations with talks of going pro.

  “Your usual?” I greet him with, careful to keep my tone even despite the way my skin tingles as he towers over the register.

  One of his brows, dark brown like the hair on his head, quirks. “Am I that predictable?”

  It’s Elena who chirps out a “Yep.”

  He chuckles, swiping one of those huge hands through the tresses of thick hair that’s longer on the top versus the sides. “The usual then.”

  I try not to focus on the low, husky tone of his voice that causes bumps to rise over my arms. He’s twenty-one, but he doesn’t sound it. Before I settled for a half-renovated basement, I couch-surfed with strangers. Most of them who were men older than my twenty years with every intention of making me pay them in some way, and usually not with money.

  Aiden Griffith doesn’t give me the same vibes those guys do, though. I’ve had limited interactions with him since the day he walked in and stared in my direction until every inch of me felt the lick of flames from his burning blue gaze. He’ll order, I’ll tell him it’s ready, and he’ll give me a generic “have a good day” knowing I’ll never offer opportunity for more. One time he told me my shoe was untied, which I’d already figured out afte
r almost falling on my face with a tray full of breakfast for table three—who happened to be his buddies. Most of them besides Caleb and DJ, a guy from my anthropology class, laughed at my clumsiness until Aiden shot them a look. They shut up quickly.

  It makes no sense to me why someone who’s as sought after as the university’s famed football player is would be at a school like Lindon. We’re not division one. If anything, we’re the misfit college—once thriving, now barely making ends meet if not for the championships the football team wins. I’ve heard people say that athletes who blow it at other schools come here to redeem themselves. Some of them make a future for themselves in the pros after their second chance, and others fizzle out.

  I wonder which the man in front of me is.

  I’ve been to a few games in the last year when I was squatting near campus and checking out my financial options for enrollment. Thanks to having nothing to my name, and a decent GED score, financial aid pulled through for me when I was accepted. I know a little bit about the game, but not what each position is called or what the scoring system is like. Most of what I do understand comes from the sixteen-year-old I work with who feels the need to read out sports stats from online that’s more like code to me than English. But because I want to understand, to learn after he walked in the first time, I try piecing together the little tidbits she always babbles about. Who’s the best, who’s going pro, who won’t get the chance—Lena and her grandmother have predictions for the entire team, and like most of Lindon, they’re in agreement that Aiden Griffith can make it to the top.