Built to Hate You: A Hate to Love Romance Read online

  I turn my head and look at her. She catches me looking at her and starts to giggle.

  “What’s so funny?” I say.

  “I don’t know,” she says. “I’m just…happy.”

  “I’m happy, too.” And I decide right then that I’m not going to tell her yet. Because I don’t want her to think that I’m just in love with her because we had sex. And I don’t want to move too fast. But when the time is right, I’m going to tell her how I feel about her.

  I love you, Mia.

  Chapter Seven

  Mia

  4 months later

  “Should I nail it here?” I ask.

  “Yep,” says Axel. “Two on each end, and it should be good.”

  I do as he says, finishing up with the rest of the boards, then admire my work. “Wow. Looks pretty professional, huh?”

  Axel laughs. We both know that if I was building this dog house for my parents on my own, it would look like a goddamn mess. But with his help—okay, a lot of help—it’s actually turned out pretty perfect.

  Jellybean, my parents’ new rescue dog, comes running up to inspect our handiwork.

  “Hey, buddy,” I say. “Look at your new house! It’s almost done.”

  Jellybean wags his fuzzy nub of a tail. He’s the cutest little corgi you’ll ever see in your life. I went to the shelter to help Mom and Dad pick him out, and they’ve been having a blast with him since they adopted him. Especially my dad. He’s nearly back to his old self these days.

  I glance across the yard and see my parents standing on the back deck, having just let Jellybean out into the yard.

  “It’s looking good, right?” I call out to them.

  “It’s looking wonderful,” my dad calls back, and my mom nods and smiles.

  “Okay, Jelly,” I say to the dog. “We’ve still got work left to do. Time to go back over to Mom and Dad.”

  “Actually, Mia…” says Axel.

  I look up at him.

  “…I think there’s something on Jelly’s collar.”

  “What?”

  “Just look.”

  Confused, I bend down and inspect Jellybean’s collar. And as soon as I see the flash of diamond, I gasp and look up at Axel.

  He gets down on one knee. He lets out a nervous breath, then grins at me. “I love you, Mia. And I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Will you marry me?”

  “Yes!” I say, and jump into his arms. Across the yard, my parents cheer and clap. Jellybean starts running in circles around us, his tail wagging like mad.

  “Oh my God. I can’t believe—wait, Jellybean! You have my ring!” All of us laughing, I lunge for the corgi. Jellybean licks my face as I wrestle the engagement ring off his collar. When I slide it onto my finger, it glimmers gorgeously, and fits perfectly.

  “Did I pick out an okay one?” Axel asks.

  “It’s incredible,” I say. Then I tear my eyes away from the ring and fix them on what I really care about. “And so are you. I love you, Axel. And I can’t wait to be married to you.”

  “Congratulations, you two!” my mom says, the two of them coming over to hug us both. They must have been hiding it before, but I can see now that they’re holding a bottle of champagne and flutes for all of us.

  Dad fills the flutes and we all hold them up.

  “To long, happy marriages,” my mom says.

  “Hear, hear!” my dad says.

  And we all clink glasses, the love in this backyard overflowing.

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  Sneak Peek: Take Me

  In some ways, I’m a typical college student. I pull all-nighters. I’m broke. I’ve eaten more than my fair share of ramen noodles. But in other ways, I’m the furthest thing from a cliché. I don’t party. I don’t have random sex. (In fact, I’ve never had sex at all.) And, believe it or not, I actually love going to class. This most recent semester—spring semester of my junior year—I got to take some some amazing classes, like “Forbidden Romance in Literature” and “Heroes and Villains.” Maybe it’s super nerdy of me to admit, but I’m actually sad that the semester is over.

  If it were up to me, I would take classes this summer. But it’s not up to me. For better or worse, my older brother, Jake, is in charge of the money that funds my education, and he has insisted that I spend the next couple months doing two things: having fun and working a summer job to “get some real-world experience” and “build my character.”

  Ugh. Older brothers, right? They’re so annoying.

  Even more annoyingly, Jake has set up a summer job for me, which I’m on my way to right now. I guess I should just be glad that he’s not making me be an intern or something at the police station where he works. Still, I’m not exactly excited about the job he did set me up with.

  I’m going to be working in an ice cream shop that Jake’s friend owns. Apparently, it’s in this boutiquey part of town and is super popular. When I looked up the website, there was one never-ending page dedicated to photos of the ice cream that people have posted on social media. Honestly, I got pretty overwhelmed looking at it. I couldn’t stop thinking about how I was going to have to learn to produce those perfectly photogenic ice cream scoops. And I also couldn’t stop thinking about all the rich, skinny girls who I was going to have to serve. They’re all going to be on one side of the counter, taking selfies with their ice cream—so tall that their heads will practically hit the ceiling—and I’ll be stuck on the other side of the counter, barely able to see over it, my thick thighs rubbing as I frantically run back and forth between flavors.

  Around that point in my spiral of anxiety, I decided I needed to stop looking at the website. But first, because my curiosity temporarily outweighed my nerves, I clicked on the “About” page.

  And, well, that was a big mistake. Because the page that loaded showed a photograph of the guy who owns the ice cream shop—my brother’s friend—and that photograph made me feel weak in the knees. Shane Armstrong’s official title was Founder and Owner of Sweet Cream. But it also should have said Superhunk. Damn, the guy was hot.

  Which wouldn’t have been such a bad thing if he wasn’t going to be my new boss.

  Click here to get your copy of Take Me

  or

  Get the Alphas Forever series bundle here

  Also by Kate Hunt

  Ripley Brothers Series

  Benefits (Book 1)

  Rocked (Book 2)

  Alphas Forever Stories

  Take Me

  Fired Up

  Coupled

  Paradise

  Alphas Forever 1-4

  Other Stories

  Can’t Have Him

  The Secret Billionaire's Nanny

  Thank you for reading!

  If you enjoyed the story, please consider leaving a review. It helps indie authors like me so much!

  xo,

  Kate