Every Reason To Hate You

CHAPTER ONE- NEIGHBORS NOT FRIENDS

Winter Ashford had exactly one rule when it came to Weston Calloway: pretend he didn’t exist.

It had worked fine for three years. Their houses sat on the same street — his a glass-and-steel monument to everything her family used to have, hers a smaller place with a porch light that flickered when it rained. She’d perfected the art of not looking at his driveway, not looking at his car, not looking at him.

Then she’d walked into her 9 a.m. seminar and found him sitting in the front row like he owned the room. Which, knowing his family, he probably could.

“You’re joking,” she muttered.

Weston glanced up, and the easy, bored expression on his face flickered into something sharper when he recognized her. “Small world.”

“Small campus. Big ego. Checks out.”

A few people around them laughed. Weston’s mouth curved, unbothered. “Nice to see the neighborhood hasn’t cured you of that mouth.”

“Nice to see money hasn’t bought you a personality.”

The professor walked in before either of them could take it further, and Winter took the farthest seat she could find, arms crossed, jaw tight. She caught her friend Ade’s eye across the room — Ade already knew the drill and was fighting a grin.

Not today, Winter told herself. Not for the whole semester.

She lasted four days.

By Thursday, the professor had assigned group projects, and fate — or whoever was running this cosmic joke — put her and Weston on the same team. She stared at the syllabus like it might rearrange itself if she glared hard enough.

“Relax,” Weston said from behind her, entirely too pleased with himself. “I don’t bite. Much.”

“I’d rather work with a wall.”

“Walls don’t get you an A.”

“Neither do you, from what I hear.”

That landed. His jaw ticked, just slightly, and for a second she thought she’d actually gotten to him. Then he smiled — slow, needling. “Careful, Ashford. People might think you actually pay attention to what I do.”

She didn’t have a comeback fast enough, and that bothered her more than anything he’d said.

That night, Winter sat cross-legged on Ade’s bed, recounting the entire disaster while Ade and Priya passed a bag of chips between them.

“He said walls don’t get you an A,” Winter said, still indignant. “Like he’s clever.”

“He’s not wrong, though,” Priya offered, earning a pillow to the face.

“Not helping.”

“I’m just saying, if you two hate each other this much, there’s usually a reason,” Ade said, far too casually for Winter’s liking. “Like, a reason reason.”

“There is a reason. His family bought out my dad’s shop. He made a joke about it in front of half the block and didn’t even have the decency to feel bad.”

Priya winced. “Does he know that’s why you hate him?”

Winter paused. “…No. Probably not. He doesn’t remember things that don’t affect him.”

Weston, for his part, was having a similar conversation two streets over.

“She’s insufferable,” he told his roommate, Marcus, flopping onto the couch. “Genuinely. I said one thing about group work and she looked at me like I’d insulted her whole bloodline.”

Marcus, who had grown up two doors down from both of them, raised an eyebrow. “You did kind of insult her whole bloodline. Junior year. The block party.”

Weston frowned. “What are you talking about?”

“You don’t even remember, do you.” Marcus shook his head, laughing under his breath. “Man. You are going to have a rough semester.”