Every Reason To Hate You

Chapter Two: Open Season

By the second week of the semester, it wasn’t a secret anymore. Everyone in the seminar — and, somehow, half the campus — knew Winter Ashford and Weston Calloway couldn’t be in the same room without it turning into a spectacle.

It started small. A comment here, an eye-roll there. But by Wednesday, it had escalated into something people actually planned their schedules around, the way you’d time a walk past a fountain to catch it going off.

“Ashford’s here,” someone whispered as Winter walked into the lecture hall, and a ripple of amusement moved through the back row like they were watching the opening act of a show.

She ignored it. Mostly.

Weston was already there, sprawled in his usual seat with his friends — Marcus on one side, and a guy named Theo who Winter had decided, on principle, she also didn’t like — flanking him like an entourage. Weston looked up when she walked in, and something in his expression shifted, sharpened, the way it always did.

“Careful,” he said, not even bothering to lower his voice. “Don’t want you tripping over your own attitude.”

“Careful yourself,” Winter shot back without breaking stride. “Wouldn’t want you to strain something being clever for once.”

Theo snorted. Marcus, to his credit, looked like he wanted to be anywhere else.

Winter dropped into the seat beside Ade, who was already watching the whole exchange with barely restrained delight.

“You two should just get a room,” Ade said under her breath. “Save us all the theater.”

“Don’t.”

“I’m just saying. That was a lot of eye contact for two people who supposedly hate each other.”

“We do hate each other,” Winter hissed. “That’s the whole point.”

The group project meeting that Friday was worse.

They’d been assigned a shared study room in the library — small, windowless, entirely too intimate for two people who couldn’t exchange a sentence without it turning into a fight. Winter arrived first and claimed the seat farthest from the door, like proximity to an exit mattered less than proximity to Weston.

He showed up seven minutes late, tossing his bag onto the table like the meeting had been called for his convenience.

“You’re late,” Winter said.

“You’re counting?” He dropped into the chair across from her, entirely too relaxed. “Didn’t realize I mattered that much to you.”

“You don’t. I just like knowing exactly how much of my life you’re wasting.”

He smirked, the kind of smirk that made her want to throw something. “Feisty today.”

“I’m feisty every day. You’re just special enough to bring it out.”

For a second — just a second — something flickered across his face that wasn’t irritation. Winter almost missed it, too busy pulling out her notes with more force than necessary. But it was there. Something closer to curiosity than contempt.

It didn’t last. Within five minutes they were arguing about the project’s thesis, each one convinced the other’s approach was not just wrong but personally offensive. By the time they left, they’d made almost no progress and both were fairly certain the other one had done it on purpose.

“He does this on purpose,” Winter told Ade and Priya later that night, pacing the length of Ade’s dorm room like the carpet had personally wronged her. “He shows up late, he acts like everything’s a joke, and then he acts shocked when I don’t just roll over and agree with him.”

“Maybe he likes arguing with you,” Priya offered, not looking up from her laptop.

“He likes winning. There’s a difference.”

“Does he win, though?” Ade asked, grinning.

Winter threw a pillow at her. “Not the point.”

Weston, for his part, wasn’t having a much calmer night.

“She’s impossible,” he told Marcus, who was only half-listening while he ate noodles out of the carton. “Every single thing turns into a fight. I said her thesis needed work — which it did, by the way — and she looked at me like I’d committed a crime.”

“Maybe don’t say things like that,” Marcus said mildly.

“It’s a group project. I’m allowed an opinion.”

“You’re allowed an opinion. You’re not always allowed to say it like that.” Marcus finally looked up. “You know you get a certain tone with her. Like you’re trying to get a reaction.”

Weston opened his mouth to argue, then stopped, because — annoyingly — Marcus wasn’t wrong. There was something about needling Winter Ashford that felt different than needling anyone else. She never backed down. She never let anything slide. It should have been exhausting.

It wasn’t.

“It’s not like that,” Weston said anyway, mostly to shut the thought down. “I just don’t like being talked to like I’m an idiot.”

“Sure,” Marcus said, unconvinced, and went back to his noodles.

The real trouble started the following Monday, in the campus courtyard, where their two friend groups collided by pure bad luck.

Winter, Ade, and Priya had claimed their usual bench near the fountain. Weston, Marcus, and Theo were cutting through on their way to the gym — and Theo, never one to miss an opportunity, slowed down as they passed.

“Look who it is,” Theo said, grinning at Winter. “Ashford and the fan club.”

“Careful,” Winter said flatly. “Wouldn’t want you to overexert yourself thinking of something original to say.”

“She’s got you there,” Marcus muttered, earning a glare from Theo.

Weston hung back a step, arms crossed, watching the exchange with an expression Winter couldn’t quite read — not quite amused, not quite anything else. When their eyes met, he didn’t look away first. Neither did she.

“You gonna say something,” Winter said, “or are you just going to stand there?”

“Just enjoying the show,” Weston said. “You’re very entertaining when you’re mad.”

“I’m always mad around you. Maybe that tells you something.”

“It tells me you think about me more than you’d like to admit.”

Winter’s face went hot — not from embarrassment, she told herself, from fury — and behind her, Priya made a small, strangled sound that was suspiciously close to a laugh.

“Don’t,” Winter warned, not looking back.

“I didn’t say anything,” Priya said, entirely too innocent.

Theo laughed, loud and unbothered, and steered Weston away before Winter could find a comeback sharp enough to satisfy her. But she caught Weston glancing back once — just once — before they disappeared around the building.

“Okay,” Ade said slowly, once they were gone. “That was not normal enemy behavior.”

“It was completely normal.”

“Winter. He said you think about him. And you didn’t deny it.”

“Because it’s not worth dignifying with a response.”

“Mm-hmm.” Ade exchanged a look with Priya that Winter chose to ignore entirely.

She told herself, walking back to her dorm that evening, that the too-fast heartbeat and the replaying of his voice in her head were just leftover anger. Adrenaline. Nothing more.

She almost believed it.