Dear Heart, I Hate You

  Dear Heart, I Hate You

  by

  J. Sterling

  Dear Heart, I Hate You

  Copyright © 2016 by J. Sterling

  All Rights Reserved

  Edited and Formatted by:

  Pam Berehulke

  www.BulletproofEditing.com

  Cover Design by:

  Michelle Preast

  www.MichellePreast.com

  Digital Edition, License Notes

  This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return online and purchase your own copy. Please do not participate or encourage the piracy of copyrighted materials. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  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.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-945042-00-3

  ISBN-10: 1-945042-00-1

  Please visit the author’s website at

  www.j-sterling.com

  to find out where additional versions may be purchased.

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Mr. Perfect Lips

  Breaking Rules

  He Changed Everything

  Just Having Fun

  Dream Lips

  The Donovan Brothers

  Good-bye

  Home Is Where the Heart Is

  Can’t Take It

  Ugh, I Miss Him

  Teamwork

  Long Distance

  Devil in Pink Contacts

  Whole Damn Zoo

  Malibu Days

  Naps Are Underrated

  Hollywood Nights

  Last Day

  Losing It

  Disappearing Act

  Brutal Silence

  Welcome, Bitterness

  Five Weeks, One Day

  Chickenshit

  He’s Here

  Didn’t Go Well

  What Do I Do?

  Win Her Back

  Second Chances

  Epilogue

  Excerpt from In Dreams

  Acknowledgments

  Other Books by J. Sterling

  About the Author

  Dedication

  This book is for anyone who has ever had a broken heart. Sometimes people do things for reasons we never get the answers to, or for reasons we can’t possibly fathom. Sometimes those broken hearts lead to happily-ever-afters.

  I hope you find yours.

  Because you deserve it.

  You’re pretty.

  Boys are dumb.

  You’re smart.

  Boys are stupid.

  You’re kind.

  Boys are idiots.

  You’re a fucking mermaid.

  —Abby O’Shea, poet, friend, and Sterling All-Star :)

  Prologue

  Jules

  I didn’t plan on him. Or for him.

  Or anything that had to do with Cal Donovan from Boston.

  Meeting him was a surprise, taking me one hundred percent completely off-guard. I met new people every day in my line of work, and none of them affected me. Wasn’t that the way of things, though? You could meet a thousand people and none of them would mean anything to you, but then you’d meet one, and suddenly they meant everything.

  I was a self-professed workaholic, so everyone in my life knew I didn’t date. It wasn’t entirely intentional on my part; I just didn’t make men a priority at this point in my life. But that wasn’t to say that if I met someone who intrigued me, I wouldn’t give it a shot. Because I absolutely would. But therein lay the rub—very few guys sparked my interest and managed to hold it.

  And that was perfectly fine with me. Work came first, and I wasn’t about to apologize for that or feel bad about it. Not even to my ex-boyfriend Brandon, when he broke up with me over two years ago because I spent too much time at the office, and he felt I should have been focusing at least a smidgeon of my time and attention on him.

  He had played the role of the supportive boyfriend at first, telling me how proud he was of my ambition and accomplishments. But all the while, his resentment secretly brewed until it exploded from him one night as we sat in his living room. To say I’d been taken off-guard and shocked by his anger would be an understatement. I had no idea he’d grown so spiteful.

  Brandon hadn’t been entirely wrong in his frustrations, but even his leaving didn’t make me want to change my priorities. All I’d felt when he was breaking up with me, delivering a speech he’d clearly practiced more than once, was a sense of relief. My heart leaped at the idea of focusing on my career without taking anyone else’s desires or feelings into consideration. Oh, the freedom I looked forward to experiencing and the complete absence of guilt.

  Yes, that might sound harsh, but I wanted to build a name for myself in the high-end real estate market, and I couldn’t do that by dividing my time. Or maybe I could have. The point was that I didn’t want to, and Brandon reminded me of that.

  Besides, when did making yourself your number one priority become such a horrible thing? Men focused on their careers all the time, and that was completely acceptable. But not for a woman; not for me. I learned fairly quickly after the Brandon breakup that men didn’t like being second on a woman’s priority list. And they seemed to be intimidated by a motivated female, calling me things like hard to handle, challenging, and difficult.

  The end result was that being single seemed to work best for me, and I had no plans to change my relationship status anytime soon.

  Then I met Cal.

  And he fucking ruined everything.

  Mr. Perfect Lips

  Jules

  I ran into the hotel, my arms wrapped around my midsection to fight off the bitter cold outside. My long blond hair had whipped around my face in the bone-chilling wind, and I did my best to smooth it back into place as I stepped into the lobby.

  Boston was freezing and I hadn’t packed appropriately, tossing short-sleeved tops and sandals into my suitcase instead of cold-weather clothing that I didn’t own anyway. How was I supposed to know an unexpected cold front could move through during early September? Back in Los Angeles, it was still at least eighty degrees every day, and with any luck, I wouldn’t have to start wearing shoes with socks until almost January.

  Fingers crossed.

  So, yeah, I hadn’t planned my East Coast wardrobe very well, and I hadn’t heard the end of it since I met the three women I was currently hanging out with. They teased me relentlessly, but I enjoyed it. This was my first real estate conference out of state, and I was having more fun than I’d had in a long time.

  The warm air from the hotel heaters hit me with welcome relief, and I turned toward my new girlfriends.

  “Bar?” I suggested, not ready to call it a night yet.

  “Definitely,” Robin from Boston said as the other two women nodded.

  Robin was in her forties, had been married forever—her words, not mine—and owned her own real estate company. She was also hilarious, constantly cracking me and the other ladies up when we should have been doing
anything but laughing.

  “Nowhere to sit,” Robin said as she nodded toward the circular bar, each seat currently occupied.

  Glancing around the crowded space, I spotted a single free table that seated four. I pointed at it and we headed for it before I realized that there were only three chairs.

  “You guys sit; I’ll find us an extra chair,” I said, scanning the area.

  A group of guys sat at a large table nearby, surrounded by at least three extra empty seats as they pored over some notebooks and chatted with each other, oblivious to the crowd around them.

  I walked over to them and pasted on my most charming smile, the one I used to close multi-million-dollar deals. “Hey, do you guys mind if I steal a chair, or are you using all of these?”

  When they all looked up at once, I automatically smiled at them each in turn before stopping cold on a pair of attractive hazel eyes. My focus dropped to the man’s lips and I sucked in a breath, completely mesmerized as I struggled to remember why I’d walked over there in the first place.

  Chairs. Right. Chairs.

  Holy hell, guys should not have lips that full and inviting if they weren’t going to be kissing me all night with them.

  The man grinned up at me, revealing even white teeth, and I wanted to hop into his lap and show him how much I appreciated what God had blessed him with. His thick dark hair was cut short and spiked up in all different directions, a casual style that probably took him a while to style, but seemed natural, and I wanted to run my fingers through every single strand.

  Instead of admonishing myself for my crazy thoughts about a complete stranger—and boy, were they growing crazier by the second—I went with it, probably a little too eagerly for someone like me. Maybe it was because it had been so long since I’d felt anything at all for a guy.

  What harm could a little flirting do? And maybe if I was lucky, I’d find out what those lips felt like on mine before the night was over. It wasn’t like I’d ever see the guy again, so who cared if I spent a few hours seeing what those beauties could do? Heck, my fantasy bank could use the inspiration.

  “Help yourself,” Mr. Delicious Lips said, his perfect mouth still smirking at me as his eyes remained focused on mine.

  Suddenly, I didn’t want to leave.

  Ever.

  The idea of chaining myself to his body and throwing away the key crossed my mind. Too soon? Probably, but I was rarely, if ever, this physically attracted toward another human being. It wasn’t like me to fall all over myself for some random guy I’d just locked eyes with.

  Sure, I tended to make friends and meet people wherever I went, but not like this. I’d never met someone who made the very idea of walking away from him seem all sorts of wrong, so I refused to do it. I didn’t think my body would have let me even if I’d been able to convince my mind. Which I hadn’t, by the way.

  Get a grip, Jules!

  My only saving grace would probably be his personality. I’d bet money that once he started talking, I’d find something I didn’t like. That tended to happen more often than not back in LA. When a good-looking guy opened his mouth, it usually ruined everything. So many lacked ambition and had no real work ethic. They relied on their good looks and sculpted bodies to get them ahead, and I was interested in more than just a pretty face. Although you wouldn’t know it by the way I was currently obsessing over this guy’s.

  “Maybe I’ll just sit here with you instead,” I joked, unable to break eye contact.

  “Please,” he said, pulling out the chair next to him for me. “Sit.”

  I promptly sat down and mentally accepted my award as world’s shittiest friend as I ignored my new girlfriends sitting behind us and chatted up the group of guys. My complete focus was on the one sitting to my right, so close, I could almost feel him. If I leaned in a little closer, I could just . . .

  “I’m Jules Abbott,” I said, extending my hand.

  “Cal Donovan.”

  When he took my hand with his in a firm handshake, squeezing way too hard, I jerked it from his grasp, my face pinched in pain.

  “Jesus, Cal, I’m a girl. You don’t have to impress me by breaking my hand.” I frowned and shook out my hand as if he’d really hurt it.

  “I’m sorry, was it really that hard?” He cocked his head to the side as he frowned back at me.

  “Yes!”

  Reaching for his hand again, I squeezed it as hard as I could to prove my point. But he wasn’t fazed in the slightest, his intriguing gaze still glued to mine.

  “Is that supposed to hurt?” he teased, and I growled, narrowing my eyes as I tried to squeeze his hand even harder, but couldn’t.

  Damn it. How could I make my point if I couldn’t even hurt him with my wimpy grip?

  I moved on to the next guy at the table, who reached for my offered hand and shook it gently.

  “Charles,” he said, and I smiled.

  “Nice to meet you, Charles. Now, that’s how you shake a lady’s hand.” I glanced at Cal with a smirk.

  The last one in their group introduced himself as Simeon, and when I repeated his name, hoping I pronounced it right, he nodded his head.

  “Thanks for letting me crash your party.”

  “No, thank you,” Cal said, brushing his knee against mine, and my entire body heated with the contact.

  “Can I invite my girlfriends over?”

  I glanced back at the girls, who were thankfully carrying on a conversation without me. It made me feel a little less like a jerk to see they were perfectly fine. Then again, this wasn’t high school; grown women tended to usually be okay on their own.

  “Of course,” Simeon said with a smile.

  Waving in their direction, I called out, “Girls, do you want to come over here with our new best friends?”

  I laughed when they immediately pulled their chairs over to the table without question, squeezing in and forcing me to inch even closer to Cal.

  Cal’s thigh pressed against mine as I scooted over, and I made no move to shift away. He didn’t either, but maybe it was because he couldn’t. The table was packed now, and I couldn’t have been happier about that.

  So we stayed that way, our legs touching. My body was fully aware of every move he made, every muscle twitch, each time his leg pressed against mine a little harder than it had been a second before. My heart raced at the contact, each movement he made stirring an excitement buried deep inside me.

  I’d read plenty of romance novels that talked about this sort of thing happening —the immediate connection between two people, that indescribable pull. And for the last few years, I’d rolled my eyes whenever I’d read those words, half calling them bullshit and half wishing they could be true. But in this moment when my entire being was being shaken to life by the simple act of a male thigh pressing against mine, I finally understood.

  I got it.

  Those words weren’t just something the author wrote to make the story sound pretty or give it more meaning—it actually happened to people. And it was currently happening to me. I felt like a live bomb, a firework, something on the verge of exploding. Nothing made you realize how much you’d been ignoring your heart, until someone came along and smacked it awake simply by existing.

  Please let him feel it too. Because how much would it suck if I was the only one feeling this heart-altering stuff here? It would suck. A lot.

  The seven of us chatted, introducing ourselves. My girls and I explained that we were in town for a conference, and the guys told us they lived here in Boston but were staying at the hotel for an office retreat. They worked in the finance industry and dropped terms about stocks, covalent bonds, and other things that honestly sounded like a foreign language to me.

  When Cal spoke about his job, his face lit up. He was smart, and apparently good at what he did; I could tell that simply by the way he talked about it. His passion for his work only turned me on more. There was something so incredibly attractive about a smart, hard-working guy.

&
nbsp; “I also help coach a kids’ hockey team,” he said. “And I’m a math and finance tutor at an afterschool program.”

  I stifled a shocked laugh. “You’re telling me that kids actually want to talk about math and finance? Come on, Cal, don’t bullshit me,” I teased.

  He smiled. “What? You wouldn’t want to listen to me talk about that stuff?”

  No, but I’d like to listen to him talk about other stuff. “I’m just shocked that kids are even interested in that at their age.”

  “You’d be surprised at the things that kids are interested in. It actually gives me hope for the future,” he said.

  “Yeah, Cal here is a real do-gooder.”

  A new guy walked up to our table, and Cal rose to his feet to give him a one-armed hug.

  “Ladies, this is Lucas,” Cal said before mussing up the guy’s dark blond hair. “Lucas, this is everyone.” He waved toward the table.

  “Hi, everyone.” Lucas’s light blue eyes beamed as he grinned at all of us. “Can’t stay. Date with a ridiculously hot cop. Don’t wait up,” he said to Cal.

  “Make good choices,” Cal warned before Lucas hurried off as quickly as he’d arrived.

  Cal sat back down, his leg pressing against mine again as he leaned in, closing off our conversation from the rest of the group. “That was my best friend. We work together.”

  “He’s adorable,” I said with a grin.

  “Too bad you’re not his type.”

  “Why are all the good ones gay?” I teased, tucking my hair behind my ear.

  “What am I, chopped liver?”

  “I’ve never liked liver.”

  “It’s an acquired taste.”

  Well, damn. So much for his personality sucking. The least he could have done was have a crappy one, be overly cocky or unintelligent, something that might shut my heart down. It would have only been fair to the rest of the male population.

  “Where are you from?” Cal propped his elbow on the table and angled his body toward mine, giving me his complete attention.