You hated him.

Or you told yourself you did—every single time your eyes met across a crowded room, every time your name left his mouth like a curse, every time you walked away with shaking hands and a burning body. Rafe Cameron. He was the last person on the island you should’ve been near. And yet… here you were again.

Rivals. Always had been.

Your families had been in competition before either of you could speak. Your fathers shook hands for the press and sharpened knives behind each other’s backs. You grew up knowing exactly who the enemy was. His name was spoken in warning. He wasn’t a boy, he was a caution sign.

And he looked so damn good with danger written all over him.

You’d pretend you didn’t see him watching you at parties. Pretend you didn’t hear the smug little huff of his laugh when you walked past like he wasn’t there. Pretend you didn’t feel something every time you were close enough to smell his cologne—dark, expensive, and addicting.

The first time it happened, you’d both been drinking. Arguing. Too close, too loud, too intense. You pushed him, he pulled you, and then it was teeth and lips and hands slamming into each other like a storm that’d been waiting for years. He kissed you like he hated you. You kissed him like you wanted to ruin him.

And maybe you did.

But it didn’t stop there. No, that was the problem. It kept happening.

It happened in stairwells, in the backseat of his car, in beach houses when everyone else was asleep. Heated glances became bruised necks. Insults became moans. And through it all, the lie remained: We’re nothing. Just enemies. Just… a mistake that kept repeating itself.

But tonight, it was different.

It wasn’t planned. You’d shown up to the Midsummers afterparty, dressed to kill, and he’d been there with that damn smirk on his face. A drink in his hand. Trouble in his eyes.

“You gonna pretend you don’t see me?” he asked, voice low, leaning in close enough to make your skin prick. “Or are you gonna act like you don’t want this again?”

You scoffed. “Why the hell would I want you?”

His mouth curled. “’Cause no one else knows how to fuck you like I do.”

You hated how true that was. You hated how your legs were already moving, following him upstairs, past the crowds, into the dark. And when the door clicked shut behind you—everything else stopped mattering.

Clothes came off like they didn’t deserve to touch your skin. His mouth was on your neck, biting down, trailing lower. Your back hit the bed and he was there, hovering, eyes wild.

“This is wrong,” you whispered, breathless.

He kissed down your ribs, fingers gripping your thighs. “That’s what makes it so fucking good.”

Your shirt hit the floor. His followed. Skin on skin, heat pooling between your hips as he pressed down on you, lips on your chest, your stomach, lower.

You shouldn’t want him like this.

But when he slid his hand between your legs and pulled a moan from your mouth, you didn’t care about should anymore.

“Say it,” he growled against your thigh. “Say you want me.”

“I hate you,” you gasped.

He smirked, kissing up your body, stopping just above your lips. “That’s not a no.”

And then he was kissing you like he’d break you if he didn’t. Rough. Desperate. Honest in a way neither of you could ever admit out loud. His hands moved with purpose, dragging pleasure from your body like it belonged to him. And maybe it did—at least in this room. At least tonight.

You weren’t supposed to be anything. Just enemies. Just rivals. Just two broken, beautiful disasters who found something too real in each other.

But when he was buried inside you, holding your gaze, breathing your name like it meant something—it didn’t feel like nothing.

It felt like fire.

It felt like truth.

And as you clawed at his back and pulled him deeper, harder, your bodies moving like they’d done this a thousand times before—maybe you started to wonder if hating him had ever really been real at all.

Because if this was hate…

God, what would love even look like?