Twisted Hate: An Enemies with Benefits Romance

Cold nights. Empty stomach. The incessant itch of anxiety crawling over
my skin.

---

My situation had been different from the Bowers, but I remembered all
too well what it was like to wake up every morning and wonder if that was
the last day I’d have a roof over my head and food on the table.
My mother had been a cocktail waitress, but she’d been more interested
in blowing her meager income on shopping than paying the bills. Sometimes,
the lights would cut out in the middle of me doing homework because she
forgot to pay the electric bill. Eventually, I figured out how to siphon
electricity from our neighbor at the ripe old age of ten. Not the most ethical
solution, but I did what I had to do.
A shiver rolled through me.
You’re fine. You’re not that little girl anymore.
“I know her.” Josh rapped his knuckle against the paper with Laura’s
picture stapled to it, yanking me back into the present. “I treated her when
she came in. Multiple broken bones, heavy bruising, twisted ankle. Still, she
was in good spirits and making jokes, trying to keep her kids from
panicking.” His face softened. “The ER can be a blur, but I remember her.”
“Yeah,” I said quietly. “She seems really nice.”
I’d never met Laura, but I could tell she was the type of mother I
would’ve killed to have.
I cleared my throat in an attempt to ease the knot of emotion that had
taken residence there. “Legally speaking, the obvious solution is to clear
Terence’s criminal record so he can find a job,” I said. As the clinic’s
practicing attorney, Lisa needed to sign off on everything I did, and she’d
agreed clearing his record was the best solution. “He was charged for
marijuana possession. One ounce, and he spent a year in jail for it.”
Heat crept over my neck the way it had when I first learned the case
details. Few things pissed me off more than the inequity of draconian drug
laws. “How stupid is that? Some rapists only get a few months in jail, but
have a little marijuana on you and your record is stained forever. That’s such
bullshit. You have weed farmers in Colorado raking in the cash from the sale
of marijuana while people like Terence are vilified for it. Tell me where the
justice is in that. I—what?” I stopped when I noticed Josh staring at me with
a tiny, almost fascinated smile.
“I’ve never seen you so worked up over something that wasn’t me.”
“Once again, you’ve proved your self-absorption knows no bounds.” My
flush of anger cooled, though my indignation at the injustice of it all
remained. “That’s not me breaking the truce,” I added. “That’s a fact.”

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“Sure it is,” Josh said dryly. “But you’re right. There is no justice in what
happened to Terence.”
I cocked my head, sure I’d heard wrong. “Repeat that. The middle
sentence.”
First the apology, then the admission I was right. Was that really Josh
sitting across from me, or had aliens abducted him and switched him out with
a more agreeable body swap?
“No.”
“Do it.” I nudged his foot with mine, earning myself a scowl. “I want to
hear you say it again.”
“Which is exactly why I won’t.”
“Come on.” I gave him my best puppy dog face. “It’s Friday.”
“That has nothing to do with anything.” Josh heaved a long, put-upon
sigh when I deepened my puppy eyes. “I said, you’re right.” He sounded so
disgruntled I almost laughed. “Only about this one thing, though. Not
anything else.”
“See. That wasn’t so hard.” I folded the cupcake wrapper neatly into a
square and pushed it to the side for future disposal. “You have a decent smile
when you’re not being an ass,” I added generously, since we were being nice.
“Thanks.”
I ignored Josh’s sarcasm and switched back to the case. I wanted to finish
all my work before I left so I didn’t have to spend the weekend worrying
about it. Our Vermont trip was tomorrow, and while I wasn’t looking forward
to two days in a cabin with Josh, I was looking forward to my first vacation
of the year.
I didn’t count my trip to Eldorra for Bridget’s coronation. I’d only been
there for a weekend, and it’d been so crazy I barely had time to sleep, much
less sightsee.
“Now, about the Bowers.” I tapped my pen against the paper. “Lisa
mentioned we could provide free medical checkups for Laura while she’s
healing.”
“Yes. Usually, we have them come into the free clinic.” Josh waved in
the general direction of the exit, and it only occurred to me now that he
must’ve been staffing the clinic all day. The pop-up tent was set up outside
LHAC, so I wouldn’t have seen him arrive. “But given Laura’s situation, we
can make home visits. We just have to fill out the appropriate paperwork…”
For the next hour, Josh and I worked on the Bower case together. He

---

created a checkup schedule and handled the medical paperwork while I
finished fact checking the details and gathered the information we needed to
clear Terence’s record.
I snuck a glance at Josh while he scribbled something on a blank sheet of
paper. His brow etched with a frown of concentration, and I realized it was
the first time I’d seen him work.
“Like what you see?” he asked without looking up from his paper.
Heat crawled up my neck again, this time from embarrassment. “Only if
the thesaurus changed like to be a synonym for loathe.”
The corner of his mouth curved up a fraction of an inch. “Truce, JR.”
I couldn’t tell whether the soft reminder was mocking or not, but it made
my stomach flip. Maybe he had poisoned the cupcake.
I highlighted a passage in the case with more aggression than necessary.
Josh and I made a surprisingly good team, but I didn’t fool myself into
thinking our truce was a precursor to an actual friendship.
Only a few things in life were certain: death, taxes, and the fact that Josh
Chen and I would never be friends.

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10

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JOSH
T
HE
BRIEF
CAMARADERIE
J
ULES
AND
I 
EXPERIENCED
AT
THE
CLINIC
FIZZLED
less than twenty-four hours later, when I arrived at the airport’s private jet
terminal to find her looking bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and all too smug about
beating me to the airport.
“You’re late.” Jules sipped her coffee. No doubt it was a caramel mocha
with extra crunch and oat milk because she was lactose intolerant and hated
the taste of almond milk.