Like you hate me, p.1
Like You Hate Me, page 1
Copyright © 2023 by Bethany Winters
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover Design: Cassie Chapman at Opulent Designs
Photography: Michelle Lancaster
Model: Mick Maio
Formatting: Kate Welter at Opulent Designs
Editing: Zainab M. At Heart Full of Reads Editing Services
Created with Vellum
CONTENTS
Content Warning
Playlist
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Also by Bethany Winters
About the Author
CONTENT WARNING
Certain aspects of this story may be disturbing and/or triggering for some readers, such as: graphic language, explicit sex, addiction, (underage) alcohol and substance abuse, depression, ideation of suicide, overdose, death of a sibling and best friend, violence (between the main characters), stalking, obsession, mentions of sexual assault, blackmail, and homophobic slurs.
PLAYLIST
“mars” by YUNGBLUD
“FUCKED UP” by jxdn
“Move Along” by The All-American Rejects
“lonely” by Machine Gun Kelly
“sTrAnGeRs” by Bring Me The Horizon
“Animals” by Maroon 5
“Mind Games” by Sickick
“forget me too” by Machine Gun Kelly & Halsey
“idfc” by blackbear
“I’m a Mess” by Bebe Rexha
“Drown” by Bring Me The Horizon
“I Hate Everything About You” by Three Days Grace
“Good For You” by Selena Gomez & A$AP Rocky
“Come & Get It” by Selena Gomez
“Houndin” by Layto
“Take What You Want” by Post Malone, Ozzy Osbourne & Travis Scott
“Church” by Chase Atlantic
“the 1” by blackbear
“Scars to Your Beautiful” by Alessia Cara
“Ghost” by Justin Bieber
“Bones” by MOD SUN
“@ my worst” by blackbear
“What I’ve Done” by Linkin Park
“WANNA BE” by jxdn & Machine Gun Kelly
“Power Over Me” by Dermot Kennedy
“Beautiful Way” by You Me At Six
“Poison” by Rita Ora
Listen on Spotify & Amazon Music
“I hate him. I hate what he makes me feel. If only it didn’t feel so damn good.”
- Andi Jaxon
For Becca
PROLOGUE
XAVI
3 MONTHS AGO
I shouldn’t be here.
I made a promise to the only friend I’ve ever had, a promise that’s getting harder and harder to keep. I’ve thought about breaking it hundreds of times—at least once a day since the day she left me—but I’ve never actually had the balls to go through with it.
Tonight, though…it feels different. I feel different. I’m in too deep this time and I just want it to stop. No more pain. No more guilt. No more misery.
With any luck, it’ll just feel like…nothing. Blackness. The end.
Clutching the blindfold I’ve kept on me for almost two years, I’m straddling my motorbike on the edge of the bend in the road my brother died on, facing the steep cliff overlooking the forest below.
Ride a motorcycle.
Jump off a cliff.
“That’s two birds with one stone right here, babe.” I laugh through the pain in my chest. Then, I lean over to get a better look. “I’m gonna do it.”
But I’m not finished yet.
And this probably isn’t what she meant when she wrote that list.
She didn’t want to die. She promised, just like I did.
Lightning strikes above me, and I wrap my arms around myself. There’s a storm coming. The rain hasn’t started yet, but it’s so windy and cold, I can barely feel my hands as I reach into my hoodie pocket. The bottle of whiskey I stole from my dad’s office tonight is long gone, so I swallow a couple pills instead, then light the joint I rolled earlier and take a hit.
My filthy, unwashed hair blows into my eyes, blocking my vision, but it doesn’t matter. I don’t need to see anything. I just need to drive. Just a few more meters.
Come on, you pussy.
Come on, come on, come on…
My phone buzzes between the handlebars, and I almost ignore it this time.
Almost.
I squint at the text message on the screen, the paralyzing fear coiling around my lungs and squeezing as I read the words. And then I look at the pictures…
I think I’m gonna puke.
I don’t stop to think before I’ve got the phone pressed to my ear. He takes forever to answer, but when he does, he sounds wide awake and highly amused, the sounds of the party he’s at echoing in the background. “What do you want?” he teases.
“I need your help.”
“Again?” I think he laughs, but I can barely hear him over the ringing in my ears. “You can’t be serious.”
“Please,” I rasp, flinching at the next flash of lightning in the sky. “He—It’s Nate.”
He pauses, then asks, “Where are you right now?”
I shake my heavy head, feeling dizzy as I look around at my surroundings. “I…”
“Never mind. Fuckin’ drama queen. I’ll be there soon.”
After he hangs up, I pocket the phone and wait, but I don’t hold my breath. Soon could mean five minutes or five hours. He won’t rush because he doesn’t really give a shit about me. I don’t blame him. I don’t give a shit about me either.
The rain starts, pours, then pours some more. I’m soaked from head to toe within seconds. I don’t know how much more time passes while I smoke my joint, shielding it inside my hoodie to try to keep it dry. Once it’s gone, I toss the roach and tip my head back, taking one last look at the dark sky before I pull the blindfold into place.
Another text comes through, and I squeeze my eyes shut behind the fabric. Lifting it up an inch, I quickly delete all the messages he’s sent me and block his number. My phone will probably break when it hits the bottom, but I can’t risk anyone finding it down there and seeing what’s on it.
I can't risk Nate finding out what I’ve done.
Shoving the blindfold back over my eyes, I hold on to the handlebars and creep a little closer toward the edge. “Sorry, Katy,” I whisper.
But then I hesitate, swallowing as I flex my fingers.
Just twist it, Xavi.
Just fucking do it already.
Just fucking—
CHAPTER 1
XAVI
2 YEARS AGO
I’m at the hospital, high, stumbling through the never-ending halls as I make my way to the waiting room on the third floor. The walls feel like they’re closing in on me, and I can barely see where I’m going, but I don’t stop to catch my breath. It won’t work anyway. I won’t breathe right again until I know Katy’s okay.
Please be okay.
When I finally get to where I need to be, I stop just inside the room, holding onto the vending machine on my left to keep myself steady. There are a lot of people in here, low voices and soft cries coming from…I don’t know where. My eyes refuse to focus on anyone but him. Like magnets, they won’t let him go. He’s sitting by himself in the middle of the room, elbows resting on his knees as he runs his thumb over the black ring he’s holding—my ring. It’s chunky and black with the number 13 written on the face. I let Katy borrow it a few weeks ago when she was having a bad day. The doctors must have taken it off her finger when they brought her in here and given it to him. That’s the only reason he has it. That has to be the reason. Because if he was the one who took it from her…If he was the one who found her like that…
Like he senses my presence here, he lifts his head to look at me.
Fuck.
He looks furious, his usually light brown eyes now red and bloodshot, his short, dark hair sticking up at the top as if he’s been yanking on it repeatedly. His knuckles look busted too, like he’s punched a few walls. I think he’s been crying, but when he looks at me, there are no tears left. There’s only hate and rage.
“Nate,” I say and take a slow, cautious step closer to him. “What happened?”
He just stares up at me, which is weird because it’s usually me looking up at him. He’s only nineteen, two years older than me and his little sister, but he’s a tall motherfucker with a huge body built for basketball. He and I both know he could snap my skinny ass in half if he wanted to.
“Who called you?” he asks, ignoring my question.
“My dad,” I whisper. “He’s on his way.”
He nods slowly, his hands shaking slightly as he continues to play with the ring. “Get out.”
I swallow and look over at his parents for the first time. His mom is sobbing into her hands in the corner, his dad on the chair next to her, gently rubbing his wife’s back as he stares off into space.
“Nate…” I try again. “Please, just tell me wh—”
He’s up and coming for me before I can finish, pulling on my jacket and then slamming me back into the vending machine, causing a few people to look this way. I wince and wrap my hands around his, holding my breath as he moves in closer, erasing the small amount of distance between us.
“Nathaniel, let him go,” his mother says quietly, her voice raw from crying. “It’s not his fault.”
“Fuck that. He’s fucking high right now, Mom,” he growls, still looking at me, lowering his voice so she can’t hear the next part. “You wanna know what happened, party boy?” he taunts, cruel and menacing. “You killed her. My sister’s dead because of you.”
“No,” I choke out, shaking my head. “You’re lying.”
She’s not dead.
She can’t be dead.
But he’s not lying.
A broken noise escapes my throat, the tears bursting from my eyes, and I can feel him watching them fall as if he’s fascinated by them. He’s staring at me again, his fingers clutching my shirt as if he knows I’ll fall apart if he doesn’t hold me up.
I wish he’d let me fall.
“It should have been you,” he says after a minute, granting my unspoken wish and letting me go.
I slide down to the floor, struggling not to throw up as I scoot away from him.
I didn’t think it was possible to feel this much pain again, but there it is, eating me up and swallowing me from the inside out.
This feels worse than it did when I lost my older brother three years ago. At least when he died, there was nothing I could have done. I was just a kid, and he was killed in a car accident.
But Katy…I could have been there for her tonight. I could have stopped her from taking those pills. I could have saved her.
Pulling myself back up to my feet, I stumble my way toward the door I walked through a minute ago. I don’t want to leave my best friend here without saying goodbye, without telling her how sorry I am and how much I love her, but he’s not letting me stay. And even if I had the energy to fight him right now, I’d lose anyway.
“Xavi?” he calls, waiting until I turn my head to look him in the eye. “You’re dead to me, you understand? If I ever have to look at your face again, I’ll break it.”
“mars” by YUNGBLUD plays on repeat through my car stereo—the last song I remember Katy listening to before I dropped her off at home last night. I’m torturing myself, but I can’t stop.
“Xavi!” she sings my name, her goofy laugh hitting my ears for the hundredth time in the last two hours. “You know I hate it when you ghost me like this. Where are you? I wanna go out. Call me right now or I’m going without you!”
I hit the play button again, tipping my head back against the headrest.
Katy’s blind—was blind—and even though she could text if she wanted to, she preferred using voice notes.
I stare at the roof and listen to her voice, tears soaking my face and neck as I sip the bottle of vodka I found under her seat.
“Xavi!” she sings my name…
CHAPTER 2
NATE
PRESENT
“I’m just saying, guys are usually so much easier to fuck around with than girls,” Frankie says, holding on to my shoulder as I all but carry her out of my car. “They don’t ask for much. They hardly ever want anything serious. They just wanna get their dicks wet, right? I thought Myles was like that. But then he catches some freshman guy doing a body shot off my chest and he just loses it. Says I’m out here making a fool out of him or some shit. How was I supposed to know that’d make him jealous? I’m not his girlfriend or his mother. You know what I mean?”
I don’t have a clue what she’s talking about, but I still nod, helping her along toward the huge, six-bedroom house that my best friend Carter and I rented for college. I like it because it’s far away enough from campus that I don’t have to deal with anyone, but close enough that it only takes me ten minutes to get to class and practice.
It was only supposed to be the two of us at first, but then our teammate Easton got thrown out of his apartment by his girlfriend last year, so Carter thought it’d be fun to let him move in with us. Frankie moved in just a few months ago. She was in a bit of a tough spot when I met her, so I told her she could stay a couple nights until she figured something else out. I’m still waiting for her to leave.
She stumbles again and then angrily rips her heels off her feet. “Stupid shoes.”
“I don’t think it’s the shoes, Frank.”
“Eat my ass,” she sasses, shoving the heels at my abs.
It’s not even four in the afternoon yet, but this is what she gets for partying with the boys all night and then continuing on for half the day. The break between New Year and the start of next semester is basically one long party in this town, a way for us to get it all out of our systems before it’s back to the grind next week.
My teammates love having her around because she’s cool as shit, but then this thing went down with Myles today and Easton called me to pick her up before she cut the boy’s dick off and made him suck it in front of everyone. Her words, not his, apparently.
“Come on,” I urge, moving her tangled, white blonde hair out of her face so she can see where she’s going. “Let’s get you to bed.”
“But you said we were gonna party at home.”
“I lied to get you out of there.”
She looks at me like I betrayed her, and I let out a laugh. Just then, someone makes a quiet, coughing sound. I was so focused on Frankie, I didn’t even see the dark-haired guy leaning against the motorcycle parked beside Frankie’s truck. I narrow my eyes to get a good look at him, then freeze. My blood runs cold as I take in his dark features, his shoulders hooked up to his ears with his hands tucked into his pockets. He looks nervous as he stares right back at me, but then something seems to dawn on him and he pales. “Fuck.”
