🥊 Hate or Fate 💕 {Enemies to Lovers}

.2.

Elijah, Grady, and Bart were all shouting at the game. What they were saying was gibberish as far as I was concerned. Something to do with football, probably.

Everything outside my head was static.

I felt pinned down. Imprisoned by the unspoken ire radiating off Gray's hunched shoulders.

His eyes tightened infinitesimally, the way they always did right before he got bored with someone and dropped the subject.

He was one of those brooding types with too many tattoos to be employable. Yet somehow, Gray was a big-deal commercial photographer who made enough money to match his engorged ego.

He was also infuriatingly pretty. Seriously, no boy had any business having eyelashes that long or cheekbones that severe. He looked like the lovechild of Captain Jack Sparrow and an edgy villain from one of the James Bond movies.

"Hey, Isla," Bart drained the last gulp of his beer and plonked his glass on the table to break my silent standoff with Gray. "How expensive is it to hire someone like you?"

"A Creative Director?" I asked, searching Bart's kind brown eyes.

Bart knew I worked at a well-known Seattle ad agency, but I don't think he actually understood what my career was.

"You mean a copywriter," Gray corrected his buddy, flashing us a tired look that made me bristle.

Gray enjoyed taking little digs at people to test their intelligence or their temper. He was hunting for a reaction, and like a shark, he smelled chum in the water.

Even worse, he was exploiting ad-industry jargon in order to minimize my actual job title.

I'd spent five long years toiling as a lowly junior copywriter, struggling to break through the many, many men who got promoted ahead of me. I loved my career, but I had to fight tooth and nail to achieve the Associate Creative Director title that I only got last year.

"You don't want a copywriter, like Isla, to put a bunch of fancy buzzwords on your site," Gray told Bart with a sardonic grin aimed right at me. "You need to show off the rocking bodies with great photography."

"If by buzzwords you mean keywords, Gray," I said coolly. "Then it actually is very important that Bart works with an agency like ours because we have experts that will make your business discoverable in local search, which will drive mindshare and new membership."

Bart nodded and pushed a hand through his crop of blonde curls in frustration.

"If keywords equal new member signups, then that's what I want," he puffed out his cheeks. "Thanks for interpreting for me, Isla."

I'm pretty sure Bart understood zero of what was said, but that's fine. If anything, I think he was trying to save us both from Gray.

"Hey, where are our beers?" Grady complained.

"Sorry, brother," Elijah shook his head with a chuckle and shrugged. "I was going to get them, but I got distracted by something much, much better."

He ran the tip of his nose down my neck, exhaling a cool breath to send a delightful shiver into my core. Elijah was working his way to my ear. He knew it would drive me crazy.

"Get a room," Grady mock gagged at our open fondness for one another.

"I've got a room," Elijah growled playfully, which resonated through my already charged cells. "Where I share a bed with an insatiable sex kitten, which is more than I can say for you fuckers. And by the way, Grady, get a fork!"