Hate to Love You - Chapter 24: Chapter 24

Hannah
The emotions his name incited left my insides feeling ice cold. Even now, my body physically rejected any mention of him, and my stomach tightened into a painful knot.
I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to shove away the flood of memories I tried not to ever think about. I would be the first to admit that he'd done a number on me and that I hadn't dealt with many of the ugly scars he'd left behind. This past year had been about getting myself back to a functioning adult, which meant putting off my trauma. But these things had a way of resurfacing, even with the mere mention of a name.
Swallowing hard, I began again, "I went to some frat party on South Street with these other girls from my dorm. It was my first real party, and I wasn't really expecting anything to happen, but Dylan singled me out in the crowd."
Even now, I could feel those dark, predatory eyes on me. It was a look I would never forget.
"He was the definition of a bad boy, the kind all the freshman girls drooled over. And he'd set his sights on me. I certainly didn't have any prior experiences with that kind of attention." Dylan had been so good at giving me the validation I craved. In a way, he'd been that last step I needed to step away from my family completely, and at the time, I'd seen him as my savior because of that. "Before the night was over, I was enamored with him."
"Wait," Tristan interrupted me. I looked up to see him frowning, but it wasn't because he was angry. "Are you talking about Dylan Masters? He has this fucking ugly tattoo on his neck — a skull or some cliche shit like that? He was always waving his daddy's credit card around."
I blinked, a little thrown off by the fact that he knew my ex. But of course Tristan knew who Dylan was. I'd later find out that Dylan had a certain reputation, one that was only amplified by the ridiculous tattoo Marcus, his best friend, had convinced him to get.
"Yeah... that's him," I mumbled, a little embarrassed now that he knew exactly who I was talking about.
"He had a nickname — the Freshman Groomer. He would fuck around with a whole bunch of them, and then leave them in a bad state." His gaze cut to mine as he realized where this story was heading.
I gave him a small, pathetic shrug. I wish I could have said I'd known better than to get involved with the likes of Dylan, but I simply didn't. "Yeah, well, then you can probably guess how the rest of this story goes. Kinda." I looked down to pick at a loose piece of lint stuck to the edge of my hoodie. "I do think I was different from his usual type. For starters, he never officially ended things with me. I think he genuinely liked me in his own unique way." Why else were we together for nearly a year?
Still, in that whole year, I knew next to nothing about him, only that he came from a wealthy family, because how else was he supposed to sustain his lifestyle? He didn't work, he hardly went to classes and he couldn't pick up after himself. From what little I'd gotten out of him, he had a full set of parents and a sister somewhere, but I never got to meet any of them. I mostly remembered him ignoring his dad's phone calls, and at the time I sympathized with him for it. I couldn't fault him when I was doing exactly the same thing.
"Hannah." Tristan's voice broke through my thoughts, and he waited for me to look at him. "I can tell you right now that he didn't like you. He just liked having power over a girl who didn't know any better. He was a predator, even if you were legally of age."
I wrapped both hands around my cup in a tight squeeze, nodding. "Right. I know that now. The thing is — he was great for the first two months. He took me to all of these places, showered me with attention and gifts, and introduced me to everyone as his girlfriend. I thought things were perfect between us. I almost couldn't believe my own luck." Now, I wanted to slap my past self for ever believing any of that.
"You mean that he behaved for two whole months?" He sounded skeptical about that possibility.
Grimacing, I looked down at the table again. "Looking back, there were some pretty obvious red flags. A couple of people warned me about him, including some of the girls he'd hurt before, but I was so far under his spell that their warnings fell on deaf ears." And maybe love was blind — because I never bothered to look or pay attention to those glaring red flags. He was my first real boyfriend, and for a while, I imagined the rest of my life with him. Now, I cringed at those thoughts.
Because in those first two months, he'd sown seeds of discord between me and my family. At the time, I thought it was perfectly normal for a boyfriend to be possessive. To me, it just meant that he wanted me. And so it seemed reasonable that he would dictate what I could wear — after all, he was the one who undressed me at night. When he demanded that I eat as little as possible to maintain the figure he preferred, I complied without hesitation, accustomed as I was to my mother's similar control. His insistence on knowing my whereabouts every hour seemed like an expression of his love. It was normal.
"I couldn't see how I'd ended up back in the same toxic environment I tried so hard to get away from, only now I was walking on eggshells around my boyfriend, doing anything to avoid his irritation... he could be so cruel with his words," I whispered that last part, my voice barely audible as I remembered some of the gross names Dylan had hurled at me during his drunken tirades. In some ways, I had learned from the best.
"But you also recognize you weren't at fault for any of it, right?"
Wasn't I? After all, I was the one who put myself in that position — I was the one who kept making excuses for his behavior.
Instead of giving him an answer, I continued, "Around the two-month mark in our relationship, he convinced me to move in with him." Tristan tensed at this, but I didn't stop. "I never told my mom because I knew she'd get upset about me moving out of the dorms to live with some guy she'd never met. My best friend, Bailey, was the only one who knew, and she insisted on meeting him first."
She hadn't been a fan of Tommy because he was boring, so when I told her about Dylan — she was initially excited for me.
"She hated Dylan and his friends from the minute they met — and the feeling was mutual. She tried to warn me about him, about the people he surrounded himself with — namely his creepy best friend, Marcus. She begged me to reconsider moving in with him — to reconsider the whole relationship. But he... he convinced me that she was just jealous, that she had flirted with him when I wasn't around and wanted him for herself. And I believed him..."
Tears of shame pricked at the back of my eyes as I recalled my first betrayal. I'd been so fucking stupid. Out of all the mistakes I'd made, hurting Bailey and Jace haunted me the most.
Swallowing hard, I forced myself to keep speaking. "We had a fight, and Dylan stood right in between us, pretending to stand up for me. To my naive brain, that just proved I made the right choice by choosing him over my best friend. She was the first person I cut off for him. After that, I severed ties with all of my other friends, and eventually, my family."
Throughout it all, I genuinely believed I was making the right choices, ridding my life of toxic influences under his wise council. "And before I knew it, I had no one except for him. My interactions were limited to him and his shitty friends. He'd effectively isolated me by making himself my whole world."
"It's pretty easy to control someone who'll do anything you say," Tristan remarked soberly.
I nodded. "He had me right where he wanted — completely under his control. I was essentially at his beck and call, twenty-four/seven. But in the end, I wasn't enough to satisfy him. He started seeing other girls — texting them, and eventually meeting up with them."
At the time, this had devastated me, but now, I couldn't help feeling a strange sense of relief that his true nature had finally started to seep through the cracks. I shuddered to think what might have happened if I had continued down that path. It was a small comfort that I had always insisted on condoms — because despite my feelings for him, I never fully trusted him.
"All the classic signs were there. He kept his phone on him at all times, excused himself to take mysterious phone calls, and changed his password to one I didn't know. When I dared question his behavior, he called me paranoid. He told me I was reading too much into nothing, that I had no evidence, and that I needed to trust him if we were going to make it work. I felt guilty for doubting him and tried to push those nagging suspicions aside. But they never really went away...
"Instead, they were confirmed when I answered his phone and heard a woman on the other end, speaking about how much she missed him and how incredible their night had been. You'd think that would be the end of it, right?" I let out a dark laugh, covering my face with my hands again. "But I didn't leave him. Instead, I confronted him, and he twisted it all around on me. He said I was acting strange, that I wasn't satisfying him, and that I was the one who'd pushed him to stray. He promised that if I changed my ways, he'd stop and everything would go back to how it was. Back then, all I wanted was that same happiness I felt when we first got together."
But his changed behavior only lasted a week.
"Maybe love really is blind because I blamed myself for not being enough. I believed I had to change for him, but no matter what I did, I couldn't meet his ever-changing standards. He kept on cheating, and each time, I blamed myself. Things started getting really bad after a while. I was failing all of my classes, crying myself to sleep every night, and entertaining thoughts of just..." ending it all.
In my head, if I was so worthless, why should I even be alive? Recalling those dark times left a heavy weight in my stomach and my fingers curled into tight balls. I hated remembering how weak and stupid I'd been, how close I'd come to...
Never again.
We fell into a contemplative silence, and I couldn't resist sneaking a glance at him. He wasn't looking at me anymore but staring off into the distance. I noticed the whiteness of his knuckles as he gripped the edge of the counter. Feeling my gaze, his cut back to mine.
"Did he ever... hurt you?" The question sent a visible ripple of pain across his features and I realized what he truly meant by that.
I pulled my hands back and pressed my palms against my thighs. "To be honest, I haven't really let myself think about it. Did he have his methods of coercion? Yes, but he was wary of pushing me too far."
Because I didn't like the look on his face — not directed at me, but still... unnerving — I coughed to fill the silence and moved on, both of us clearly needing the distraction. "By the end of it, I'd been with him for almost a year, and my parents had reached their breaking point. It was the first time I'd seen them agree on anything." And it seemed like that would be the last time too. "They contacted Bailey to get my location, and the three of them showed up to forcibly take me back home. I don't remember much of what happened, but I remember screaming and resisting as my dad carried me to his car. And I remember Bailey and Dylan yelling at each other. She punched him. Really hard — she broke his nose."
Dylan found out the hard way that an angry Bailey was no joke, especially when it came to those she loved.
"She sounds like a very loyal friend," Tristan said as he smiled at what she'd done.
I cast my gaze lower, his well-intentioned comment landing with a painful sting. "She's like a sister to me, so the fact that I chose some douchebag over her, really speaks to how much I..." I trailed off, averting my gaze as shame sank its razor claws into my heart.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him lean closer. "And yet, he failed to keep you two apart. He's gone, and she's still in your life. I'd also wager that you're harder on yourself about it than she would want you to be. You don't go to the lengths she did for someone you don't love."
I rubbed a hand along my thigh, trying to wipe away the sweat that had dampened my palm. "I know she loves me, I just don't think I'm..." deserving of her love. Or her forgiveness.
But I stopped myself from finishing that sentence out loud, realizing that voicing those doubts might come off as a plea for pity, and nothing he could say would change my mind. Instead, I decided to shift the subject to a more positive note.
"The silver lining is that Dylan left me alone after that, and then he graduated — so I haven't seen or heard from him since. After, I made a conscious effort to get my life back on track. I focused on getting my grades back up. I got stronger, and maybe I got a whole lot meaner, but that whole ordeal taught me an important lesson. I need to prioritize my well-being."
Tristan nodded thoughtfully, his brow furrowing as he leaned back slightly. "So, just to be clear, you're not hung up on him at all, right? You hate him?"
Both of my brows shot up and I made a face of disgust. As if that wasn't enough of an answer, I further explained, "I went through a period of intense self-loathing and depression after everything fell apart. I refused to leave my bed, eat, or engage in any normal activities. All I did was sleep or stare off into space. But with Bailey and my family's help, I slowly began to recover, and when she dragged me to a couple of therapy sessions with my parent's permission, I finally let myself see sense. So yes. I hate him. I now know how much he stole from me."
Was that relief I saw in his eyes? Before I could be sure, he nodded and pushed himself away from the counter. I watched him turn around, and silence settled between us. He didn't move from where he stood, clearly processing everything I had just told him. I knew I'd unloaded a lot on him, but he'd asked for it.
I eventually lost patience waiting for his response, nerves threatening to send me running. I needed to get my point across. "I know you want sex and only sex, but sex is complicated. I can't do complicated."
Trusting people, especially men, had become incredibly challenging. I wouldn't let anyone have that much power over me again. The fear, stress, and constant doubt about whether I was enough... it was a crippling state of mind to be in. I knew that sacrificing my mental health for someone else would destroy me. I couldn't do it.
It was only recently that I'd felt... interest for the first time in months, and it was because of him. Did I want him? Yes, I could admit that much.
But could I actually have sex with him? My body thought so, but my head said no. Even if it wasn't a relationship, I'd need some parts of it to feel like one. We probably wouldn't be exclusive, and that was a deal-breaker for me.
Even if we agreed to exclusivity, I didn't think I'd be able to trust him. Not with all those girls constantly throwing themselves at him, chipping away at my insecurities. It would drive me crazy and undo the months of work I've done on myself.
I didn't want to go back to being that weak, paranoid, and anxious girl again. And being with him could do that to me.
It wasn't worth it.
However, in my experience, men never handled rejection well. This could go two ways — he'd get angry, or he'd start begging or bargaining. Either way, I wasn't going to change my mind, no matter how much my body wanted him.
I tensed when he finally turned back around to meet my eyes, face infuriatingly blank. Taking a deep breath, I prepared myself for whatever was about to happen — because his silence had given me nothing.
"Okay," he simply said.
All the building tension left my body in a confusing rush. Wait? He wasn't going to pressure me? He had to know his chances were good — neither of us were idiots and could see we were attracted to each other.
"You aren't upset?" I asked, scanning his face for any hints of trickery. Was this his way of getting me to lower my defenses?
Both of his brows shot up and he let out a humorless cutting laugh. "Fucking hell, Hannah. I'm not about to keep pushing you after everything you just told me." Shaking his head, he stepped back and ran his fingers through his hair. "The last thing I would ever want is to hurt you."
I didn't know how to respond to that, so I stayed quiet as my insides twisted in unwanted flutters.
He sighed at my silence, thinking I didn't believe him. "My usual motto is to never give up, but there are times when it's better to stop, especially when it comes to these matters. I heard everything you were trying to tell me, and I understand your reservations. I can be just friends with you. You never have to be on guard or fear for your safety with me."
I sat there in more stunned silence, my heartbeat a thundering drum in my ears.
I liked him.
I liked him too much.
Nodding as I forced a small smile onto my lips, I said, "Thank you. I really appreciate that." I bit my lower lip. Hard. "What about your... sexual urges?"
He laughed — he had such a beautiful laugh. "I can deal with my sexual urges on my own, so you don't need to worry about me."
On his own? Or did he mean with other women? A bitterness settled on my tongue as that thought occurred to me.
Goddammit, Hannah. You don't want him, but you don't want other women to want him. That's not fair and you know it.
"Okay." I nodded, choking down the jealousy. I nodded again. "Okay, that's good. I'm glad we got all of that out of the way. And honestly? I do feel lighter after getting everything all out in the open."
"That's good," he replied with a reassuring smile. "And for the record, I'm sorry you had to go through all that. Your parents really let you and your brother down, but despite everything, you both turned out pretty great. I think that's a testament to just how strong you are."
Why did his words make my eyes sting?
I chuckled awkwardly, looking down. "You don't have to apologize for any of it — we all have our shit to deal with." I paused as a sudden idea struck me. "Do you have anything you want to tell me? I'm a really good secret keeper." It was true. Growing up with a mother like mine left you with all kinds of unique talents, secret-keeping being one of them.
I wasn't sure what I was expecting, but the amused smile on his lips caught me off guard as he tilted his head, considering his words carefully. I held my breath, waiting to hear what he'd say next.
"I once peed in my older sister's shoes and blamed it on the dog after she snitched on my brother and me. You won't tell anyone about that, will you?"
Despite my laughter, a sharp pang of disappointment hit me. I wasn't sure what I had hoped for, especially after he'd been so open with me about his family over the past two weeks. But this felt different — like he was closing himself off.
No. Like I had gotten close enough, and he wouldn't let me come any closer. I couldn't help but feel like it was because I had drawn a line in our relationship.