Hate/Love

LOVE/HATE SEALED WITH INK BOOK ONE QUINN RILEY Copyright © 2023 by Quinn Riley All rights reserved. Love/Hate 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, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. If you have found this book on a free site it has been pirated and is therefore an illegal copy. Please support your authors, do not accept, participate in or condone piracy in any way. This book touches on mental health, something that is very close to my heart. You can call 24-hour advice and support – for you, your child, your parent, or someone you care for help to speak to a mental health professional an assessment to help decide on the best course of care Find a local urgent mental health helpline You are loved CONTENTS Preface 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 Afterword Acknowledgments About the Author PREFACE Anxiety. It’s your prison guard. It holds your body in a continual state of fear. It makes you think you are dying. You’re suffocating on air. Irritable tension grabs you by the balls and spreads throughout you, leaving you shaking. I wasn’t always this way. Dark thoughts now crept through my skull. Compulsive impulses and checking everything three times have become my life. Why? Korbin mother fucking Rose. My bully. My Tormentor. He’s every stereotype. Football captain. Blond hair. Killer tan and freakishly hot. He has gray eyes that pierce you like a silver arrow. Masculine lips that look like they’ve been kissed, ravaged, and have done every dirty thing you’ve ever fantasized about. Okay, let me paint you a picture. Imagine walking across the desert for days. Your mouth is parched. Lips scorched. You spot a tall glass of icy-cold water with lemon and lime wedges. Mouthwatering, right? You take your first sip and wind up with a mouth full of sand. That’s Korbin. Everybody in this town worships him. Hell, I’m sure they think he walks on water. It’s a dirty, stinking mirage. I’ve seen the real Korbin. He came from the pits of Hell. His hatred toward me appeared in our first few weeks of high school. I didn’t even realize he knew me. Korbin stopped in the hall and asked me to meet him and his friends for lunch. The pathetic loser I am fucking grinned and agreed. The jocks always sat at the same table. Jasper appeared behind me, carrying a plate of leftovers from the trash. “Dinner.” I will never forget his smirk. I stepped back, knowing I’d been set up and glanced around to see all the students watching us. Korbin stepped forward, eyes cold, no expression on his face as he took the tray off Jasper. The stink made me heave. “Isn’t this what trash like you eats?” The words fell from his mouth in a sneer as he shoved it into my face. His words stirred the last drop of my self-worth. Korbin tormented me for years. Never letting me forget I was trash, even in the town I’d been born in. My mother, for her sins, was a Carlton; one of the elite families in Hill View. Her family disowned her for having a child with a guy from the wrong side of the tracks. Mother dearest, bless her heart, tried the trailer life which lasted a month. Mom ran home and pleaded for her parents’ forgiveness. They agreed if she married Jacob Stand. They were married three weeks later. Mom calls a few times a year, that’s as far as our relationship goes. Since she left, it’s been Dad and me. The rest of the Carltons are still in town, and to them, I am a bastard child who carries the Blackmore name and not part of their bloodline. In one of her rare motherly moments, she paid for me to attend a private high school, telling Dad a private education would give me more advantages. It’s more likely she felt guilty, and this was Mom’s way of appeasing her conscience. It was hell for a kid who came from nothing to go to school with trust fund babies. I tried everything to fit into their world. I wore makeup to make my skin appear anything but the living corpse it resembled. I bought chinos and polo tops from the secondhand store and styled my hair in a goddamn side parting. None of it worked. I fell into a dark place and couldn’t understand why they were so cruel and hated me. “Sticks and stones will break your bones, but names will never hurt you.” It’s bullshit. Words hurt. They cut you one slice at a time. Once said, they can never be taken back or forgotten. Those words find you, whisper with their darkness until you’re covering your ears to stop them, but you can’t. They live inside you. You believe them. The truth of who I am. Unwanted by my mother Rejected by Hill View. Hated by Korbin. An unfamiliar emotion claimed half my soul. Anger. Gut-feeding fury. Hatred toward myself. It burned like a furnace in my stomach, raging through my veins, and with it came a fuck you attitude. I pushed everyone away and hid the