Bittersweet Expectations (Hate at First Flight #0.5)

31. The Thin Line Between Love & Hate

I swallowed the shrimp that I was chewing on hard as Finn's eyes locked straight onto mine.

What was he doing here? What had he been discussing with Ethan Clarke? Had they been talking about me?

My thoughts were racing a mile a minute as I felt my stomach roll over in nervousness.

The corner of Finn's mouth pulled up into a playful smirk as his eyes glinted with what I could only conclude as evil.

He knew exactly what I was thinking.

He always knew exactly what I was thinking.

I had always been an open book to Finn Hammond. So open about my thoughts that I was easy to trick and so gullible to every word that had slipped out of his mouth.

I searched his eyes for the Finn that I had been in love with and came up lost. Once they had been filled with love, now they were only brimming with contempt. Contempt that I felt was unjustified given how our relationship had ended.

He was looking at me like I was the reason for our break-up. Like he had walked in on me half naked with another man in my bed.

My fingers tightened around the cocktail glass in my hand as I felt my anger towards Finn Hammond slowly rise to the surface. Needless to say, this was the first time I was seeing him after walking out of his apartment that dreadful day.

He was dressed in a black tuxedo, and once upon a time, I would've thought him the most dashing in the room. But now, he paled in comparison to the man that stood beside him.

The very same man whose eyes burned into me, leaving my skin feel like they'd been graced by a low flame. Slowly, hestitatingly, my eyes darted back toward Ethan Clarke as if they were moths being drawn by the flame.

Ethan Clarke's face was unreadable.

Once again, I didn't know what was going on in his head.

I didn't know what he was thinking or feeling.

His eyes studied me as if the longer it stared at me, the answers to whatever questions plagued his mind would appear.

There was only two guesses I could discern as reasons behind why he had been glaring at me.

One, Finn had told him something about me that made his blood boil.

Or two, he didn't like that I was associating with his brother.

Whichever it was, whatever civility that Ethan and I had slowly begun to develop might be gone by the end of the night.

"Do you need me to go slap some sense into him?" James said, getting my attention back to him.

My body deflated in relief as I took a deep breath of air. I had been holding my breath in anxiety.

"What?" I looked over at James, trying to ignore the stare that burned into the back of head.

James chuckled and I knew it was because of the discomfort that would clearly have been etched on my face.

"Ethan," he replied simply as he looked past me. I tried not to follow his gaze, knowing that he was looking at his brother. "Say the word and I'll have my brother apologizing for whatever wrong he did you."

I scoffed as the image of Ethan apologizing to me appeared in my head. Ethan Clarke, apologizing? To me?

That had as much likelihood of happening as me winning the lottery.

"Thanks for the offer," I smiled as Julian and Julie walked towards us. "But your brother doesn't bother me." I smiled brightly at him to mask the lie.

James nodded, his face not hiding how skeptical he was.