The Spite Between Us

by Remy Ashford

Heat 3 / 5One-Shot2,808 words12m read~19m listen

Eleven thirty-eight p.m. on a rain-slick rooftop above a city that never stops humming. Tatum Reyes stands in the dark with a stack of noise complaints, a chipped ceramic mug, and a Sharpie dare scrawled across the top sheet in furious capital letters: “PICK A SIDE”.

When Rook Callahan arrives — leather jacket soaked, jaw set, bad reputation blazing ahead of him like a warning flare — the mediation session Tatum planned goes sideways in thirty seconds flat. He doesn’t want protocols. He wants an answer. Two years ago, Tatum’s carefully neutral compromise killed a beloved queer bar and took half of Rook’s world with it, and he hasn’t forgotten. Neither has Tatum, even if they’ve buried the guilt beneath a mountain of procedure and perfectly measured language.

Argument becomes sparring. Sparring becomes something rawer, sharper, laced with an attraction neither of them asked for. When a thunderclap kills the rooftop lights and the storm crowds them into the dark of the potting shed, the words finally run out — and what’s left is breath, heat, and a kiss that tastes like everything they’ve been refusing to admit.

Enemies To Lovers