I Like You I Hate Her (Something Like Love) Read online

  I LIKE YOU, I HATE HER

  A SOMETHING LIKE LOVE NOVEL

  J. R. ROGUE

  Copyright © 2022 by J. R. Rogue

  All rights reserved.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales

  is completely coincidental.

  Proofread by Victoria Ellis

  Cover art by Pink Ink Designs

  Print and E-Book interior design by J.R. Rogue

  J.R. Rogue

  PO Box 984

  Lebanon, MO 65536

  www.jrrogue.com

  [email protected]

  CONTENTS

  Content Warning

  Author’s Note

  TOP OF THE MOVIE POSTER

  THE BANE OF MY EXISTENCE

  DON’T FUCK YOUR SISTER’S IDOLS

  TOUCHY-FEELY SHIT

  EVERYONE LOVES A SCANDAL

  SPEAKING OF SNAKES

  IN MY FICTIONAL BED

  DON’T FUCK THE HELP

  THE STUDENT BECOMES THE TEACHER?

  A GOD OF PAIN

  LABOR OF LOVE

  WE AREN’T FRIENDS

  I WANT TO LIVE

  NEANDERTHALS LIKE THIS MAN

  I WANT HIS PRIVATE TOUCH

  A WOMAN CAN RUIN YOU WITH A PEN

  ROOTED IN FEAR

  THE OTHER WOMAN

  IS THIS A TRUCE?

  SPLASH OF COLOR

  TWO BIRDS, ONE STONE

  BACKWOODS YOGA CLASS

  EVERYTHING BUT THE KISS

  SIR DADDY KANE

  IT’S BRED INTO YOU

  FUCK THE MEDIA

  IT’S ALL FICTION

  PROMISE ME YOU’LL COME

  I’M NOT THE PREY

  LIVING IN THAT SHADOW

  NO USE CAUSING A SCENE

  YOU’RE ONLY HUMAN

  THE RIGHT THING TO DO ON PAPER

  I WANT TO BE BETTER

  A CONSTANT IN HER LIFE

  BOYFRIENDS OF MY PAST

  PAYBACK IS A BITCH

  YOU WERE BORN TO BE A STAR

  THE PERFECT ESCAPE

  WEEPING WILLOW

  VULNERABLE

  I WAS ONCE A NOBODY

  WHAT A SAD WORD

  YOU DON’T NEED PERMISSION

  I GOT YOU

  THIS JADED WOMAN

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by J. R. Rogue

  CONTENT WARNING:

  emotional abuse, physical abuse, suicidal thoughts, childhood trauma, eating disorders, and body hatred

  AUTHOR’S NOTE:

  The characters in this novel crossover from two of my series. Tristan first appears in Burning Muses, book 1 in the Muse & Music series. Jo first appears in The Rebound, book 1 in the Red Note series.

  I Like You, I Hate Her is a standalone romance. Reading Burning Muses and The Rebound is not necessary, though it would certainly enrich the experience if you read them first…or make you want to punch them both. You decide.

  TOP OF THE MOVIE POSTER

  TRISTAN

  There’s something about being British that does insidious things to women.My voice is no longer my voice but instead a tool. And I use it. I use it well.

  Right now, my tone is one I hope will convey my annoyance to my manager, Clarke, and it likely is. But it’s also making his assistant squirm in her seat. She’s a pert thing. Too young for me to consider as more than a pleasant thing to look at, but certainly an eye-catching distraction from my current situation.

  I’m one week away from playing the role I've been dying to play since I first stepped foot on the stage of my middle school play of Sense and Sensibility.

  There are roles you lose, roles you hold on to as years pass when projects stay in pre-production hell, and roles you want desperately to forget.

  This is a role I have never forgotten. The part I have been waiting to play my entire life.

  And my leading lady? Hollywood’s darling? She had to drop out one week before filming due to another film schedule running off the tracks. You can’t count on superhero action flicks to adhere to any sort of manageable schedule at times. I should know. I’ve had my time monopolized and chewed up, but wearing a cape is a bloody brilliant way to spend your time.

  “This was supposed to be perfect, you know,” I run a hand over my face. Noting my stubble is getting a bit wild. “It’s supposed to go off without a hitch. Be a dream. Or at least be as surreal as the dreams I’ve had about this role.”

  “I know. But you know how those productions go. Cameron can’t drop out of Hero League. The money is too good. And it’ll expose her to a new fanbase,” my manager says matter-of-factly.

  “I know,” I groan. I’ve worked with Cameron Stone in the past. She’s lovely, and I want great things for her career. “She’s on the uphill, and it’d be foolish to turn it down. I just…the screen test was so bloody brilliant with her. And after those horrid months with Bernard as my lone co-star in Travesty I quite looked forward to the idea of working with someone I got along with.”

  Clarke smirks.

  I chuckle, “No, the irony is not lost on me that the bloody film was called Travesty…” My last film shoot was with a man I hope never to see again. Bernard Barrister is an icon, a three-time Oscar winner. And the man rarely bathed.

  And had rancid breath.

  And hated me.

  I just spent a long winter filming in the mountains with him. I’d looked forward to filming a role I’d coveted since I was a boy—largely due to my late father—with a beautiful woman.

  “I’m sure you’ll have the chance to work with Cameron again,” Clarke assures me. “She’s disappointed as well.”

  I nod, the anxiety slowly working out of me. I know the casting director will find someone worthy of taking Cameron’s place. It’s been easy for me to land co-stars. All I have to do is name them in an interview and I have them. Or, if that doesn’t work, have my manager make a phone call.

  My name will always be the first bill, top of the movie poster. And those attached to mine? Their star rises. I don’t make the rules. I just follow them…and benefit from them. And I’ve benefitted from this rule since I started talking. Since I acted out my first starring role in my parents’ living room.

  Tristan Kane—British heartthrob, Oscar nominee, tabloid obsession. And, let’s never forget, son of Sir Cosgrove Kane. I don’t make the rules, and I don’t make my titles. They’re given to me, whether I want them or not.

  At thirty-six years old, I’m one of the highest-paid actors in Hollywood. Everything I touch turns to gold, save for my relationships. And I’ve had my fair share of them. I spent my twenties sleeping through the A-list crowd, never settling down, or wanting to—until I met a writer who made me want to try out the monogamy thing because some argued she was great for me on paper.

  As predicted, I fucked it all up. Maybe in rebellion.

  I’ve always been a performer. It started when I saw the way women lit up around my father, much to my mother’s dismay. I’ve always wanted to create a blush in
a woman. To see them smile, stifle a laugh at a joke. And I’ve always wanted to make my father proud, to be just like him, not just in appearance.

  I shake my head, glancing at Clarke before I reach for my coffee. “So who will we pull in last minute? Does Whitehorse have his eye on anyone?”

  The director, Adam Whitehorse, is a good friend of mine, and it isn’t the first time I’ve worked with him. It’s thanks to him I almost captured an Oscar. Or, maybe it’s thanks to me that he has his. We could go back and forth on it for hours, and we have.

  Clarke leans back in his seat as well, bringing his hands to his temple. “Yes. They have someone in mind. They’ve had someone in mind, same as you. But she couldn’t do it when casting started last year. And there was also the case of whether you would agree to it. They didn’t want to risk it. Adam knew you would hate it.”

  At this, I nearly choke on the coffee traveling down my throat. I recover quickly. “Risk losing me?” I ask, a cold chill moving through me. My mind goes to her immediately.

  Because when it comes to my hate or the feeling I’m masking, her name is at the forefront of my mind. She’s the thorn in my side, and I feel the pinch of it every time our names are said in the same sentence. And it happens often. Images of us kissing on a street corner are forever immortalized online and in print if you’re the kind to read grocery store checkout lane garbage.

  And our chemistry onscreen? It’s forever immortalized. You can’t erase the impact a movie has on an audience. And you can’t erase the effect a co-star will have on your career. Or the effect their touch will have on your personal life.

  Over five years ago, I fell closer and closer into the grey area with said co-star. All while in a relationship with the first woman to make me consider settling down—Bestselling Author Seraphina Daniels.

  I cheated on Sera, foolishly letting myself be caught by the paparazzi as I kissed her. The same co-star I’d been kissing on screen for weeks.

  She’s like a drug, one I hate and want in my veins all at once.

  I was drawn to her pouty mouth, her fair skin. Her cruel words and the bruises on her arms, put there by another man.

  I wanted to break that woman open so that I could see everything inside, and I let that lust compel me to betray someone I said I loved.

  “Tell me you’re not going to say that name,” I close my eyes, let out a long breath.

  Clarke sighs as well, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I can’t do that, Tristan. You know she’s the only one who can do this alongside you. You know the only one who can play this role is Jo.”

  THE BANE OF MY EXISTENCE

  JO

  You shouldn’t trust women in Hollywood. Shit, you shouldn’t trust women anywhere. They’ll stab you in the back. I would know. I’ve pierced a few.

  The girl before me looks sweet, a tad naïve. This city will eat her alive before long, and she’ll be running back to whatever town in middle America birthed her doe-eyed ass. Not my problem. My problem, at this very moment, are the words coming out of her mouth.

  “He’s not...he’s not going to make it,” she says again, wincing.

  “What do you mean?” It’s more a hiss than a question.

  “He said...he said he missed his flight.” She ends the sentence more confidently. Good girl.

  The he in question is my wayward boyfriend, Francis. He’s supposed to be coming in from Madrid to spend the weekend with me before filming starts on my next film. And yet, he isn’t on my doorstep.

  The sick feeling I’ve had in my stomach for the past week is proving right as usual. Trust your guts, ladies. It never lies, and yet, we ignore it consistently.

  The girl delivering this news to me with the kind of fear a B-Movie actress would in a horror film is my manager's assistant. I didn’t realize managing me required two people, but here we are. Here we are in this hellhole of a city that I loathe but subject myself to year after year.

  “Thank you, Belle. That’ll be all. Why don’t you take the day off? Tell Isla the same. I want to be alone.”

  The girl nods and hurries out of my foyer. As soon as I hear her car pull away, and shortly after, Isla’s as well, I breathe easy.

  I could text my boyfriend—Francis—right now, ask him about his bullshit excuse that he missed his flight. But I don’t have the strength, and quite frankly, I planned to end the relationship after he visited, anyway. I just wanted him here to fuck me. I have an itch to scratch, and I need to scratch it before I have to look into the eyes of my co-star when filming starts.

  I pad into my living room, then plop onto my couch, staring at my toes. They’re a pretty shade of pink, one my hair has often been. It’s blonde now and has been for years. It’s hard to keep wild hair when you’re donning different faces for roles.

  I miss the colors, and at times, miss the man who was in my life when I was the girl with pink hair.

  I don’t have access to a single one of my verified social media accounts and haven’t for years, but word travels fast when people want you to know they have information that can wound you.

  My ex-boyfriend Sean das Dores—the biggest pop star in the world—has reunited with his scandalous former lover, his uncle’s ex-wife. I knew it would happen, eventually. Dating models and smiling for the camera didn’t fool me.

  He’s on my tv when the Grammys air. He’s on Netflix with a new documentary. He’s on the radio when I start my car, and she lives in his songs, a place I always wanted to exist. Sean was my first love, and there is no face he can make that I cannot read, no chorus he can sing that I won’t tear apart.

  If only he’d been as skilled at reading me. Then he would have tossed me to the curb ages ago, before his star rose and the world fell at his feet.

  I pull my phone out and look over the text from my former co-star, Bastian. He meant well, I think, in telling me. Seven years is a long time to be missing from someone’s life. Maybe he thought it wouldn’t hurt me. But I’ve felt sick for days over the news.

  It could be other news making me ill, but I don’t want to think about that. Him. And I don’t want to be honest with myself right now.

  A knock at my door pulls me from my stupor. Who the hell? I have a gate at the end of my drive. No one should be at my door.

  The familiar feeling of sweat at my spine washes over me, the icy chill taking me to the past and back to the present. The whiplash is nauseating.

  I pull up the security camera on my phone and check the front door. It’s Isla. I hop up, wiping my damp brow, and go to the door.

  When I open the door, I force a tight-lipped smile, eyebrow raised. “I thought you left. Didn’t Midwest-Mary tell you I didn’t need anything else for the day?”

  Isla, my loyal manager, smiles, crossing her arms. “Yes, I was making calls in the car. Are you okay?”

  I know why she’s asking. I hate being alone. I actively avoid being alone at all costs. Perhaps it’s the reason I have a manager and an assistant. And a boyfriend I don’t even like.

  “I’m fine,” I groan, the lie apparent in my tone, stepping aside to let her in.

  She smiles a smile of triumph and walks past me. “Is it the Sean thing?” she asks, reaching for my hand when I close the door. I pull away before she can reach me.

  Isla’s a touchy-feely person, and I tolerate it when I can. I’m not touchy-feely unless the touch gets me something in return. Letting her hug me only gives something away. And I’m not too fond of that.

  I roll my eyes before walking past her into my kitchen. “I barely know the boy anymore. Not like we kept in touch.” Why would he want to speak to me?

  “Well, I don’t think he’s a boy anymore,” Isla smirks, earning a glare from me.

  Years ago, I had an affair with Sean’s uncle, thrusting my ex into his own with his uncle’s wife. And now they’re back together. They got a happily ever after, and I got a restraining order on the man I fucked behind my boyfriend’s back.

  It serves me right,
right?

  I shiver, running my hand over my goosebump-covered arms, fighting the urge to run to the bathroom to throw up. It’s never safe when someone is in my house. “No, I suppose he isn’t a boy anymore.” I stare at Isla hard, and she swallows slowly.

  Isla and I aren’t friends, as much as she would like for us to be, but at times she’s the closest thing I have to one.

  “Is it him then?” she asks, avoiding my eyes.

  “Francis? No. He’s busy. I know he gets busy.” I don’t believe he’s busy, and I don’t think he missed his flight. My boyfriend, or soon-to-be newest ex, has no backbone. And he’s scared of me. He always has been. He backs down from every fight we have. And that used to be what I wanted, but it isn’t anymore.

  I wave my hand in the air, bored with Francis talk. But Isla shakes her head.

  I need her to get to the point. What him is it? I have a laundry list of hims in my life.

  “Is it the movie? Is it Tristan?”

  At that name, my heart stills.