How to Kiss Your Enemy
Amanda Ashby
Copyright © 2019 by Amanda Ashby
All rights reserved.
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.
Edited by Christina Phillips
Copy Edited by Serena Clarke
Proofread by Amy Hart @amyhartproofreading
Cover Design by Barry Holt
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Epilogue
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Acknowledgments
About the Author
1
It wasn’t that Via Mackenzie hated nature. She liked it just fine from a distance, where she couldn’t get eaten, stung, or have her hair messed up by turbo-booster-strength wind.
Unfortunately, her freakishly sporty parents shared none of her sentiments.
“Come on, Via. I told Libby we’d be down at the lake by nine,” her mom said while doing a complicated stretching ritual. “You don’t want to miss out on canoeing, do you?”
As it happened, that was exactly what Via wanted to miss out on.
She knew it. Her mom knew it. And she was pretty sure every fish in the lake knew it too.
Via slumped her excellent posture to mimic fatigue and discreetly scanned the grassed area of Camp Domingo. More like Camp Doom. It was a collection of primitive cabins with no Wi-Fi or screens, and beds made of concrete and rocks, buried at the base of a Southern California forest overlooking a lake. All of which was two hours from her hometown of Cricket Bay.
They’d been coming here every summer for the last ten years, and her parents always said it was the perfect way to prepare her for life. Via was pretty sure it was the perfect way to be killed in an unspecified sporting disaster.
“Can’t I have a day off?”
“You cannot.” Her mom finished with the stretching routine and folded her arms. “And who are you looking for?”
“No one,” she said, then inwardly kicked herself. “I mean nothing.”
It was kind of true, since for the last two weeks all her efforts had been to avoid someone, not to actually find them. So really she was looking for negative space. Anywhere her nemesis, Hudson Trent, wasn’t.
Oh, and for the record, thanks to all the running and avoiding, she hadn’t even been forced to hack the health monitor app her mom had insisted the whole family wear while they were away.
Still, it was almost over.
This afternoon Hudson’s father was coming to collect him and take him away. Not that he should have even been at the camp. His aunt and her family had been coming to Camp Doom for years, but this was the first time he’d joined them.
It was both unprecedented and unappreciated.
Still, she’d spent the last two years of high school avoiding him, so this was just business as usual.
“I hope you’re not trying to sneak off and game.” Her mom narrowed her eyes. “Most of the year I let you stay glued to that computer and in return, all I ask is that for one month in summer you step out into the fresh air. Back in—”
“Mom, you seriously think you’re going to win her over with the whole ‘back in my day’ speech?” Zac sauntered out of their shared cabin and winked at her. Via gave him a reluctant nod.
She adored her twin brother, but it was irking to watch him move effortlessly between their parents’ love of nature and sport, and her own preference for real coffee, science, and comfortable libraries. Plus, while she had dark curly hair, was five foot three on a good day, and had boring gray eyes, Zac had amazing thick blond hair, blue eyes (that twinkled. Seriously.) and was already six-foot tall, with the promise of more to come.
“Thanks for the great parenting advice.” Their dad appeared behind Zac, his eyes fixating on their mom, who’d started stretching her legs. “Looking good, Jen.”
Their mom blushed, and Via and Zac let out a matching groan. Their parents were ridiculously loved up and thought it was perfectly okay to check each other out. In public. More importantly, in front of them.
Via blamed all the nature.
“You’ve probably got a three-minute window to get out of here,” Zac said in a stage whisper. “Unless there’s something you want to tell your awesome older brother?”
“You’re older by twenty-one minutes,” she reminded him out of habit. “And I’ll take a hard pass on that, thanks.” Zac’s inability to keep a secret was the stuff of family legends.
But he was right. Their dad had reached their mom and was affectionately kissing her. She had two minutes, or three tops, if they were being particularly gross. She gave Zac a quick nod and hurried away.
All she had to do was wait until quarter past nine. Once her parents were safely on the lake, they wouldn’t return until lunch, leaving her free and clear.
A familiar voice rang out, and she caught a flash of green in the corner of her eye. She ducked behind a trashcan and peered around it to see the villain himself.
Hudson was talking to one of his little cousins and was facing out toward the lake. His legs were tanned, and his brown hair had been cut short since school had broken up for the summer. He’d also grown taller, broader, and the other day she’d seen that a hint of stubble brushing his chin.
But a leopard couldn’t change its spots.
On the inside, he was still the same guy who’d sabotaged her eighth-grade science fair project and humiliated her in front of the entire school. What hurt the most was they hadn’t even been enemies. They’d been friends and—
Nope. Not thinking about that.
She stayed low and scurried off in the other direction. In the last two weeks she’d discovered multiple places to stay out of his way. Because hiding was so much easier than having to face him.
