"I hate you. If I have to spend another second in your presence I'll shoot myself."

Yeah, that's what he told her. Spewing hate was how he hid what he really felt. Not just from prying eyes, but from himself, too. The signs were all around them, out in the open for anyone to analyse and see what was truly behind his narrowed, loathing eyes.

He was seven when he first met her, but from that moment onward he knew she was dangerous to him. She was six, but she was a hurricane. He was too young then to know about pure love and passionate lust, but his soul could not be fooled at his tender age. He had seen firsthand what chaos trapped inside a woman can cause. The evidence was in his parents. His father was air and his mother was fire. He fueled her flames to the point of destruction. His mother burnt down their home and his father sought alcohol as an escape from the shambles. That warning was engraved in his soul, stealing him from his innocence, so he knew she was meant to be kept behind the line where he caged anything that had the potential to destroy him.

She made it easy for him to begin to despise her. She grew up to be everything he stood against. He fought for the common man and she took her throne with the elites. He did not trust a single person and she broke vows at her earliest convenience. He lived rock and roll and she swayed her hips to mainstream pop. He was black and white and she was an explosion of look-at-me colors. He was dirt poor and she never double checked price tags. He smoked until he felt numb and she yelled to unleash her demons. He was right and she was left. He was the moon and she was the sun.

There was no way polar opposites could find a way to each other. He was certain of that; he inhaled that and exhaled it back into the atmosphere. He was safe from her—until her heart was first broken. He shouldn't have cared at all. He didn't even think her capable of tears due to her lack of heart, but at the first sign of her glistening eyes the walls of steel he had built wanted to come down. Her faith in the one she loved was shattered to smithereens when the list of girls her boyfriend had slept with came to light. He wanted to laugh until his sides hurt at her misery, but he knew deep in his bones that she did not deserve the betrayal. She was stupid to have fallen for the corrupt system of love, but he could also see the courage it took to make that choice, not matter how foolish it had been. So when he should have let her go, he reached for her hand and told her one day she would find someone who only breathed for her.

A truce was nowhere near in the making, he made sure of that. Just because he had allowed himself the second of sympathy did not mean he was her friend or that he cared about her. She was still an infectious canker in the knit he hung out with. They were his people, never her. He continued to speak his mind and she continued to disagree. He continued to make fun of her shrill voice and she continued to make fun of his deadbeat roots. He yelled and she yelled back. Everything was as it should—until she started dating another fucking dimwit that only wanted her for sex. She was fifteen, naive despite her insistence otherwise. She had had one other boyfriend that had a hundred girlfriends during their relationship; she was not equipped with the experience of detecting assholes. So what does he do when he finds out her new boyfriend wants to use her and dump her like trash? He beats him black and purple and warns him about showing up again.

She is angry, sad, embarrassed, and confused for the following month, but he continues to fight her to hide his deed at maintaining her unbroken heart.

Their years continue to increase and she gets more beautiful with every passing one. She becomes a woman right in front of him, with luscious, vanilla-scented hair that cascades down her back in smooth waves, piercing green eyes that can cause a war in one blink, creamy, tan skin that glitters in the sun, a figure with more curves than anyone could know what to do with, and plump, pink lips that part to release minty venom. Even in physical features they are on opposite ends of the spectrum. She resembles that of mythological goddesses and he is rugged and sharp like the no-good-for-nothing punks children are warned about becoming. She is not his type right off the bat—until she stands under the right light and suddenly she is all he can see. She slithered her way into his unsuspecting dreams, looking at him underneath her thick lashes, calling out to him with a sensual whisper that set his skin on fire. Night after night he sees her in his sleep, wanting him, touching him, that he can't stand reality. He would never go anywhere near her in consciousness, but in his dreams he can't keep his hands off of her. He swears it's a phase, the automatic response a man feels when a beautiful woman is beside him. So, of course, he looks to his drugs and other, more tolerable women to forget her.

If he could go back in time and warn himself of the impending disaster he was creating for himself, he would do it regardless of what fleeting moments of pleasure he was given. It all started one hot, sticky afternoon. Everyone else was gone, being less bitter, less angry, and more willing to enjoy their life than he was. Those days she, too, was as angry with the world; it was hardly a surprise to see her stroll into their group's spot and take a place beside him. It was quiet between them. That anomaly should have tipped him off, but he went with it. He could get use to their silence—until silence blurred into his hands on her, her lips on him, and their bodies pressed tightly together. If asked, he would like to say she came on to him, that she snaked her fingers into his hair and tugged with such need first, but, really, it was an explosion years in the making. It could have ended up in bloody murder or in aggressive sex. And with the way he sunk into her and the way she made his knees shake, it could still go either way. That was the thing about them, he was air and she was fire.

No strings attached was what they were aiming for, but they overshot and landed in a hot, heap of limbs on his bed. He would roll off of her and she would roll into his side, his arms holding her sacred, naked body into his heaving chest until they drifted off to uninterrupted, blissful sleep. Little by little she engraved her name in his walls of steel and he let her. There was no other name he ever wanted to hear, speak, or know. He wanted it to only be her for the rest of time—then he caught himself wishing for that. He could not let her move into his life like he had put up the place for rent. He never leased. He was a nomad, never staying in one place for too long. She would not change that. She would not steal his heart from him and get away with owning it. He owned himself. It had been that way for years and it was not about to change. So, of course, he ditched her one cold night when they were supposed to meet under the stars and found body heat elsewhere. Word got out about his list of girls he left behind. Just like she had come into his life, he had expected her to leave like a hurricane, smashing everything in sight with her raging power, but she left as undetected as the bite marks he left on the inside of her thighs.

Fate was a cunning thing. There was a reason why she was the chaos in his life. She was there to keep him alive, to keep the world spinning on its axis. Three days into her departure and he found himself missing her vibrant colors, the sound of her loud laugh, her sharp intellect, and her take-no-prisoners attitude. She was his complete opposite, but she was his equal. Without her around he found himself unable to breathe. He went on for a week with whatever shreds of oxygen he could steal, but found himself crawling to her front door, ready to demand what was his. Seeing her again was like seeing her for the first time in his lifetime; she was breathtaking and blinding. She zapped all the energy out of his bones and stored it for herself. When he told her he was sorry for being careless with her feelings, she remained silent. As it were, it caused a flash of fury inside of him.

"Do you think this is easy for me? I hate you," he told her. "If I have to spend another second in your presence I'll shoot myself, but somehow our friends want you back."

There. That was all he needed to say. He could walk out of her bedroom and never have to think about her again. But just that thought, just the thought of never looking into her green eyes and seeing the waves of pleasure he gave her, to never hear her call his name in soft, adoring tones, was enough to make him swallow his pride. He pushed his walls down and said, "No. Actually, that's all wrong. I fucking love you," he muttered to her with shaking hands. "I think I always have and I've never known what to do with it. It's always being easier to hate you than love you because I knew there was no chance in hell you could ever love me back. And that's fine. All this time holding you, kissing you, having you was enough. And it was the realest I have ever been."

She let him walk out of her bedroom. Silence had rung for far too long before he did himself the favor of leaving. He wanted to retrace his steps, invent a time machine to take it back, but for once he had to let someone cross the cage of restraint he had built to contain the world. He did not want to be afraid of vulnerability. Not with her, at least. He had meant every word he had given her, but she did not want him. It was inevitable, really. She was destruction trapped in human flesh—but, oh, it had been worth being damaged by her. He would remember her as his first love and first heartbreak. He did not know how long it would take for the pieces to come back together, or if they would even look the same after being fingerprinted by her, but that was fine. One day it would just being a bittersweet memory.

When she walked into their spot in a blur of beauty and wrath, he forgot how to breathe. He knew he would have to come up with a strategy on how to survive her presence—until she grabbed his face, cast her piercing eyes into his, and said, "It's always easier to hate the one that can destroy you. And love, for us, has always been our weakness."

Her kiss was fire and he fueled it with his tongue.