The Years We Called It Hate

They’ve been enemies for as long as anyone can remember. Zoey is playful, kind, and harmless-looking, the sort of girl teachers adore and classmates underestimate. Nick is controlled, serious, and quietly brilliant, hiding a kindness he never lets her see. They’ve lived two houses apart since kindergarten, their rivalry born from chalk-drawn sidewalks, childish pranks, and a refusal to back down. Now in high school, their war has only grown quieter and sharper. The pranks are gone, but the tension remains, carried in glances, words wrapped in politeness, and a history neither of them knows how to let go of. Forced together by circumstance, they must confront what their rivalry has been hiding all along: not hatred, but something far more dangerous. A slow-burn enemies-to-lovers story about growing up, holding on, and the strange ways love can begin where it was never meant to exist.