All Chapters of Hate You, Till I Don't : Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

POV: AveThe announcement was supposed to be exciting.Loud. Dramatic. Flashy, even. Ave had imagined it once or twice — how it would feel if they actually pulled this off. Maybe there’d be a slow-motion gasp, confetti raining from nowhere, a cinematic swell of music behind the words that would change everything.But when the panel chair lifted the mic and said the words, “And the winning team is…”, all Ave felt was static.Her chest tightened as her breath got caught somewhere between hope and fear. Her fingers curled tightly around the hem of her sweatshirt, knuckles whitening. Next to her, Blake stood unnaturally still. Too still. Like if he moved, even a breath, the entire moment would fracture.She didn’t realize she was holding her breath until she tasted copper on her tongue.> “Team 3 — Ave Thompson and Blake Ryker.”Applause exploded like a wave.The auditorium erupted. People clapped, cheered, whistled. Some groups groaned in disappointment. A few teams offered forced smiles

POV: Blake---Blake didn’t expect the email.He hadn’t even been checking for it. The competition was over. Results had been announced. They hadn’t won, but they’d made it to the finals — third place, tied with a robotics team from Abuja. Good enough for pride. Good enough to silence the voices that had once called them a chaotic pair of rivals doomed to combust.Not good enough to change his life.Or so he thought.The email subject read:> RE: Internship Opportunity – MIT Labs Nigeria ExtensionBlake blinked. Then blinked again.He hadn’t applied for anything yet. Not officially. The university reps had talked vaguely about “future support” during the award ceremony, and some professor from Lagos had passed him a business card. But nothing concrete.This — this was real.He clicked it open, his heart already sprinting ahead.---Dear Mr. Blake Madu,Your recent project submission for the National Innovation Circuit caught the attention of our senior mentors at MIT Labs. We are curr

POV: BlakeThe first morning after the results came out felt like waking up in someone else’s life.Blake stared at the ceiling for a full five minutes before he even moved. His room was the same. The sun still filtered through the cracked blinds. His desk still had the same half-drunk mug of cold coffee. His phone was still face-down on the pillow beside him.But everything was different.The competition was over.They’d won.The team group chat had exploded last night — confetti emojis, screaming GIFs, Nia’s all-caps voice messages, and someone (probably Greg) sending a bad Photoshop of the trophy sitting on top of a pile of pizza boxes. Ave had sent a quiet “Thanks, everyone. We did it.” Nothing more.But she had replied.And that alone made Blake’s chest loosen just a little.He rolled onto his side, reaching for the phone. A new message blinked at him from her. Just one line:> Do you want to meet? Just us.Blake’s fingers hovered over the screen for a beat too long. Then he type

POV: BlakeThe campus was nearly deserted.Golden sunlight spilled over the walkways in long ribbons, catching on the empty benches and glinting against the library’s high windows. Summer had officially begun, but Blake’s heart hadn’t caught up yet.He stood by the stone steps outside the east wing, pacing slowly, clutching two chilled bottled drinks. His heart was pounding in a way it hadn’t since the final results were announced. Not from nerves about the project. Or the judges. Or the future.This time, it was all Ave.She had texted him “Let’s talk.”Just that. No punctuation. No emojis. But her name alone on his screen had made his lungs stop working.It had been weeks since the last proper moment between them—since that argument, since the silence, since the accidental brush of fingers when they passed a tablet between them, pretending nothing was wrong. Then came the quiet dinner, the top 2 reveal, the final stage, the win...But not them.Not yet.He heard footsteps and looked

POV: Dual (Ave & Blake)AVEI didn’t expect the last day of summer to feel like this.Not like an ending.More like an opening — a door I’d kept locked in my chest finally giving way.I stood in front of the school’s greenhouse, sunlight soaking into the concrete beneath my feet, watching Blake wrestle with a tangled string of fairy lights he swore would make our “post-finals, no-longer-hating-each-other” party feel less nerdy.He looked ridiculous.And I loved him for it.The words still scared me, even now.Not because they weren’t true — they were, maddeningly so — but because I’d spent so long convincing myself I didn’t want this. Him. Us. That we were built only to clash, not to connect.But somewhere between all the fights and the late-night builds, the near-kisses and the actual ones, the shared panic attacks and tiny moments of silence where everything made sense... I stopped hating him.And I started hoping.“I swear,” Blake muttered, “these lights have it out for me.”“You’r