Deven stared at the ink, the slight smudge on the last word where her pinky had accidently dragged on the paper. “I heard my parent’s arguing one night,” she read, blinking back tears. “And it scared me because I had never heard my dad cry. They didn’t know I was listening, and I didn’t hear everything. But what I did hear was about my sister. He mentioned he wished she was never born because she was messing up the family since she didn’t belong to him. And my mom cursed him out and told him she never wanted to see him again. He apologized and said he didn’t mean it. That he was just upset. And I hated how my mom was being so selfish because my dad didn’t deserve that. He was a good man and he loved all of us very much. But he left and I was scared I would never see him again. But thank God I did. Maybe that’s how I try to ease the pain now. Thinking maybe, just maybe, I will see him again like before. That is why it’s so hard to let him go. I just wish there was something that I could do this time to bring him back,” she finished, looking up. Felicia didn’t comment, but Deven could tell it wasn’t exactly the core memory she was expecting.

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-one

She felt like shit.

Deven lay quiet in the bed, listening to Paul’s heavy breathing as he slept in the peaceful bliss of his orgasm. She didn’t even know when or how they’d even made it to the bedroom. Or how many times she had climaxed from the kitchen and the hall. All she knew was that her body was pulsing, whether from the wild sex or the guilt, she couldn’t say which.

Her cell phone rang, loud and distant from somewhere in the house. It could’ve been Justin. Deven shut her eyes against the harsh reality and tried to quell another bout of rising remorse. What was she supposed to tell him? How could she face him? And poor Paul. What did that mean for their friendship now? Complications, she surmised with a frown. None of which she had time to deal with. What was she thinking? Of course, she hadn’t been. Not with her head anyway.

Paul stirred next to her and Deven shifted to watch him. He looked adorable when he slept, those pink lips of his partly ajar and turned up at the corners as if he were smiling in his solace. He’d fallen asleep immediately after round three (or was it four?) so he lay naked with the covers tangled in his legs.