My father had died because he valued money and prestige more than his own flesh and blood.

Chapter 8

Devlynn

“Hello again, Princess,” his familiar voice hissed in my ear.

Even after all these years, that voice still made my entire body tingle with need and want. I despised myself for it. I should hate Elis. But I didn’t. That made my anger and confusion mix together like an overdone stew.

I turned, my face almost touching his and my heart vibrating even more than it was a moment ago.

Elis’s lips curled into a smile. He looked so smug and sure of himself, something I hated and found immensely attractive. I backed my chair away from him, needing space, needing to breathe. I’d come to this coffee shop down the street from my apartment for some peace, and his smiling face was the furthest from it.

He barked a sardonic laugh that curled through my bloodstream like a spider web and sat down across from me, grin half-cocked and eyes trained on mine.

“What do you want, Elis?” I finally asked, exasperated with the game of cat and mouse we’d been playing. Everything about him pulled me in and made me resentful of his presence at the same time.

“Can’t a guy just say hi to an old friend?”

“Is that what we are? Friends?” I asked, zeroing my eyes in on him.

“Maybe not,” he said, taking a sip of his coffee. “But I want to be.”

“Elis, please stop messing with me. I’ve had a hard couple of weeks.”

“Well, I’ve had a hard couple of years,” he spat, his voice low and laced with anger.

I lowered my head to avoid his face. I knew what my mother had done and how it had impacted his family.

It’d also impacted mine.

After it happened, my parents lived as nothing more than roommates. If they could avoid each other, they did. My father had threatened divorce, which—thanks to their prenup—would have left my mother penniless. She’d begged me to talk to him, to convince him not to go through with it. Her eyes had been wild and flowing with tears. I hadn’t wanted to help her. I’d wanted her to suffer like my father and I had suffered. But at the end of the day, she was my mother, so I’d convinced my father to stay with her—something I now regretted.

“Elis, none of that was my fault.”