Chapter 3

Eve’s POV

I woke to the smell of tea and the distant sound of someone rummaging through my kitchen cabinets.

For a moment I just lay there, wrapped in the blanket Devin must have draped over me at some point during the night. The couch cushions were still warm and the pillow still smelled faintly of the cologne I had given him for his birthday three years ago and that he apparently still wore. I made a mental note to buy him more. The man was loyal to a fault, even to his grooming products.

The morning light was pale and thin, filtering through the windows in that quiet way light does when the city has not yet woken up enough to fill the streets with noise. I pushed myself upright and found Devin in my kitchen, moving around with the comfortable ease of someone who had done this a hundred times before. Which he had. He knew where I kept my mugs. He knew I took my tea with exactly half a teaspoon of honey and a splash of milk. He knew I needed two minutes of silence before I could form coherent sentences in the morning.

He turned when he heard me stir and held out a steaming mug. "You're predictable," he said.

"Good morning to you too."

"I made eggs and toast. The bread was questionable but I toasted it aggressively enough to kill anything that might have been growing."

I wrapped my hands around the mug and let the warmth seep into my fingers. "What time did you get up?"

"I didn't really sleep." He shrugged, already turning back to the stove. "I T ook a few showers instead to clear my head."

I nodded and did not give it a second thought. Devin was a restless sleeper. He had been that way since college, when exam stress would have him pacing the dorm halls at three in the morning. The showers were just his way of dealing with a bad night. I had shared hotel rooms with him enough times over the years to know his habits, and a midnight shower was far from the strangest thing he did.

What I did not notice was the way his eyes flickered away from me when he said it. What I did not catch was the almost imperceptible tension in his shoulders, the way his grip tightened briefly on the spatula before he relaxed it again. I was too tired and too heartbroken to read between the lines, and Devin had spent seven years making sure I never learned to read between them with him.

So I just sipped my tea and let him cook for me, I was grateful in the uncomplicated way I had always been grateful for him. He was my best friend. My safe harbor. The one man in the world who had never looked at me like I was a target or a prize or a stepping stone to something better. He was gay, which meant he was also the one man in the world who would never complicate things with feelings I could not return. At least that was what I believed.

The tea was perfect. Half a teaspoon of honey, splash of milk and steeped for exactly four minutes. I had not even seen him check the time.

We ate at the small table by the window, the city stretching out below us in shades of gray and gold. The eggs were fluffy. The toast was, as promised, aggressively toasted. We ate in comfortable silence for a while, and then Devin set down his fork and looked at me with an expression that made my stomach tighten.

"There's something I need to tell you."

My mind immediately jumped to the worst conclusions. Delphine was pregnant. Ambrose had already moved on. The wedding vendors were refusing to refund my deposits. "If this is about the cake tasting, I already canceled it."

"It's not about the cake." He paused. "It's about your father."

My father was not a topic that came up often between us. Devin knew what Gerald Lovelace was. He knew about the years of neglect after my mother died, the eighteen month timeline from funeral to remarriage, the way my father had let Delphine and her mother walk into our home and treat me like furniture they were waiting to replace. He knew all of it, and he had spent years biting his tongue because I asked him to.

"What about my father?"

Devin leaned back in his chair. His eyes were steady on mine, and I recognized the careful patience in them. It was the same look he got before he delivered bad news to a boardroom. "Do you remember last year, when I mentioned that your father's business dealings looked a little too complicated for comfort?"

"Vaguely."

"I wasn't vague about it. You just didn't want to hear it."

Fair point. My father's business was the last thing I wanted to discuss over brunch, or ever. "What is it, Devin?"

"Gerald is in significant debt. And the person he owes the money to is Martin Lovelace."

The world tilted. I set my mug down very carefully, afraid I might drop it. Martin Lovelace was my mother's cousin. He had been circling the family fortune since before I was born, positioning himself as the rightful heir if anything ever happened to the bloodline. He was the man Delphine had probably called last night after I walked out of the cottage. I believe he was the reason my mother had written that clause into her will in the first place.

"How much debt?" I asked.

"Enough that he cannot pay it back without your inheritance."

My stomach turned over. "So my own father has been betting against me. He owes money to the man who stands to inherit everything if I fail, and he just conveniently let me waste a year planning a wedding to a man who was never going to marry me."

"Your father might not have known about Ambrose."

"He might not have. But he knew about the deadline, and he never warned me." I stared at my half eaten eggs and felt the betrayal settle into my bones like a chill. "He never once told me he was in trouble. He never asked for help. He just let me walk toward the edge of a cliff while he stood there holding hands with the people who wanted me to fall."

Devin did not say anything. He just reached across the table and covered my hand with his, his palm warm and steady. It was such a small gesture, but it anchored me in a way I could not explain.

"I have thirty days," I said, my voice quieter than I meant it to be. "Thirty days to get married or I lose my mother's whole legacy. Every single thing she built all goes to Martin."

"We will figure it out." He said it with absolute certainty, like it was a fact as solid as the table between us.

"How? Ambrose is gone. My father is compromised. The entire board is probably already placing bets on my failure. I have no options left, Devin."

His jaw tightened. "There is always an option."

"Name one."

He was quiet for a moment. The morning light caught the edge of his jaw and I noticed, fleetingly, that he looked exhausted. The kind of exhausted that went deeper than a single sleepless night. I wanted to ask him what was really going on behind those steady eyes, but I was too afraid of the answer.

"There's something else I need to tell you," he said. "About your father's finances. The debt to Martin is just the surface. I have been digging into this for a few months now, and I think there are things Gerald has been hiding from you for a very long time. Things that go back to when your mother was still alive."

I went cold. "What about my father?"

Devin looked at me and I could tell he was holding back.

"It's worse than you think," he said quietly. "And I need you to be ready for it."