Page 106 of Loving the Tormentor

Another laugh leaves me, my cheeks heating. "I don't know. Surely, you've experienced it. You guys have known him forever."

They eye each other for a few seconds.

"Not really," Alex says softly. "We love him, but he's always been the problematic friend. His caring side comes out so rarely that I'm not even sure when the last time we saw it was."

"For me, it was when my dad died," Ella admits. "He took care of me then. But that was two years ago."

Peach shrugs. "I don't know, I just argue with him. Always with love, though."

We all laugh, but they still look at me expectantly.

"Okay, um," I start thinking. "He cooks a lot, which is…a work in progress."

"Whoa, whoa, slow down. Hecooksfor you?" Ella says with visible excitement.

I nod as butterflies flutter in my stomach at the thought.

"That guy hatescooking," Peach insists. "What have you done to him?"

Biting my lip, I shrug. "I didn't ask for anything. He said he wants to get better at it."

"What else, what else?" Alex giggles.

"Uh, we practice the violin together. He takes the time to help me improve."

Peach slaps Ella's thigh. "Evelyn must be dying of jealousy."

My heart drops, not liking hearing her name. I know her and Achilles used to sleep together, and there's no other way to put this: I'm a jealous girl.

Every Monday, I see her at rehearsals, eyeing me while she talks with Achilles. I haven’t shown him that side of me, but I'm silently fuming while I watch them.

"Did they ever date?" I ask, trying and failing to act aloof.

"Achilles doesn't date," Ella replies automatically before it hits her. "Well, he didn't use to."

"There's no easy way to say this. Evelyn is the groupie who got lucky because they fucked more than once. But no matter how many times she asked him to help her practice, to give her advice…he never did. It used to annoy him how insistent she was about it. He stopped seeing her when she went through his music sheets to see if he'd composed anything. But then he took her to his room at the start-of-year party. I don't know; that man is complicated, Nyx."

I remember seeing her on her knees, with that terrarium between them, when I exited the bathroom.

"I don't think he's complicated," Alex chimes in. She looks at me with shining eyes. "I think he hadn't found the right person."

But am I the right person for him? Because I'm worried about what's to come. That not everything is going to go the way he wants it to. And Achilles is a dangerous man when things don't go his way.

"Next thing you know, Achilles is going to come on quadruple dates with us," Ella squeaks, eyes sparkling. "Changed man."

"I think he'd rather be thrown in shark-infested waters." Peach snorts.

Our laughs are cut off by all our phones beeping at the same time, and a coldness falls over the group.

"Ugh, come on," Peach groans. "Hermes has been relentless lately."

The last post was something about Evelyn, and how her brand-new relationship with one of the law postgrads, Calvin Park, gave social-climbing energy. It made no sense to me. Evelyn is rich. Calvin is rich. They're all the same to me.

"Who wants to check?" Alex asks shyly. "Because I don't have the strength."

Ella and I are both on it, Peach following a few seconds later.

"It's not that bad," I say at first glance.