🥊 Hate or Fate 💕 {Enemies to Lovers}

.49.

The last time I was in Elijah's condo, he punched his best friend in the face. Gray's eyebrow was healing up nicely, but the rift that the fight caused was still a festering wound in their friendship.

It took us forty extra minutes in the drizzly Seattle rain to find a place to park Rebecca's car, and because we had to park far away, we were going to have to carry my stuff five blocks back to her car. 

It wasn't the distance, or the chilly weather, or the trudging walk over slick pavement and steep hills that bothered me, though. It was going back to that place. 

Rebecca silently reached out and held my hand in the elevator while we watched the floors tick by on the digital screen. My stomach acids clashed with the inertia of our ascent, bringing me dangerously close to vomiting up the nerves in my throat. The smooth jazz playing in the background was grinding on my nerves. 

"Holy hell!" Rebecca exclaimed as we stepped off the elevator and onto the plush carpets lining the hallway. "You guys lived in a really nice building."

"I think Elijah inherited his condo from his grandparents because the average age of our neighbors was, like, seventy," I stared at the innocuous tan walls. "But his family owns it, outright."

"Lucky guy," she snorted disdainfully. "Must be nice. All I ever inherited from my family was facial hair and a bubble butt." 

Wealth inequity aside, we were nearing the dreaded door and my stomach was churning like a power mixer. I counted the sconces on the way, a habit I picked up when I lived there. 

Trembling, I took my keys out of my purse to fiddle with the ring. 

It felt cathartic to carefully isolate and slide the thing off once and for all. Literally and symbolically, the separation was almost complete.

Slotting the jagged metal into the lock ratcheted up my pulse. 

The bolt released easily, and I cracked the door to inhale a burst of Elijah's cologne, and laundry detergent, and something very musky.

Not just musky, it was human sweat mingled with the funk of unwashed sheets, and unspeakable stains settling into grungy surfaces and the heady scent of a (very recent) passionate interlude.

The condo was dark, but it wasn't empty. Somewhere in the distance, I could hear nineties R&B music drifting over the buzz of a ceiling fan. Rebecca froze at my side as I kept pushing the door in.

"Wait, something's not right," she caught my wrist and wrinkled her nose. "We should call him to make sure he's gone."

I dug my phone out of my purse and hit the call button to hear Elijah's aggressively loud ringtone trill in the background. It always played the Husky fight song. A tribute to his glory days.

No one picked up.

I looked at Rebecca, perplexed. 

Technically, we were trespassing. She shrugged and I tried calling Elijah's phone again.

A scuffle came from the direction of our old bedroom, which immediately got our attention.

Rebecca clasped my shoulders and yanked me into her cleavage as if trying to protect me (or shield her boobs from a ghost).

"Hold on babe," Elijah's voice drifted through the flimsy walls.

The door to his bedroom was yanked inward, illuminating the ridges of his bare chest in the dim light of the hall. His eyes went from molten amethyst to slightly muddled when Elijah spied Rebecca and I huddled in the doorframe.