🥊 Hate or Fate 💕 {Enemies to Lovers}

.68.

**Four weeks later**

I never, ever, thought I'd say it, but the anniversary of my dad's death started out a surprisingly good day. 

Not only did my boyfriend find the perfect way to honor the occasion, but he also planned activities to keep my mind off the sadness that usually overshadowed everything else. 

He me to my father's grave to surprise me with a string quartet he hired to play a selection of Beatles hits, including my Dad's favorite song, Golden Slumbers. Gray quietly held me while I cried and he waited while I placed fresh roses in the vase beside my Dad's headstone. 

To draw me out of my sadness, he asked questions about my Dad. He even managed to coax a smile out of me when I told Gray about the time my Dad dressed as Santa Claus and accidentally lit the living room on fire because he knocked over an advent candle. No serious damage was done to the house, thankfully, but he ended up having to buy the charred remains of the Santa suit that he rented. My Dad wore that tattered red and white singed suit every year after that just to 'get his money's worth'. 

Then, Gray took me to Café Vita where we shared coffee and buttery pastries with Rebecca and Bart. 

After that, my friends escorted me on a personal tour of the Seattle Arm Museum (or, the S.A.M., to us locals), which happened to be one of my favorite galleries in the city. Bart and Rebecca peeled away from us somewhere around the sculpture wing to give Gray and me some time alone. We wandered around for hours discussing our favorite artists and blissfully in love. 

From there, we went downtown to the Pink Door. The famous burlesque restaurant on the waterfront was infamously hard to get a reservation at, but not for Gray. 

He somehow scored us one of the best tables in the place so we could enjoy the DJ spinning a live soundtrack for a troupe of sensual male and female dancers while we dined on mouthwatering Italian food.

We were just tucking into our meals when a familiar voice curdled our happiness on the spot. 

"Isla!" The hairs on my neck prickled like needles.

"Eli, what are you doing here?" Gray's low, protective snarl made my tummy knot.

"Nice to see you too, brother," Elijah's sickeningly confident smile made my heart sink. "Isla, don't you look lovely? Don't go calling the cops now, I had no idea you'd be here to violate your little, order of protection."

I offered him a wan expression.

Elijah's failure to understand why I reported his assault was repugnant, and, technically, he wasn't supposed to be within fifty feet of me. 

The last thing I wanted, however, was to cause a big emotional showdown with my hateful ex in a public place.

I eyed the perky young blonde woman on ELijah's arm to realize that she wasn't the same woman he was living with a few weeks ago. Gross. 

"We're not interrupting anything, are we?" Elijah stretched his mouth even wider still and bared his gleaming incisors. "What's the occasion?"

The cruel glint in his glassy eyes said he knew exactly what day it was.

We dated for almost five years and Elijah used to call this my 'hibernation period' because I would barricade myself in my room and try not to think about my dad's untimely death.

Elijah's immaculately tailored outfit didn't quite cover the bulging cast on his hand. It also couldn't hide his bloated face, or the waxy sheen of his skin, or the glowing red rings around his irises. It was pretty obvious that he was high on something.