My best friend had broken up and gotten back together with her boyfriend eighteen times.
I hadn’t lost my mind yet, but her brother had.
He cut her allowance on the spot.
“Babe,” she sobbed into the phone, “can you come with me to beg my brother? We’ll kneel together. If he sees how sincere we are, he’ll definitely soften up.”
I was in the middle of a ranked match when she called.
My mage was hiding in a patch of brush, waiting to ambush the enemy jungler, and I didn’t even blink as I sent him straight back to the fountain.
The only thing that wavered was my soul.
“Hold on,” I said flatly. “Why am I kneeling too?”
There was a guilty pause on the other end.
Then my best friend, Summer Carter, answered with absolute confidence.
“Because if it’s just me, my brother might stay mad. But if you come too? He’ll definitely forgive me.”
I stared at my phone in silence.
Somewhere in this city, wealth and delusion were clearly living under the same roof.
Summer and I had been friends since high school. She was a spoiled rich girl with too much charm, too much freedom, and absolutely no sense of self-preservation. The greatest suffering she had ever experienced in this life was romantic suffering.
And unfortunately for all of us, she was deeply, hopelessly, dramatically tangled up with one person.
Ethan Brooks.
Her on-again, off-again disaster of a boyfriend.
They had known each other since childhood. They grew up in the same circle, went to the same schools, attended the same parties, and fought like sworn enemies for most of their lives.
Summer was sunshine. Loud, playful, dramatic, always smiling.
Ethan was the opposite. Moody. Sharp. The kind of guy who looked at people like he was already bored of them.
As kids, everyone adored Summer and avoided Ethan.
Summer had once tried to include him. Every time another kid approached her, Ethan would get mad. Eventually she got mad too. After that, they spent years sniping at each other like two beautiful lunatics.
Then, in senior year, Ethan’s family went under.
He disappeared overnight.
They didn’t see each other again until two years ago, when Summer ran into him at a club.
Since then, they had been locked in a cycle of attraction, chaos, breakups, reunions, crying, cursing, kissing, and then starting all over again.
An epic love story, if you were deeply unwell.
I leaned back in my chair and rubbed my forehead.
“So what did he do this time?”
Summer sniffled. “I was going to Europe to recover from heartbreak. I really was. I had already packed. I was literally driving to the airport. And then Ethan chased after me.”
“That sounds familiar.”
“I was determined to break up for real this time. I was. But then he got a tongue piercing.”
I closed my eyes.
“Summer.”
“It looked really good, Chloe.”
Of course it did.
And just like that, the airport was forgotten and the hotel was booked.
I let the silence stretch long enough for her to feel some shame. It didn’t work.
“Are you mad at me?” she asked carefully.
I wasn’t.
Summer could do all kinds of ridiculous things and I never stayed angry at her. If anything, I just wished that instead of hanging herself emotionally from the same tree eighteen times, she’d go pick eighteen new ones.
“I’m not mad,” I said. “Just spiritually exhausted.”
She laughed weakly, then finally got to the point.
“My brother cut my allowance in half. Chloe, I only have ten thousand a month now. How am I supposed to live like this?”
I opened my banking app and stared at the number on my screen.
Eighty-eight dollars and twenty-three cents.
For a moment, I wanted to ask God if I too could experience the pain of being unable to survive on ten thousand dollars a month.
Instead I asked, “Why is your brother this mad?”
Summer’s voice dropped to a whisper.
“Every time Ethan and I fight, I ask my brother to ruin Ethan’s company.”
I sat there for a second.
Then another.
“Summer.”
“And every time Ethan and I get back together, I regret it immediately.”
“Sis,” I said honestly, “the fact that your brother hasn’t buried you in the backyard means he has the patience of a saint.”
“Will you still come with me?”
“No.”
“I’ll split the money he gives me with you.”
I sat up straighter.
For friendship, of course. Definitely friendship.
“When are we going?”
“Tomorrow morning. He’s flying back from London.”
I was quiet for a beat.
Then I said with all the dignity poverty had left me, “For you, babe, I would cross mountains of knives and seas of fire.”
The next morning, Summer pulled up outside my apartment in her Maserati.
I climbed into the passenger seat of the rich girl chariot and spent the whole drive thinking about what kneeling position looked most graceful.
Summer, meanwhile, was radiant with confidence.
“The second my brother walks in, we start crying,” she said. “Then we throw ourselves at his legs and beg. Easy.”
I turned to look at her.
“Are you serious?”
“My brother looks cold, but he’s soft-hearted.”
I nearly laughed.
Her brother wasn’t soft-hearted. Her brother was the kind of man who made strangers instinctively step out of his way. Women stayed back. Men stayed farther back. He had one of those faces that looked expensive and dangerous at the same time.
And I hadn’t seen him in three years.
Still, I was mentally rehearsing my most respectable kneeling posture when something strange flashed across my vision.
Lines of text.
Like live comments floating in the air.
I blinked.
They were still there.
I almost laughed.
If the crown prince finds out his sister dragged his future wife into this, her allowance is definitely going straight to zero.
Ha. Just thinking about it is enough to make her brother mad all over again.
He’s been secretly in love for more than ten years. He finally comes back and the first thing he sees is his little sister and her best friend kneeling in the living room like they’re filming a melodrama.
If he doesn’t fall harder, who will?
First time he met her in high school, he wanted to say she was beautiful. Opened his mouth and said she didn’t look human.
Foreign-language system fully upgraded now. Back then he was basically a tragedy.
I stared ahead.
What.
Future wife?
Crown prince?
Who were they talking about?
Before I could make sense of any of it, Summer slammed on the brakes outside her family’s mansion.
And just like that, disaster began.