She held it up, eyebrows raised, and I shrugged. “I told Mara comfortable but sexy,” I said, suddenly unsure.
She pulled off my HELL’S KITCHEN shirt and put on the set, top and bottom. She looked down at herself and gave a little, satisfied hum. "They're perfect," she said, and the way she said it made my chest hurt. She curled up on the bed, knees to her chest, towel turban slowly sliding off her head, and patted the space beside her.
I got in, still naked, and let her tuck herself into the crook of my arm. The sheets were cool, the air outside the window sharp enough to bite, but under the blankets it was pure body heat. She traced lines on my chest with her fingers, lazy and aimless, and for a while, neither of us said anything.
"Are you happy?" she asked, finally, voice so small I almost didn't hear it.
The question shocked me because it had never occurred to me to check. I'd spent so many years hungry, so many more years angry, that the idea of contentment was foreign, like waking up in someone else's skin. But lying there, with her pressed to me and the echo of her laugh still in my bones, I realized I was. I was fucking ecstatic. I was terrified.
I turned and kissed the top of her head, breathing in the smell of her hair, the clean edge of it. "I'm not just happy," I said. "I'm ruined for anything else."
She laughed, but it was a soft sound, and I felt her relax all at once, every muscle going liquid in my arms.
We slept that way—her heartbeat in my ribs, my wings folded in around us, the cat a warm weight at our feet.
CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN
Annie
The next few weeks spilled out in ways I never could have predicted: a collage of sun-drenched mornings, midnight snacks, and sex that got so good it was almost boring how often we ended up on the floor, the countertop, or the front seat of the GTO.
The days stopped keeping themselves separate. I learned the sound of Samiel’s walk, the way the floorboards groaned under his clawed feet when he was being deliberate, even, in his attempt to sound less like a beast and more like a boyfriend.
Was that what he was? My boyfriend? My fiancé? My… lover?
I learned the cat’s routines, which were as precise and occult as any demon: Fluoxetine liked a spoon of cream at dawn, and exactly two cubes of ice in her water dish or else she’d drag the dish to the bedroom and dump it on my socks, a warning shot across the bow. I learned I loved waking up before sunrise, loved it so much it made my chest ache, because there was a blinding, still blue to the world at that hour. And every time I rolledover, there was Samiel, looking like he’d been waiting for me to acknowledge his existence since time began.
It was domestic, but not boring. Samiel alternated between treating every day like a honeymoon and every night like a wrestling match. We cooked together in the kitchen. Sometimes I’d find a recipe on my phone and he’d scowl at it, then make it from memory, better than the photo in the app. He had a truly perverse love of breakfast casseroles—like, Midwestern church potluck level—and an actual knack for sourdough that I found almost offensive. His hands were big enough to knead three loaves at once. The first time I saw him braid a challah, I wanted to fuck him on the kitchen counter, and then I did, and then the only real problem was picking the dough out of our hair and from under my nails before the bread went in the oven.
We went to town sometimes, but never for long. The world outside felt less real, less concrete, than the one we’d made for ourselves. The first time we went to the grocery store together, he spent the entire trip glowering at the other customers, like he was daring the senior citizens in the produce aisle to challenge his right to buy spinach. I made a game of it, seeing how many times I could get him to laugh in public before someone called the manager. By the time we got to the checkout line, he was red-faced from trying to stifle his laughter, and I was heated with the rush of being able to undo him so completely, so easily.
One Saturday morning about four weeks in, Samiel drove into town. He’d gotten weirdly obsessed with the farmer’s market—maybe it was the way the produce stands looked like offerings to a minor god, or the fact that every time he went, he picked up gossip about the demon and human sides of town and came back smugger than a cat in sunshine. I watched him load up the GTO with empty baskets and every reusable bag we owned, then kissed him goodbye, tasting the anticipation on his skin.
“Don’t start any fights with the vendors,” I warned, and he just grinned, promising nothing.
He was barely gone ten minutes before the doorbell rang.
I froze. There was no reason for anyone to show up—no deliveries scheduled, no neighbors who’d ever come closer than the property line, not even an HOA dweeb with a bad attitude and a fresh stack of warnings. I padded barefoot to the window, peeking through the slit in the blinds.
It was Seth.
I recognized him instantly, even with the new mustache and the dumb black tie. I’d blocked his number, never once replied to the DMs or the “hey you up?” emails, but somehow he’d found me out here on the absolute edge of the void, where even the cell reception had to be paid for in blood. I watched him shuffle his feet on the front step, then check his phone, then look up at the house like he half-expected it to bite him. He was carrying—no, this was unreal—a fucking bouquet of gas station sunflowers, already starting to wilt at the tips.
I thought about hiding. I could have bolted for the mudroom, texted Samiel to come home, or even just waited for Seth to leave, like a raccoon playing dead on the kitchen floor. But the old me—every version of Annie that had ever existed—hated being cornered more than anything. I put on the Hell’s Kitchen T-shirt, jammed my feet into Samiel’s slippers, and opened the door.
He almost dropped the flowers. “Annie?” He blinked, jaw agape. “You look… You look amazing.”
I ignored that. “How did you find me?”
He shuffled, looking past my shoulder for a glimpse of something I couldn’t imagine. “You never answered my texts,” he said, “so I called your mom. She said you’d joined a witness protection program or something. I thought she was joking.”
She was, but that didn’t matter. I’d have to thank her later. I leveled a glare at him, arms crossed. “You drove all the way here?”
“It’s not that far,” Seth said, and I could feel the lie in his voice. “I just had to see you. I made a mistake, Annie. I want to fix things. I’m better now. I’m in therapy. I got a raise at work. I?—”
His voice trailed off as he stared at my neck, at the constellation of hickeys Samiel had left there like some kind of demonic Rorschach test. I resisted the urge to cover them or explain that last night had involved a very athletic session with the headboard. Seth's eyes went so wide I half-expected them to fall out and roll across the welcome mat like cartoon marbles. God, I hoped he wouldn't faint. I wasn't about to perform CPR on my ex while wearing my boyfriend's demon-sized slippers.
