He was lucky to have survived his crime against cast iron, let alone not be evicted. I looked at Flossie, unsure if the contempt in her painted face was real or imagined. "To be fair, I don't blame Flossie or Sofia for that response."
"She's also a single-malt kind of judge." He nodded at my glass. "You're holding yours like you're not sure whether to drink it or use it as a shield."
I looked down. He wasn't wrong. I'd been doing it since my first sip, keeping the glass between us like it was something. "I'm deciding."
"On the whiskey?"
"On several things."
He didn't push. That was the thing about Daemon I hadn't expected and still hadn't quite calibrated for. He knew when to wait. He returned to lean against the counter, giving me space, watching me the way he'd watched me all evening. A subtle presence, and I found I liked it.
I took another proper sip and let it settle. Then I looked at the lamp.
It was genuinely terrible. A Pepto Bismol base, topped with a shade painted in overlapping roses, the shade a deep mauve that cast everything in a pink both too warm and too much. Under it, the entire room looked like the inside of a Reno brothel that had lost the plot.
"She painted it herself," Daemon said, following my gaze.
"I know. You mentioned that."
"She asks about it every time she comes in."
"What do you say?"
"That I love it." He said it without a trace of irony. "Because it makes her happy, and she's eighty-six, and it's a lamp."
I looked at him then. Really looked for the first time. The man who pretended to be straightforward but wasn't. Who'd installed solar lights in an old woman's garden and called a terrible lamp beautiful and spent six months not pushing past what I could give.
"You're not what I thought you were," I said.
He didn't respond right away, as if he were searching for the right words. "What did you think I was?"
"Easier to understand than this."
Something changed in his expression. Not a smile. Something more careful than that. "Is that a complaint?"
"No." I set my glass down on the nearest doily-covered surface. "It's an admission."
The room felt smaller than ever. It had always been small, but now, with him this close and the whiskey warm in my chest and last night sitting between us like something neither of us had found the words for, it felt smaller still.
"Daemon," I said.
"Yeah," he said, his voice dropping.
"About this morning."
Something moved across his face. "You don't have to?—"
"I called it a mistake." I held his gaze while I worked to get my heart out of my throat. "I panicked. That's what I do when something matters more than I planned for it to." I fought to steady my nerves, for all the good it did. My "I'm not panicking now" came out thin and squeaky.
He looked at me while the lamp hummed, and I swear Flossie watched each of us in turn, as if we were playing tennis.
Then Daemon set his own drink down, stepped forward, and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, his thumb tracing a slow line along my jaw, like he was in no hurry at all and wanted me to know it.
"Then what do you want me to say?" he asked quietly.
"I want you to tell me this is about more than sex. That last night meant something. Because if it didn't, I need to know now before I do something stupid."
"Like what?"
