Chapter 6 #2
Ava watched his profile, the rigid line of his jaw.
He’d promised to tell her about his past. Tomorrow, he’d said, and tomorrow was technically today.
But this, the way his knuckles had gone white on the wooden spoon, the careful blankness in his voice, this wasn’t a conversation for Mia’s kitchen with pasta bubbling on the stove.
She could push. She wanted to push. But some doors, once opened, couldn’t be closed again.
“I’m sorry,” Mia said softly. The combativeness had drained from her voice.
“It was a long time ago.” Victor adjusted the flame with his hand this time, no supernatural assistance, just a twist of the dial. Human. Deliberate. “The pasta’s ready.”
They served dinner in careful silence, the earlier sparring dissolved into something more tentative.
The sauce was remarkable, rich and layered, with depth no ten-minute enhancement had any right to produce. Ava tried not to think too hard about what hellfire did to tomatoes. Or what a century of grief did to a person. A demon. Whatever Victor was.
“This is actually amazing,” Mia admitted, twirling her fork. “Like, stupid good.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t think good pasta gets you off the hook.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.”
“But it does buy you points.” Mia reached for the bread. “So explain how this arrangement works. Ava tells me about demons, which, by the way, I’m still processing, and suddenly you’re fake dating her?”
“The breach of confidentiality put her in danger.” Victor set down his fork, giving the question the weight it deserved. “The partners would have… the consequences would have been severe. A claim, a romantic claim, offered legal protection they couldn’t circumvent.”
“And fake dating was the only solution?”
“It was the most expedient option.”
“Expedient.” Mia looked at Ava, one eyebrow raised. “He called your relationship expedient. How romantic.”
“Fake relationship,” Ava said.
“The arrangement,” Victor said at the same time.
Their eyes met across the table. Heat crept up Ava’s neck, and she looked away first.
“Right.” Mia stood, collecting plates with theatrical efficiency. “Not real. Totally fake. I definitely believe you both.”
Victor insisted on washing dishes while Mia dried, moving through their cramped kitchen with unexpected ease.
Sleeves still rolled up. Soap suds on his forearms. Each plate received the same careful attention, like he’d done this a thousand times before in a thousand different kitchens across six thousand years.
Ava leaned against the doorframe and watched him work. Tried to reconcile this, the domesticity, the dish soap, the comfortable silence, with what she knew he was. What he’d done. What he’d survived.
“You know,” Mia said, studying him over a wine glass, “for a demon, you’re pretty domestic.”
“I’ve had practice living among humans.”
“But you don’t need to eat. Or sleep.”
“I don’t require food or sleep, no.” He rinsed a glass, held it up to the light to check for spots. “But I can enjoy both.”
“What else do you enjoy? Besides terrifying first-year associates and cooking with hellfire?”
Victor considered the question, hands still in soapy water.
“Good wine. Literature, though the modern publishing industry leaves much to be desired. Classical music.” He paused.
“I’ve developed an appreciation for jazz, actually.
The improvisation. The way it breaks rules while still following structure. ”
“What else?”
“The smell of coffee in the morning, even though I don’t need the caffeine.” He set the glass in the drying rack. His eyes found Ava across the kitchen. Held. “Unexpected challenges.”
“Is that what Ava is?” Mia asked. “A challenge?”
“Mia.” But she barely managed the word.
“Among other things,” Victor said quietly. He didn’t look away.
The kitchen felt smaller suddenly, the air going thick between them. Mia’s gaze bounced between them like she was watching a tennis match, and then she grabbed the wine bottle with both hands.
“More wine. We definitely, absolutely need more wine.”
They moved to the living room, where the ancient couch waited with cushions permanently molded to the shapes of a hundred movie nights and a thousand conversations.
Mia and Ava took their usual spots, muscle memory folding them into familiar positions. Victor sat in the wobbly armchair that Ava had rescued from the sidewalk two years ago, the one that creaked ominously whenever anyone over a hundred and fifty pounds sat in it.
It creaked under Victor’s weight. He shifted. It creaked again.
“Don’t worry,” Mia said. “It’s never actually collapsed. Yet.”
“Reassuring.”
“So.” Mia tucked her feet beneath her, wine glass cradled in both hands. “Forty-nine days left.”
“You’re counting?” Victor asked.
“Ava is. She’s got it marked on the calendar. Little X’s through each day, like she’s crossing off a prison sentence.”
Ava sank deeper into the couch cushions. “I like to keep track of things.”
“She’s always been that way,” Mia told Victor, as if Ava weren’t sitting right there. “Counts everything. Days until exams. Days until break. Days until the next callback I’m never going to get.”
“Mia…”
“It’s fine. I’m manifesting.” Mia waved a hand. “The point is, Ava counts. It’s how she survives things.”
“By watching them end?” Victor asked.
The question landed strange in Ava’s chest. She thought about all the countdowns she’d kept: days until graduation, days until the bar exam, days until her loans came due. She’d never thought about what it meant. That she’d spent her whole life measuring how long until things were over.
“This does.” She met his eyes, made herself hold them. “We agreed. Fifty-six days.”
“Forty-nine now,” Mia added.
“Right.” Victor sat back. The chair creaked in protest. “Forty-nine.”
No one spoke. The vanilla candle had burned down to a stub, flame guttering, shadows stretching across the walls like something listening.
“Unless,” Mia said slowly, her voice careful in a way it rarely was, “someone catches actual feelings.”
“Mia.”
“What? I’m just saying. If this fake relationship becomes real, then forty-nine days is just… a number.”
“It won’t.” Ava’s fingers tightened on her wine glass. “We have terms. Boundaries. Rules.”
“Right. Those are working great.” Mia set down her wine and leaned forward, elbows on knees, the posture she used when she was done playing. “Let me ask you something, Victor. Directly. No deflecting. No demon lawyer bullshit.”
Victor’s expression didn’t change. “Ask.”
“Do you have feelings for my best friend?”
The candle flame stretched sideways, though there was no draft. The shadows on the wall shifted.
“Yes.”
Ava’s pulse stuttered. Her hand found the pendant through her shirt, pressing it against her skin like an anchor.
“Victor…”
“Real feelings?” Mia pressed, relentless. “Not arrangement feelings. Not ‘she’s useful and interesting’ feelings. Real ones. The kind that keep you up at night. The kind that make you do stupid things.”
Victor was silent for a long moment. His hands had stilled on the armrests, fingers digging into worn fabric.
“Yes.”
“The kind that might last longer than forty-nine days?”
The question hung in the air. The candle guttered and almost went out. Victor opened his mouth. Closed it.
The silence stretched. Ava couldn’t breathe. Tingling heat spread from the pendant’s chain across her collarbones, or maybe that was her own heart pounding through skin and bone and jade.
Victor stood abruptly, nearly knocking over the armchair. It rocked on its uneven legs and settled with a reproachful creak.
“I should go.” He was already moving toward the door, the careful control cracking at the edges.
“You don’t have to…” Ava started, rising.
“I do.” He pulled on his shoes with quick, efficient movements, not bothering with the laces. “Thank you for dinner, Mia. And for protecting her. Even from me.” He straightened, hand on the doorknob. “She’s lucky to have you.”
“Victor, wait…”
But he was already opening the door, already stepping through, and his expression told her that if she pushed now, whatever thin thread held this together would snap entirely.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Ava.”
The door closed behind him.
Mia exhaled slowly. “Well. That demon is completely gone for you.”
Ava dropped her head into her hands, pressing her palms against her eyes until she saw stars. “This is a disaster.”
“Is it?”
“Yes.” The word was muffled against her palms. “He’s my boss. He’s ancient. He’s from a dimension adjacent to hell. He had a girlfriend who died and he hasn’t dated anyone since the eighteen-nineties.”
“Nobody’s perfect.” Mia moved closer, the couch dipping under her weight, and wrapped an arm around Ava’s shoulders. “Besides, he cooks. And he washes dishes. Do you know how rare that is?”
“This isn’t funny.”
“It’s a little funny.” She squeezed. “But seriously, I’ve watched you date human guys for years.
Investment bankers who couldn’t name a single book.
Law students who talked about themselves for three hours straight.
That guy who pronounced ‘espresso’ wrong on purpose because he thought it was charming. ”
“Jonathan wasn’t that bad.”
“Jonathan was exactly that bad.” Mia pulled back enough to look at her. “I’ve never seen you like this with anyone. And I’ve never seen anyone, human, demon, or otherwise, look at you the way he does.”
“How does he look at me?”
“Like you hung the moon.” Mia paused. “And like he’s absolutely terrified that you’re going to realize he’s not good enough for you.”
Ava lifted her head. “He said that?”
“He didn’t have to.” Mia handed her the wine glass with the air of a doctor prescribing medication. “Come on. Ice cream and terrible reality TV. Doctor’s orders. No thinking about demon boyfriends for at least two hours.”
“Fake boyfriend.”
“Sure, honey.” Mia was already heading for the freezer. “Whatever helps you sleep.”
They curled up with Ben & Jerry’s and the remote, the TV casting blue light across the room. Some reality show about people renovating houses and screaming at each other about backsplashes. Mia provided commentary. Ava didn’t hear any of it.
She kept seeing Victor’s face when Mia asked about feelings that lasted longer than forty-nine days. The way he’d opened his mouth to answer. The way he hadn’t.
The way he’d fled like a man running from something he couldn’t outpace.
Forty-nine days.
Her phone buzzed on the coffee table. She grabbed it too fast, nearly knocking over her ice cream.
Victor: I apologize for leaving like that.
She stared at the message until the screen started to dim. Typed three words. Deleted them. Typed four different ones. Deleted those too. Tried a third time and gave up.
Finally, before she could talk herself out of it:
Did you mean what you said?
Three dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again.
The response came slowly:
Every word.
She stared at the screen until it went dark. Until Mia pretended not to notice her crying into her ice cream. Until the reality show ended and another one began and the night stretched on without her.
The mark above her heart pulsed warm. Steady. Patient.
Forty-eight days now, technically. The clock had struck midnight somewhere between the second episode and the third pint, and she hadn’t even noticed time passing.
Later, when Mia had gone to bed and the apartment had settled into silence, Ava stood in the kitchen doorway. The pot Victor had used sat on the drying rack next to their mismatched plates. Perfectly clean. Nothing out of place.
Like he’d never been there at all.
Except she could still smell cedar and smoke, faint beneath the vanilla candle. Could still feel his eyes on her when he’d said unexpected challenges. Could still hear the silence where his answer should have been.
Forty-eight days. And she’d just watched a six-thousand-year-old demon wash her dishes like it mattered to him.
She pressed her hand over the mark and let the warmth pull her under.