Chapter 15
CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
Annie
Iwent for maximum flippancy, because that was how these games went.
"My last boyfriend was a barista with a demon complex.
He had a Satan tattoo on his thigh and kept a bootleg bottle of absinthe under my bathroom sink.
" I propped my chin on my fist, giving him the look that said, Go ahead, judge me, I dare you.
"He moved into my place after, like, a month.
We played house for almost a year before I realized he actually thought I would do his laundry forever.
Seth would leave his dirty socks on my coffee table and then text me from work asking what was for dinner.
" I paused, not sure how much I wanted to say.
"When we broke it off, I expected to be broken-hearted, but I think I felt relief more than anything.
The joy of finally giving up on something that had been long dead. "
Samiel listened, eyes on my mouth, not my eyes. For a solid beat, he didn’t react—like he was buffering, trying to make sense of a story that probably sounded as alien to him as “I once fucked a centaur” would to a regular guy.
“What was his name, again?” he said, not moving.
I almost lied. The urge was there, sudden and ancient and leftover from every time I’d watched a new boyfriend’s face try on the shape of the last boyfriend’s name.
But I didn’t want to start this thing with a lie, not even a dumb one.
“Seth,” I said. “He was… present. I wouldn’t call him an ex so much as a roommate with benefits and boundary issues. ”
Samiel nodded, but his jaw flexed, like he was chewing over the name and not finding it to his taste. “He wasn’t good to you.”
It wasn’t a question, but I answered anyway.
“He was fine. Just small. Like, his world was a studio apartment and a coffee shop and three friends who all hated each other. I wanted more.” I looked out at the lake, at the black mirror of water and the way our reflections flickered in the glass. “I always want more, I guess.”
He was quiet for a second. Then: “Did you love him?”
I shrugged, but the answer surprised even me. “No. I don’t think I’ve ever been in love, exactly. Not the way people sing about it.” I rolled my glass between my palms, letting the cold bite my skin. “I wanted to be seen. I think that’s all. He saw what he wanted, not what I was.”
Another silence, this time with teeth. I risked a glance at Samiel, and the look on his face was rawer than I’d expected.
Not just jealousy—though there was a jagged edge of that—but something like confusion, or maybe even grief.
“Have you ever been in love?” I asked, and it came out sharper than I meant.
He stilled, the kind of stillness that meant a hundred gears were grinding in secret.
“Not really,” he said. “Demons don’t do love.
Not… the way you think. Sex, yes. Loyalty, sometimes.
But the closest thing I’ve felt to it is right now.
” He looked up, square in my face, and there was no joke.
“I’ve never done this before. Not the food, not the house, not the…
” His hand, big and inked with veins, hovered over mine but didn’t touch.
“I’ve never had a relationship that wasn’t a game, or a fight. Or a contract with a time limit.”
I stared, waiting for the punchline, some hint that he was exaggerating.
But he wasn’t. I realized with a jolt that I might be his first—his actual first shot at more than just sex, or violence, or whatever demons counted as a social life.
He’d been with other people, sure, but the way he said it, the way he looked at me, made it clear.
Nobody had ever let him try, or wanted him to try. Nobody had ever made him want to.
I reached out, slow, and set my hand on top of his. It felt like petting a sleeping tiger—risk and reward, both in the same breath. “You’re doing okay so far,” I said, and the joke landed, because his lips twitched in relief.
He squeezed my hand, careful not to leave marks. “Who else?” he said, and I realized he wanted the rest of the list—not out of jealousy, but because he genuinely believed that love was a numbers game, and that each ex was a rung on a ladder he didn’t know how to climb.
I thought of the guy before Seth, a grad student in Tampa who’d once proposed to me after a music festival, too high to remember it the next day.
I thought of my first girlfriend, a girl named Sammi who had dyed both our hair with box bleach in eighth grade and then kissed me behind the choir room.
I thought of the bartender who’d let me drink for free and called me his “dark muse,” which sounded romantic until I realized he was dating three other muses at the same time.
I gave him the highlights reel. “A music nerd. A girl with good hands, a bartender who couldn’t keep a secret.
” Then, because it felt wrong not to say it, “None of them ever lasted. I was always too much.” I looked down at our hands, my chipped black polish against his red skin. “Or maybe they were just not enough.”
He nodded, looking thoughtful. “I like that you’re too much,” he said at last. “I like that I can’t predict you. If I could, I’d be bored already.”
"Does it bother you?" I asked, and my voice came out lower than intended. "That I've fucked other people. That there have been… well, not a ton, but enough to make a dent."
It was the kind of question I'd flung at men before—usually at the bitter end, a lit match in a room I was already planning to torch.
But with Samiel, I wanted the answer. I needed it from him, unfiltered, because I didn't want to wake up a week from now and find out my past had started to rot the foundation.
He didn't answer right away. His hand stayed on mine, palm warm, thumb moving in slow arcs over my knuckles.
When he finally spoke, it was quiet but brutal as always.
"I hate it." He didn't look away from me, not even to blink.
"I hate that anyone else has ever touched you.
I hate that they got pieces of you and didn't even know what they had.
" He flexed his fingers, and I realized he was fighting the urge to squeeze, to leave a mark on me that would outlast every other handprint.
"But it's only fair," he added, softer now. "You had a life before this. So did I."
"Did you?" I said, and realized I genuinely wanted to know. "You ever have anyone… serious? Before now?"
He shook his head, smiling with just the right amount of self-loathing. "No. I told you—demons don't really do love. Not unless we're starving for something. And I didn't even know I was hungry." He paused, then: "You're my first real thing. The first one that matters."
I should've found that terrifying. Instead, I felt it settle in me like a shot of whiskey—a little burn, then a clarity that cut through every other noise.
"I don't care if you get jealous," I told him.
"But you can't do the thing where you treat me like an object.
If I'm your first, I still have to be a person. "
He grinned, but there was no menace in it.
"I'm learning," he said. "But you have to be patient.
Sometimes the urge to break things is all I have.
" He let go of my hand, just enough to cup my face, thumb tracing the line from cheekbone to jaw.
"If I get too much, you have to tell me. Or punch me. I can take it."
"That a challenge?" I said, letting him see the spark of mischief that always made men underestimate me.
"It's a promise," he said. "And I hope you hold me to it."
I let the moment hang, let the weight of his confession fill the space between us. Then I leaned in, resting my forehead against his. "Next time you get the urge to break something," I said, "try me first. I might like it better."
He laughed, and it was a real laugh. Under the table, he squeezed my thigh once, then let go.
Wanting to shift topics, I asked, “Can I ask you something weird?” I stared out at the traffic of demons and humans moving through the bar, all pretending not to obsess over each other.
“Where’s your family in all this? I mean, do you have parents?
Siblings? I’ve never met a demon who wasn’t just, like, born fully formed out of a volcano or something. ”
Samiel nearly choked on his whiskey. “You want to meet my family? Annie, that is a threat, not a privilege.”
“I’m not saying I want to meet them,” I clarified, grinning. “I just want to know if you have a mom out there who’s gonna show up and judge me for coming to dinner with chipped nail polish and a healthy fear of organized religion.”
He made a show of rolling his eyes. “My mother’s barely on this plane.
She comes around once a year for the HOA meeting and then bitches for six months about the paint on my house.
” He tilted his head like he was rifling through a mental Rolodex.
“There’s my dad, but he’s mostly retired.
Spends his days building model trains and arguing online about politics.
The only thing that sets him off is when people disrespect railroad infrastructure. ”
I burst out laughing. “Your dad is a train guy?”
“Oh, absolutely. He’s got a whole basement layout.” Samiel’s face twisted with mock horror. “Once he cornered the mayor for a solid hour about switching the town’s public transit to light rail. The mayor nearly exorcized him out of boredom.”
I grinned so hard my jaw hurt. “Tell me there’s a picture,” I said. “If there’s not a photo of your dad in a conductor hat, I’ll be crushed.”