20. Chapter 20
Evie
The ankle is a travesty.
I discovered this when I swung my legs out of bed and placed my right foot on the hardwood.
My body informed me, in no uncertain terms, that this had been a grave miscalculation.
The joint is swollen tight and bruised deep plum, fading into a sickly greenish yellow at the edges.
Every step sends pain shooting up my calf.
I’m standing in my kitchen anyway because the muffins won’t make themselves, and my new employee is a demon from Hell I’ve known for approximately thirty-six hours.
Yesterday, I cried in front of him, let him sleep on my couch, and agreed to a labor-for-lodging arrangement that I’m fairly certain no HR department in any realm would approve of.
Today I need to act like that was a rational decision made by a competent adult, and not a woman who was out of options.
I have to actually let him help, and that part is turning out to be harder than expected.
Milo hasn’t moved from the spot I assigned him.
He’s been leaning against the counter by the window for the better part of an hour, notepad open, studying my kitchen.
Now and then, he flips a page or taps his pen on the paper.
Mostly, he watches me. I’ve been keeping my back to him because acknowledging that fact would make me far too aware of him.
The machine sits past a break in the counters, across a stretch of open floor with nothing to grip. I’ve been recalculating the distance while pretending to be very focused on muffin batter. All I have to do is ask. The words are right there. Can you make the coffee?
My eyes stray toward the machine again. Milo’s pen stops tapping.
“You know . . .” He sets the notepad down. “I read that humans discovered coffee after watching goats eat coffee cherries and then refuse to sleep. So really, the ritual you’re so attached to began with over-caffeinated livestock.”
I chuckle. “That can’t be true.”
“It’s documented.”
He moves toward the coffee machine. The canister lid clicks open, the scoop scrapes through the grounds, and water rushes into the reservoir from the tap.
I told him the ratio once, among nineteen other instructions, while he scribbled in that notepad last night with his handwriting slanting further right with every page.
I assumed he’d retain maybe half of it by morning.
The button clicks, and the machine begins its low, familiar gurgle. He sets the canister back in its exact spot, lining the label to the front the way I would have, and returns to his corner.
I adjust the flame under the cast iron and keep my mouth shut, because the only honest response is thank you, and apparently those two words are beyond me this morning.
“Let me do something. I’m just standing here.”
“You’re observing.”
“I’m useless.”
“Those aren’t mutually exclusive.” But I hand him the spoon anyway because my ankle throbs with every shift of weight, and if I don’t delegate something soon, I’m going to end up on the floor. “Fold, don’t stir.”
He drives it into the batter with all the subtlety of a cement mixer.
“Oh my God.”
“What?”
“You just obliterated four blueberries.”
“They’re in the batter. That’s where they go.”
“They go in whole. You made blueberry soup.” I gesture with increasing frustration. “Take the spoon down through the center, scrape along the bottom, bring it up and over the top. It’s not complicated.”
He tries again, sinking the spoon into the mixture, dragging it along the bottom, then rotating the wrong way and smashing three blueberries against the side of the bowl. Purple bleeds through the pale batter.
I limp over and wrap my hand around his.
“The motion comes from the wrist.”
I don’t process the full scope of what I’ve done until I’m already doing it.
His hand is under mine, and large enough that my fingers barely span the width of his knuckles.
I pull the spoon through the batter in one clean fold and his arm comes with me, the tension in his grip dissolving the moment I take over.
He follows without hesitation, and the easy willingness of it sends heat up my arm.
“Now rotate the bowl.”
His bare forearm drags across mine. Beside me, his ribs expand with a breath, and this close, the flush spreading up his neck is impossible to miss.
I let go and cross back to my counter. The pain in my ankle when I put my weight down is a gift. Without it, I’d still be standing there, touching him, calculating how little effort it would take to slide my palm up his forearm.
He’s a demon. A fact I keep having to restate to myself with increasing urgency whenever he gets within arm’s reach.
If he were a man who’d wandered into town, ended up helping me cook breakfast because my ankle was wrecked, and taken notes the night before because he genuinely wanted to learn, I wouldn’t be fighting this.
I’ve never reacted to anyone like this. It’s unfair that the first person to make me forget every sensible rule I live by is someone I can’t want.
His demonic origins are supposed to stop me, and they’re barely functioning as a speed bump.
Milo frowns into the bowl, attempting another fold on his own. His tongue presses against his lower lip in concentration.
“Better?”
“Getting there.” Apparently, normal speech has left the building.
He finishes the last fold and turns toward me, bowl cradled against his chest, looking proud of himself.
“You have flour on your face.”
My hand flies up. “What? Where?”
He sets the bowl down and steps closer. I don’t step back.
“Hold still.”
His fingers tremble against my jaw. His thumb traces my cheekbone, skims the corner of my mouth, then drags across my lower lip.
He jerks back.
“Sorry.” Both hands disappear into his pockets. “There was flour . . . I didn’t mean to.”
“It’s okay.”
It’s not. My lip is on fire. I want to grab his wrist and bring it back. To press his thumb against my mouth. To find out what his skin tastes like.
Milo retreats to the stove and busies himself examining burner knobs he doesn’t know how to operate.
I exhale through my nose and pivot toward the fridge. My right foot takes my full weight, and my knee buckles under the pain. I suck air through my teeth, and the sound is loud enough that Milo spins around.
“That’s it.” He’s across the kitchen in two steps. “You’re done standing.”
“I’ve got breakfast to finish.”
“And you can finish it from up here.”
He wraps both arms around my waist and I’m airborne. Cold granite meets the backs of my thighs.
“You can’t keep picking me up every time you disagree with my choices.”
“I can when your choices involve standing on an ankle that’s three different colors.”
“It’s not that bad.”
“It’s worse than yesterday. You shouldn’t be on it at all.”
I scoot forward on the counter, ready to hop down. He plants both palms against my bare legs.
The warmth of his skin sears into mine. He steps between my legs to block my dismount, fingers curving around the outside of my thighs. I curl my own against the surface so hard the edge bites into my palms. Every thought about breakfast, bacon, and muffin batter vacates the premises.
“Stay.” His thumbs press fractionally firmer. “Sit here and tell me what to do. Boss me around. I’ll do whatever you say.”
That’s a terrible thing to say to me right now.
I could get this out of my system right here on this counter and deal with the consequences over breakfast. And I think .
. . fuck it. What exactly would happen if I hooked my fingers through his belt loops and pulled him forward?
If I wrapped my legs around his waist and put my mouth to his throat?
What is the worst that could realistically go wrong at this point?
His thumbs drag slowly along the inside of my thighs, and my hips follow the touch toward the edge of the counter.
Milo’s gaze dropping to the space I just closed between us like it’s a problem he’s trying very hard not to solve.
“Evie. I need you to stop moving.”
His grip tightens, eases, then tightens again. He leans in until our foreheads nearly touch, the last of the space between us disappearing. For one reckless moment, I’m sure he’s going to kiss me.
He lets go of me and steps back so fast he bumps into the opposite counter.
Milo clears his throat and adjusts his glasses. “Besides, keeping you comfortable is sort of in my professional interest. Hard to negotiate a bargain with someone who’s in too much pain to think straight.”
The arousal dies so fast it leaves me nauseous. There it is. The part I keep letting myself forget. He’s here because he needs something. And for one stupid moment, I let myself believe it was me.
“The eggs are in the door of the fridge.”
“Evie.”
“And I need a new ice pack.”
His shoulders draw in. Then he turns to the freezer without another word and wraps the ice pack in a clean towel. He crouches in front of me, cradling my heel in one hand while he settles the compress against the swollen joint with the other.
“Fruit’s on the cutting board.” He straightens and gestures to the strawberries and knife already arranged beside my hip. “You handle that. I’ll figure out the eggs and bacon.”
I unclench my fists and nod. “Start with the cast iron. Cold pan, medium-low heat, and don’t touch the strips until the edges start to crisp.”
Milo cracks the first egg cleanly. A ridiculous little burst of pride catches me off guard, and I immediately want to take it back.
The second break is messier, sending a piece of shell into the pan.
I press my lips together as he tries to pinch it out, but it skates across the wet egg white, dodges him twice, then disappears into the center.
“Use a bigger shell to scoop it out,” I say, in the calmest voice available to a woman dying inside.
“I almost have it.”
What he has is three fingers in a hot pan, and a piece of shell that’s outmaneuvering him.
Milo leans closer, brow furrowed, tongue pressed into his cheek. He finds it, pinches it between his fingertips, and holds it up for me to see.
“Got it.”
“You’re burning the bottom of the eggs.”
He drops the shell and lunges for the spatula. Every instinct I have is screaming at me to get down and take over.
“Scrape the bottom. Push everything toward the center.”
“Right.” He starts herding the eggs around the pan. “Scrambled. So, this is fine.”
The bacon is uneven, pieces still pale on one side because he flipped too early despite being explicitly told to wait.
The scramble has shell in it, which I’m absolutely picking out before plating.
None of it is up to my standards, but I don’t care because he just looked at me like cracking an egg wrong in my kitchen was a genuine moral failure.
And he’s a demon. His bar for guilt should be higher than a broken yolk.
I breathe in and remind myself that imperfect bacon has never killed anyone. Probably.
“I’ve been thinking about the parking lot.” I keep my focus on the strawberries. “When you showed me your . . . horns.”
The spatula stops mid-motion.
“Everything happened so fast that I didn’t get a proper look.”
“There wasn’t much to see.” He resumes flipping the bacon, but the motion has lost its ease.
“I barely saw them before I ate gravel. I don’t think that qualifies as a thorough viewing.”
The corner of his mouth lifts, but the rest of his face doesn’t follow. “The full viewing isn’t really worth the buildup.”
“In movies, demons always have the whole ensemble. Horns, tail, red skin, pitchfork. Is any of that accurate? Or is Hollywood just making things up?”
“Some of it.” Lightness enters his voice, though his posture remains tense. “Horns vary in size and shape. Tails are less common than you’d think. Red skin is accurate, but it’s only one color out of many. We take mortal form when we’re topside.”
“You said the horns vary. What about yours?”
“Mine are . . .” The spatula hovers over the pan. “They’re fine.”
“Fine?”
“Functional.”
“Can I see them again?”
“No.” He focuses very hard on the bacon. “They’re not that impressive.”
I remember Daisy at thirteen, hunching in oversized sweatshirts because she developed early and the boys at school noticed. She had the same posture Milo has now, body trying to take up less space around the thing it can’t hide.
My hand stills. Not knowing what he actually looks like has been bothering me, but he clearly doesn’t want to show me. And I understand too well what it feels like when someone pushes past a boundary because they’ve decided they have the right.
“What do demons normally eat?” I ask because sometimes the kindest thing you can offer someone is an exit from a conversation they’re trying to avoid.
He latches onto the new subject immediately. “You don’t want to know.”
“I asked, so clearly I do.”
“There are communal feeding halls. Cafeteria-style, though calling them cafeterias is generous. More like troughs with ambiance. The standard fare is insects. Roasted beetles, fried crickets, various larvae preparations.”
My stomach clenches. “Stop.”
“Some of the market stalls sell rodents. Skewered, mostly.”
“Stop talking.”
“It’s efficient protein.”
“That is the most upsetting sentence anyone has ever spoken in this kitchen.”
He grins, and it pulls a dimple out of his left cheek.
“Would you . . .” I clear my throat. “Would you rather have that? The bug situation? If it’s what you’re used to, I can figure something out. I’m not cooking you beetles, but I could probably find crickets online . . . and I can’t believe I’m offering to purchase insects for you.”
His lips part.
“No. Everything here is better. I don’t understand half of it yet, and Nora nearly killed me with that coffee, but even the unfamiliar things taste like something worth learning.”
He goes back to the eggs.
I set the knife down, and the realization settles with it.
Talking to Milo is easy. Worse, I want to keep asking him things.
I want to know what else he’s never tasted, what his favorite thing has been so far, whether demons dream, what his world looks like, and why any mention of it makes him retreat into himself.
Another morning in this kitchen with him fumbling, checking his notes, flinching at grease splatter, and looking to me for approval, should not sound appealing.
He told me twenty minutes ago that keeping me comfortable serves his professional interests. And I’m sitting on my kitchen counter, wondering how quiet tomorrow morning will feel if he’s not in it.