THE DEVIL I LOVE

Chapter Thirteen — The Space Between

He texted at noon: How are you?

She didn't reply until six: Surviving.

I expected you to be angrier, he wrote back.

I don't have the energy for anger today, she replied. Just a lot of thinking.

About us?

About everything. She paused, then added: Including us.

A longer pause on his end. Then: Can I see you?

Aria sat on her apartment sofa with her shoes off and her hair loose and the particular exhaustion of a day spent being composed settling into her bones. Outside, evening was coming in softly over the city.

That might not be a good idea right now, she typed.

I know, he replied. I'm asking anyway.

She stared at the message for a long moment. This was the pattern of them — both knowing the sensible thing and asking anyway, choosing anyway, staying anyway. She wasn't sure anymore whether that was courage or stubbornness or simply the way love — if that's what this was growing into — refused to be reasonable.

One hour, she typed. The bookshop street. There's a bench outside the laundromat.

He was there when she arrived, leaning against the wall with his hands in his pockets, looking less composed than she was used to. The evening light caught the tension in his jaw.

They sat on the bench without preamble.

"I need you to know," he said, "that the Meridian move is business. It's strategy. It's been in motion for two years."

"I know."

"It's not about hurting you."

"I know that too." She looked at her hands. "But it will hurt my father. And my father's pain has always become my family's problem."

Damien was quiet.

"What happens now?" she asked. "Between you and my father's company — where does it go?"

"Forward," he said carefully. "I can't stop it, Aria. I won't pretend I want to."

She respected the honesty even as it cost her something.

"And between us?" she asked.

He turned to look at her fully. In the fading evening light his expression was stripped of everything except what was real.

"I don't want to lose this," he said. "Whatever this is — I don't want to lose it."

"Even if it costs you?"

"I'm beginning to think the cost of not having it is higher."

Aria looked at him for a long moment. A woman walked past with a bag of laundry. Somewhere nearby a bookshop was closing for the night.

"I'm not walking away," she said finally. "But Damien — I need you to be honest with me. Always. Whatever happens in the business world, whatever moves you make — I need to hear it from you first."

"Yes," he said, without hesitation.

"Promise me."

"I promise."

She nodded. He reached over and took her hand properly this time — not fingertips grazing, not an almost. His hand around hers, firm and deliberate, in the open air of an ordinary street where anyone could see.

It was the first time.

Neither of them commented on it.

They sat there until the streetlights came on, and the bookshop went dark, and the city settled into its evening around them, and for one stolen hour the rest of it receded to a distance they could manage