Page 126 of Dark Night of the Soul

The phone buzzed in his pocket. He checked it quickly, then put it back.

“Was that—?” I started.

“He’s still working on it.”

Part of me thought he already knew something but only partial information and if that was the case, he wasn’t sharing. For the best.

He slowed as we passed a café that held an old-world charm. It was small. Two tables inside, three outside, mismatched chairs, a chalkboard menu written in looping script I couldn’t read. Someone had hung paper lanterns over the narrow sidewalk, and they swayed gently in the breeze off the sea.

He hesitated. Glanced at me with question in his eyes. Like asking if this was okay.

“We can sit,” I said. “If you want.”

So, we did.

When the server came over, he ordered my coffee in Turkish and angled his body to block the aisle. He spoke Turkish. For a second, it hit me how many places he’d lived. How many versions of the world he’d learned to survive.

He didn’t order anything for himself. Of course, he didn’t. He didn’t ask what I wanted, either. He already knew.

It shouldn’t have been endearing. It was.

He folded his arms over his chest, stretched out his long legs, crossed at the ankles, like this was something he did every day. Still watching everyone who came in and out of the café and the shops within his line of sight. His gaze moved in a slow loop. Door, window, reflections, back to me.

It amused me.

Even in a casual setting, he was still hyperaware of his surroundings.

I watched people pass. Couples leaning into each other. Friends laughing. A woman scolding her kid. An orange tabby lounged at my feet under the table like we were best buds.

Ordinary things. Intimate things. Things that felt unreachable.

And then it hit me. I’d never done this before. I’d never stopped to have a moment like this without demons breathing down my neck or the world moments away from burning. And I’d certainly never done this with him.

It was weird.

My chest constricted. I didn’t know why. And I’d lost the taste for the coffee. It had gone cold anyway, the surface gone flat and dark.

Because I realized something sitting at the rickety café table with this man who had decided he belonged next to me. If this was any other time, any other place this might be considered a date.

I’d had dates before. The normal version of it. Dinner and movie plans. Coffee and shopping excursions. A life that had felt possible. And then Azriel—a fallen angel with a talent for ruin—had murdered that man and taught me how fragile possible was. That relationship was safe, distant, and gone.

There was nothing safe about us. There never would be.

But it was also real in a way I never expected. In a way I couldn’t survive losing.

And that was terrifying.

It was a glimpse of a life we weren’t allowed to want and the quiet certainty that if I lost him, it would destroy me in ways I’d never survived before.

“You’re thinking too loud again.”

Oh, hell.

He was listening. Of course he was.

Sometimes my thoughts bled into him before I realized I was thinking them.

Heat crawled up my neck, but I pretended not to notice. He pretended not to notice.