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DAEMON

“Huh, it’s like everyone is scared of us,” Isla mutters loud enough for me to hear over the music as she lowers two bottles of beer to our table and looks at the empty ones surrounding us. It does look suspiciously like everyone has given us—me—a seriously wide berth. “I wonder why that is?”

“Fuck off,” I snap, reaching for my drink. “You knew I’d be no fun when you dragged me out of my flat. Suck it up.”

“Pfft.” She falls into her seat dramatically. “Just a couple of cuts and bruises and everyone thinks you’re a thug. He’s had his heart broken. Give him some sympathy,” she announces loud enough to make me wince but not loud enough to carry to the other tables. Especially while the band up on stage murder some cover of an old Led Zeppelin song.

“Jesus, I. Fancy shutting your big fucking mouth?”

“So I am right, then? Someone has broken your black, little heart.”

I glare at her, hoping—predictably pointlessly—that she might drop it.

“Who?” she demands.

“It doesn’t matter. It’s over and forgotten about.”

“You wanna tell your face that? Fuck’s sake, D. It’s hardly like I’m going to go and—”

“It was Calli,” I blurt without meaning to.

Shock renders her useless for a beat as if she can’t physically process that bit of information.

But then her chin drops and her eyes widen, and I know she heard it loud and clear.

“Calli?” she echoes. “Calli Cirillo? Daddy’s perfect little princess who never puts a step out of line?”

“I,” I growl, not liking the judgemental tone of her voice.

“What? It’s true.”

My lips part to argue, but I struggle to find any words as I think about the version of Calli that everyone but me sees.

“There’s a whole other side to her.”

Isla leans closer, intrigue filling her eyes.

“Well, there must be, because not everyone willingly dances with the devil, or even gets close to breaking his heart.”

“It was… nothing. The whole thing was a mistake. I never should have—”

“Stop,” Isla says, holding her hand up between us to cut me off. “Can you just stop with the bullshit? I know I’m not Alex,” I shake my head when she says his name with nothing but disdain, “but I see you, D. I see what the others don’t. And I might joke about your black heart, but I see it. I see it all the fucking time. So don’t bullshit me with mistakes and it not meaning anything or any of that shit.

“You’re a mess. So it wasn’t nothing, and it probably wasn’t a mistake.” My lips part to argue, but I don’t get a chance to say anything because she keeps going. “Calli doesn’t seem like the kind of girl to do something impulsive, or irrational. If she was with you, then she wanted to be.”

I shake my head. “I’m not that guy for her, I. I was just a bit of fun. A fuck you to her parents.”

“I fucking hate that you can’t see what I see when I look at you,” she complains.

“You see what you want to see.”

Her expression hardens as she glares at me. “I’m going to ignore the insult in that statement for now and just focus on the facts. I think I might see exactly the same as Calli sees. Everything you try and hide from everyone else on the planet.”

“I don’t need this, I,” I mutter, draining my beer in a few large swallows.

“So ignoring it and getting fucked up is a better option than hearing my advice?”

“Not sure you’ve given any advice.”