Page 26 of Commanding Chaos

I slammed my bedroom door and fell face first onto my mattress where I could scream into my pillow without causing the neighbors alarm.

To think I trusted him. To think I was attracted to him. That I was starting to like him. I was an idiot. I should have listened to my sister from the get-go. She wasn’t blinded by his good looks and charm. She saw the demon for what he was, and from now on, so would I.

At least, I wanted to. But he’d wormed his way into my psyche, making me feel things I shouldn’t for a creature from the Underworld. Things no one should, yet I felt them anyway. Ember may have seen the demon, but I saw the man beneath…and no man was perfect. Of course Chaos would make mistakes. Everyone did.

Ugh! I had to stop making excuses for him.

I lay there stewing for half an hour before a knock sounded on my door, and I groaned. “Go away.”

“Hey, Ash.” Ember came in anyway. Typical.

I sat up and found her lurking in the threshold with the door half-opened, her hand resting on the knob. “What?” I snapped.

“Chaos has something he’d like to say, and then we all need to talk.”

“No, I don’t want…”

She pushed the door the rest of the way open, revealing the demon, before she turned and walked away. He stepped into my room and clasped his hands in front of himself.

I gave him the maddest look I could muster. “I don’t have anything to say to you.”

“You need to listen.” He paced across the room and sank onto the bed next to me.

I scooted away. “You don’t get to tell me what I need.”

“I know. That’s why you need…” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I would like to apologize if you’ll allow it.”

“You…” I clamped my mouth shut. Did he say apologize? The demon who justified his every misdeed wanted to admit fault? Oh, I had to hear this, so I waved my hand for him to continue.

He sat up straight, angling his body to face me and resting his palms on his knees. “You’ve had a trying few days. Yesterday, your friend died, and you watched two from your coven nearly be beaten by a monster that should have never crossed the veil. Your anger at me is justified.”

“Hold on.” I lifted a hand to stop him. “Is there an apology in there somewhere? Because it sounds like you’re the one forgiving me for having feelings.”

His hands fisted, and he growled. “Apologies are new to me. I am trying.”

“He really is trying,” Ember called from the hallway.

“I see. So my sister put you up to this. You can save it.” I clutched a pillow to my chest.

“No.” Ember stepped into my room. “We had a long talk, and he came to this conclusion on his own, believe it or not. I need you to hear him out so we can get past this and get down to business.”

I narrowed my eyes.

She rolled hers. “If not for yourself, do it for the coven. They need us.”

Damn her for throwing logic my way. I slammed the pillow onto the mattress. “Fine. Continue.”

“Privacy would be nice,” Chaos said.

“I’ll be in the living room.” She closed the door, and he waited for her footsteps to fade away before he spoke.

“I apologize,” was all he said.

I crossed my arms. “For what?” Not that I actually expected him to know what he needed to be sorry for.

He took another deep breath and exhaled slowly. “I apologize for not listening to you. For suggesting you should feel any way other than the way you felt. For manipulating you with my magic. For not trying to understand your thought process, and for not considering the harm I could cause the humans while trying to assist your coven.”

I opened my mouth to snap back at him, but I closed it, opened it again, and closed it. That covered everything I was pissed at him about, taking the wind right out of my angry sails. My boiling blood cooled to a simmer, but I tried to hang on to the clarity it had brought me. He might have been damn good at apologies, but he was still a demon.

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