Page 57 of Conflicted

I felt Nox brush against my back. I tensed, waiting for him to mock me for losing my shit. Instead, he reached around me, grabbing one of my hands.

“Here.” He wrapped it around the baseball bat.

“I get to go first?”

“Of course.” He let go and stepped back. I turned to face him. “It’s our first date, after all, and I’m a gentleman.”

“You’re a demon.”

“I notice you’re not arguing with me about this being a date.”

“That’s because we both know it’s not.” I tested the weight of the bat, figuring out how much power I’d have to hold back. It wasn’t like I’d be able to really work my frustrations out, but the thought was there. “The idea of usdatingis ridiculous. We can’t be together. And what’s more, we don’t want each other.”

The temperature in the room rose alarmingly high, but when I glanced at Nox, his face was impassive. I must’ve been imagining things.

“You’re right. We can’t be together,” he said.

See? It was much easier when we were on the same page. I wasn’t sure why Nox had brought me here. Probably out of some misplaced pity after seeing me break down last night. It was stupid, really. I’d known as soon as I slid into his car that I was making a mistake.

That didn’t mean I could stop myself making it though. Right now, I’d give almost anything just to have a few minutes of the peace I only seemed to find with Nox.

I studied the room carefully. There was an old washing machine, a TV, lots of plates and glasses, and even a printer. “Okay, demon. Tell me where to start.”

By the time our hour was up, my mood was considerably lighter.

“I had no idea that’s how a printer looks on the inside,” I said with a laugh. We were back in the car, minus the flames, driving back towards central London. “It’s one of the few things in the compound that the twins haven’t broken.”

Nox’s lips twitched. He hadn’t taken a turn in the rage room, insisting he was happy just watching me break stuff. “Does that happen often? The twins breaking things?”

“More often than I’d like,” I admitted with a sigh. “They try to contain their fights to the gym, but it doesn’t always work like that. I think the office is safe because they’re scared of Benji. It’s his space as much as it is mine, and messing it up would put them on his bad side.”

“I take it that’s a bad thing.”

“Very bad. Benji likes his things ordered in a certain way, and upsetting that means upsetting him. An upset Benji tends to be a violent Benji.”

Nox shook his head with a laugh. “Shit, it almost sounds like our house. If I get home and one of them hasn’t set something on fire then I count it as a win.”

“Sounds like we’ve got more in common than we thought.”

Nox was quiet for a moment. “Makes sense, I guess. Demons are just angels who chose a different path. The original ones, anyway.”

Memories of my parents flitted through my mind,greyed and warped by the passage of time. “The path they chose literally divided Heaven in two.”

“Because they wanted freedom,” Nox said baldly, not taking his eyes off the road. “They wanted a life where they didn’t live under the control of someone else. Where they had the freedom to do what they chose.”

I snorted. “They lucked out with Lucifer.”

“True, but only because he lost the battle. If he hadn’t, the world would look very different. Maybe angels and demons wouldn’t be raised to hate each other the way they are now.”

I swallowed around the lump in my throat. “That doesn’t change what actually happened though. There were never going to be any winners in a war that turned brother against brother. Best friend against best friend. Lover against lover. It was a recipe for disaster from the very beginning.”

“Perhaps they thought it was worth fighting for. Sometimes you have to risk everything to gain the one thing you want. I know that’s what I did to escape from Hell and live topside.”

My brow furrowed. “Hang on, what did you risk? And what do you meanescape? Couldn’t you just come and go as you pleased?”

Nox laughed bitterly. “No. I only came to Earth when I was commanded to. The rest of the time I was required to stay inside the inner circles. I was as much a prisoner there as the sinners.”

I was stunned. I’d been under the impression that demons had the same freedom of movement as angels. I mean, sure, ours was limited by our missions, but we weren’t ever imprisoned anywhere.

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