Page 86 of For the Love of the Gods

Laurel smiled.Smiled. “He’s so kind. Well, if you aren’t too busy, feel free to stop by the shop in the next few days. I’ve been working on a new recipe I’d love for you to try.”

“That, um,” I reset myself, “That sounds great, Laurel. Thank you.”

Laurel nodded at both of us, then trickled off down the street. I stared at the spot she’d been for a little, shocked. Maybe Plutus was right, maybe people were actually okay with this. Maybe their opinion towards me was starting to improve.

I thought of Laurel’s shop, of the bread and spices and jam there. “Damnit.”

“What?” Dominic asked, crowding me a little.

I threw a hand out in the direction Laurel had walked off. “Now I have to go back to her store.”

Dominic looked at me like I might be a tad crazy. “Why?”

“She had this amazing fig jam last time we were there,” I explained. “I told myself I wouldn’t buy it if she was rude, but now I have to.”

Dominic's lips turned up at the corners. “Youhaveto?”

“Yes.”

“That makes…sense,” Dominic said, slowly.

“Don’t try to understand my feelings towards that jam,” I said. “I would have risked her wrath for it.”

“And what would you give me?” Dominic asked, leaning towards me, eclipsing the sun peaking over the buildings. “If I faced her wrath for you?”

“The day you do anythingforme, Dominic,” I said, reaching up to pat his chest. “Is the day our lovely realm freezes over.”

“No need to remind me, Rose,” he said, wrapping his hand over my wrist, pulling me off balance and closer to him. “Now,” Dominic continued, moving the hand around my wrist to fold my palm in his, “We’re getting ingredients for dinner. You owe me.”

“I don’t owe you shit,” I said, even as I followed him. I got the ingredients for a recipe I had in mind becauseIwanted to. Not because I gave a damn what Dominic thought. I told him so, surrounded by wheels of cheese. To which Dominic chastised me for exposing our bickering to the entire Underworld. Which made me throw a small block of gouda at his head.

The shopkeeper looked at us with wide eyes, but I just had the urge to tell him that this was nothing, that this was covering the depth of our resentment and serving as repentance for what I’d taken from Dominic.

Something I was now doubting I’d be able to give him back.

Chapter 23

Rose

A jar of fig jam had to be the most innocuous item in the world. There was nothing inherently wrong with it, nothing to set me off.

And yet looking at it sitting in my cabinet, exactly the way I remembered seeing it in Laurel’s shop made me angrier than I’d been in a while.

Somehow in the past day since going to Purgatory and without me noticing him leave, not that I kept track that often I just…

Without noticing him leave, Dominic managed to sneak away to Laurel’s store and buy the jam for me. Then place it in the cabinet without fanfare.

And I. Was. Pissed.

Because if he’d purchased it, then strolled into the house waving it in front of my face and making a ridiculous comment about how I was going to pay him back for his kindness, I wouldn’t have batted an eye.

But buying it like this was fuckingnormalfor us, like he did this every day was so off-putting and world-ending I had only one reaction. Anger.

Dominic didn’t just get to decide to start being nice to me, not after everything. He’d spent years reminding me of what I’d done to him at every turn, constantly keeping me on edge and in waiting for the day he decided to pop out of the shadows and put a knife to my throat.

Without so much as an admission of forgiveness or change of heart, he just starts doing shit like that for me? The way he made my tea for me every morning and the afternoons where I needed it was one thing. Not a pattern. No, no that wasn’t who we were to each other.

Because if we did, I would have to take the lock off my own instincts, desires. The soft touches and time spent in silence and wanting to ask him if he wanted to eat dinner with me alone.

---