by Megan Hart
"It won't change our agreement," the devil warned.
She shook her head. "I don't care. I want to know."
"You'll be able to cry again. I daresay you won't be able to keep yourself from it."
"I don't care."
"You're risking everything you've found with him, Kathleen," the devil continued smoothly. "You could lose it all."
Again she shook her head. "I need to know."
"All right. Far be it for me to deny you, then. But I do wish..." the devil paused, and for the first time in all her acquaintance of him, she saw him look sorrowful and believed the emotion to be true. "Never mind. What is to be, will be. It's all part --"
"Take it away," she told him.
The door inside her mind swung open.
24
Kathleen sat in the coffee shop, the few hours she had every week while Callie was in preschool. The time she spent drinking coffee and working away at this dream she was convinced would never come true. Kathleen focused on the computer, searching for the words that wanted to become sentences that would tell a story.
It was crowded in here, as always, so when the man passing her table bumped her by accident she didn't think much of it. At least not until he kept looking at her. She pulled out an earbud and gave him a lift of her brow that made words unnecessary.
"AC/DC," the guy said.
Faintly surprised and taken aback that he'd creeped on her phone to see what she'd been listening too, she pulled out the other earbud. "Yeah?"
"Good music."
She narrowed her eyes a little, studying him. He wasn't tall, but he wasn't short. He had dark hair. Hazel-y eyes. A nice smile. "Uh huh."
The guy lifted his cup toward her in a silent and totally lame toast that didn't seem to need a reply. Kathleen tucked the earbuds back into her ears and bent over the laptop again. Still, she couldn't quite shake off the weight of his gaze. He was staring, though pretending that he wasn't.
"It's a book," she said finally, pointing at the computer screen. He looked caught, and she kept herself from laughing by biting at the tip of her tongue for a second. "I'm writing a book. People ask me that a lot. What I'm typing. So...there you go."
That was the first time she saw him, but it wasn't the last.
Every Tuesday and Thursday from quarter-to-ten to quarter-to-noon, she came to the coffee shop to work. She drank flavored coffee and listened to music with her earbuds in so she could avoid random conversations, and also because she wrote better to the beat of a playlist.
After three weeks, they'd become acquaintances, worthy of a nod of greeting. She couldn't remember when she figured out his name was Jake, or that he knew she was Kathleen. Probably they both simply absorbed the information the way she had about the rest of the coffee shop regulars, overhearing names when the counter clerks called out the orders ready at the counter. Jake always had a book with him; she'd noticed that right away when she'd seen him reading one of her favorites, Trout Fishing in America.
Today, it was something else. "Hey, Jake. Good book?"
He looked at the slender paperback in his hand, the cover battered and taped in places. Brave New World. He shifted a little in his seat. "Yeah. You've read it?"
Kathleen studied it. "Yes. It's one of my favorites."
He grinned. "Have you read every book I've been reading?"
"Yes." She returned the grin.
"How's your book coming along?" He jerked his chin toward the laptop.
Kathleen's smile faded into a frown. "It's okay, I guess. Actually, it's shit. I don't know why I bother. I should just give up. There's so much better stuff I could do with my time."
"Hey, don't say that. I'm sure it's not shit." He hadn't read it and of course could have no idea if it was shit or not, obviously, but it was nice of him to say.
"I got another rejection." She paused. "I'm almost finished with this one. It's my fifth. I have a stack of rejections and an email folder with more taking up too much space on my hard drive. I don't watch TV, I barely read anymore, I don't do anything but clean the house, pick up after everyone else, and work on this stuff, and it's going nowhere."
"You can't give up."
Kathleen raised both brows. "Sure, I can. I should. I mean, there comes a time when you should just admit that something's not working, even if you really want it to."
"All writers get rejected. Stephen King got rejected hundreds of times."
"Not everyone is meant to get what they want, Jake."
He studied her for a second. "Is that what you really want? To be a writer?"
"To be a published writer," she corrected. "I am a writer, if you define that by the fact that writers write. Well. I write. But I want to be a published writer. I don't need to be famous. I don't need to make a million bucks. I just want to be published."
"Then you can't give up," he told her. "'Cuz if you do, you definitely will never get published."
Surprisingly, it seemed like the right thing for him to say, and gave her pause. Her husband treated her writing as something less than even a hobby. He certainly never told her not to give it up. If anything, he grouched that the time she spent working on her books would be better spent mopping the floor or folding his laundry.
Kathleen looked at the clock. "Shit. I gotta go. I'll be late picking up my kid, and they get sort of irritated when that happens."
Quickly, she gathered her belongings, closing her laptop and slipping it into her bag, grabbing up her coat. Juggling too many things, she almost dropped her mug. Coffee sloshed. Jake took it gently from her hand.
"Here. Let me get that for you."
"Thanks," Kathleen said after a second. Her eyes met his. His touch had tingled, literally, a small static shock. "See you Thursday?"
Jake nodded. "Yep. I should be here."
"See you then," Kathleen said.
At the front door, pushing the door so the bell overhead jingled, she paused. Looked back over her shoulder. Her gaze found him all the way across the room, and she smiled a little uncertainly before going out the door.
She looked back.
And it began.
"Closed?" Kathleen turned to Jake. "It's closed today?"
Jake looked closer at the sign on the coffee shop door, then up and down the street. Other shops on this side were dark, while ones across the street were lit. "Power outage."
Kathleen blew out an irritated breath. "Well, shit. I really needed the time today. I got another request from an agent, for a full. I need to get some revisions done."
"Eighteen-wheeler hit a power line," said the man passing behind them on the sidewalk. "Knocked the power out for this block only. Strangest damn thing, you'd have thought it would've taken out more than that. Guess we got lucky."
"Anyone get hurt?" Kathleen asked.
"Heard the driver died." The man's shrug said he didn't really know for sure, or maybe didn't care.
Jake waited until the other guy had passed them before he turned to her. "I can make you some coffee, Kathleen. I have a table you can sit at, if you need to get some work done. I only live over on Maple. You want to come over to my place?"
She should say no, she thought. No thank you, Jake, but I couldn't possibly. It wouldn't be appropriate. I'll go to the library. Or I'll sit in my car....
"Are you sure? I don't want to be a bother."
As it turned out, Jake had no coffee. He had hot tea, which he offered instead, and Kathleen accepted. She put her computer bag on his kitchen table. She hung her coat on the back of the chair.
When she turned to face him with an uneasy smile, Jake kissed her.
She turned her face at the last second so his mouth barely brushed the corner of hers, but she didn't pull away. When he put his arms around her, holding her close, mouthing first her jaw and then her neck, she sighed and shivered and tipped her head back to allow him access. When he pressed his teeth to her skin, Kathleen let out a long, low moan.
She stepped backward without let
ting go of him, putting herself against the wall next to the basement door. Jake pressed against her, sliding a knee between her thighs and earning another of those rasping groans. She fisted her hands in the front of his shirt, pulling him closer. Offering him her mouth. Her tongue. She opened herself to his kiss and the grasp of his hands she made rougher by moving his touch from her hip to cup her breast.
"Fuck me," Kathleen whispered in his ear over and over as she worked him free of his jeans and briefs. She stroked him, and he shuddered under that touch. She shifted, her back still against the wall. His bare flesh pressed hers. With only a simple shift in angle and his hands under her ass, lifting, he could be inside her, but Jake hesitated until she kissed him again. Hard, bruising, sucking his tongue, she broke it long enough to say again, "Please."
They had the summer.
Furtive phone conversations. Instant messages. She found far more excuses to meet him than either of them had ever dreamed could happen, and even though she told him she assumed that every time would be the last-- that he would get tired of the arrangement, that he'd realize he wanted someone else, that he would simply stop answering her messages...that didn't happen.
They had the summer, and it wasn't enough.
"I love you," she said.
"I'm leaving him," she said.
"I want to be with you," she said.
Somehow, Jake was standing and Kathleen had stumbled back against the kitchen table, with the chair knocked over behind him. She looked up at him, surprised but not apparently hurt, though she would later find the bruises of where she'd hit the table with her back.
"Jake --"
"Are you crazy," Jake said. "What the hell are you talking about? Leaving him?"
Kathleen straightened. Her hands became loose fists at her sides. Her chin lifted, but she didn't say anything.
"I figured you were coming here to break it off with me," Jake said. "Jesus fucking Christ, Kathleen. What the hell are you trying to do?"
"Did you hear what I said?"
"Yes. I heard you."
She cleared her throat, fighting to keep her voice steady and calm. "I've made a mistake."
"Shit. Yes. A big one." He shook his head. Made a pushing-away gesture with his hands. "Just get out of here."
It was cruel, but what had she expected? A man who'd fuck a married woman could hardly be counted on to be kind. It didn't matter how he'd kissed her, or the hours he'd spent learning her better than any other person ever had. It didn't matter that he'd looked at her as though she were a treasure.
"I love you," she told him again. "I understand if you don't feel the same way, but I thought at least there was something."
"Well, you were wrong," he said coldly. "I can't give you what you want, Kathleen."
Kathleen folded slowly, crumpling, and ended up with her hands flat on the floor. Head bent. Shoulders shaking.
She broke in front of him, because why did it matter anymore, if she tried to convince him that she was strong? She wasn't. She had walked this path with him and now he was letting her go ahead of him, but she had not reached this place by herself.
He deserved to watch her break.
"Please," she whispered in a voice gone thick with tears.
"I can't give you what you want," Jake repeated.
"You don't have to make me your all," she said again, this time looking up at him so he'd be forced to remember her face forever when at last, he'd made her beg. "But please, please, don't make me nothing."
"I can't," Jake said. "I'm sorry."
They both stayed like that for a time, neither moving. Another minute passed, then another, before Kathleen got to her feet. She wiped at her face and squared her shoulders. She swallowed over and over until she could speak, and when she did her voice was rough and raw and agonized, but it didn't shake or waver.
"I'm not sorry," she told him. "Even if this is how it ends, I'm not sorry about any of it."
She was waiting for him to answer her, but he gave her nothing but his silence.
So she left him.
“I can make all your dreams come true.” The devil did not wear a blue dress. He wore a pair of loose-hanging sweatpants and a tank top that showed off his bulging muscles. “Everything you ever wanted can be yours.”
“Everything?” The idea was preposterous and pleasing, like something from the novel she’d been thinking about starting to take the place of the one that she couldn’t seem to finish.
The devil nodded. “Yes.”
Kathleen didn’t say anything for a long minute, staring into the takeout cup of coffee she’d allowed to get cold. She’d met the devil a week ago in the same coffee shop where she’d met Jake, and did not miss the irony of that. “Can you help me understand why?”
“Why you were so wrong about him?”
She carefully did not look in the devil’s direction. She’d done that once unexpectedly and seen more than a blond gym rat. She’d seen darkness. It was better to look at the devil slowly to let her brain take the time it needed to see whatever form he’d taken. She nodded.
“Who says you were?” The devil asked.
She looked up, blinking to focus. “He did.”
“And it hurt, huh?” The devil pulled a sympathetic face Kathleen had a difficult time believing was true. “Like a punch in the face?”
A punch in the face, a stab in the heart, a slashing open of her flesh down to the bone. “Yes.”
“Let’s face it,” the devil said, “love is a punch in the face you never see coming.”
“And wouldn’t duck if you did.” Kathleen lifted her chin. She tossed her full cup into the garbage and stood. Her hands trembled, so she closed them into fists. “I wouldn’t change any of what happened. I made my choices. I never thought I could feel that way about anyone, ever. Now at least I know I can.”
The devil shook his head. His features morphed. His hair darkened, streaking with gray, long, then short. His body changed. His clothes. Then he was back again to the blond, muscled body he’d worn the first time he stopped to talk to her.
“He could never have given you what you wanted, Kathleen. He thinks he doesn’t have it to give you. He thinks I own it.”
Bile rose in her throat, and she swallowed hard. “What does that mean?”
The devil spelled it out for her swiftly, without embellishment. A mother’s sin, a son’s love. She listened, jaw dropping. Kathleen shook her head.
“No…He owes you his soul if he doesn’t do what you say?”
“That’s the common deal, and what Jake believes he owes.” The devil grinned and ran his tongue along his teeth.
She faced him. “Give it to me.”
“You don’t have to take it,” the devil said with a raise of his eyebrows and a pursed mouth. “We can make our own deal.”
“That’s part of it.” She drew in a breath, then another, tasting soot and ash and also the sweet, sweet undertone of honey. “Take it from him and give it to me.”
“And what shall I give you in return, my dove?” The devil stood to pull her closer.
Kathleen let him. “Just…take away the pain. Let it not hurt anymore, okay? I just don’t want it to hurt anymore. Give me his burden. I can take it, if you just stop me from feeling this.”
“Ah,” said the devil as he kissed her, “the things we do for love.”
25
The devil had not been lying when he said he hadn't been the one to leave her the muffin.
"I met you both in that coffee shop," Kathleen said. She had not fallen to the ground, though every part of her ached as though she'd been hit by a truck. She let herself sink onto the edge of the bed. Sweat beaded on her upper lip; she licked it away.
"You'd have met me anywhere," the devil said. "I have a knack for showing up when I'm wanted."
She remembered everything, now. That descent into love. How she'd drowned in every look, every touch, every sigh and every word Jake had said or refused to say.
&nb
sp; "You let me believe all this time that I bound myself to you in exchange for getting published and being successful." Kathleen's mouth worked around the bitterness of the words.
"You assumed that. And you know what they say, when you assume you make an ass out of..."
"You say you don't lie," she cut in, not caring in that moment if she'd risk Satan's fury. How could it matter, anymore? "But you lied to Jake. You lied to me. You told him I asked you to make me forget. You told me I asked for you to take away my tears. But really, what I did was ask to take away his burden, didn't I?"
The devil smiled.
"I asked you to give it to me, instead."
Her mouth no longer tasted of blood and salt. Golden honey coated her tongue. Sweetness. She shook, as she had so many times in the presence of the Fallen One, but now it was not with fear or grief or pain.
It was with love.
"I asked you to give me all of Jake's tasks so he would no longer owe you his soul. So he could move on with his life and make something real of it, even if it wasn’t with me. That's what I exchanged for our arrangement." Her voice rose. She got to her feet. She was not bigger than the devil, but she felt a power rushing through her. It sparked like electricity, tingling through her every nerve and crackling in her fingertips. It pushed Lucifer back one step and then another. With glee, she moved toward him, watching him retreat. "But he never owed you anything, did he? You told me his mother had sold him to you, he believed he had to pay her debt, so he did as you asked because he thought he had no choice. But we all choose, right? We all play our part in the circle, and Jake never was bound to you. You just let him believe he was."
The devil sighed and waved a languid hand. "People assume."
"He was never bound to you," Kathleen said in triumph, "which means that when I took over for him, I wasn't taking on anything but a misunderstanding. Which means our agreement is null and void. I owe you nothing."
"Exactly," the devil said with a grin. "You owe me nothing."
