I discovered who you really are? I think to myself.
“I got a new job,” I confess, although I’m more than happy to leave the details of said job out for now.
“Yeah?” His face lights up in excitement for me. “See, not all bad.”
I think of the job and internally cringe.
“No, I guess not,” I mutter as our server appears with a small bowl of olives and a pitcher of water, ready to take our drink orders and thankfully cutting off any questions about said job.
“What about you? How’s your mum doing?” I ask, sipping on some water in the hope of calming my nerves once we’re alone again. It does very little, and I realise that I probably should have gone ahead and just ordered straight-up vodka a few seconds ago.
“She’s doing okay. She’s home and being looked after by…” He hesitates, his brow pulling tight. “Galen, her other half.”
“But she’s okay?” He’s already told me all of this over message, but I couldn’t help but feel there was more to it.
“They’ve assured us that she is. The scans have come back clear. She just needs to rest and stop overdoing it. She seems to have forgotten what she went through only months ago.”
“She’s embarking on a new life. It must be hard not to get carried away, especially after all the years of crap.”
“Trust me, I get it. But seeing her in that hospital bed again, it just brought it all back. She came so close to not even being here now. I just… I didn’t need that reminder, you know?”
I nod, completely understanding what he means.
“So what about everything else?” I ask, my heart hammering wildly in my chest as my eyes pick out the cuts and bruises which have healed significantly since I saw him Sunday. “School? Work?”
He flips open the menu and chooses to study that instead of looking at me, and my stomach drops into my feet.
I hate myself for not figuring all this out earlier. For trusting him so blindly when I quite clearly didn’t know him at all.
All the questions I’ve been bottling up this week spin around my head as I try to find the most pressing to start with, but it quickly becomes obvious that I’m not going to get the chance when Louisa reappears with our drinks and pulls a small pad from her pocket.
“Are you both ready to order?” she asks politely, although I don’t miss the way she openly checks Toby out as if he’s not obviously on a date with me.
“Ladies first,” Toby says, his eyes drilling into me, basically eye-fucking me over the table. And despite everything I’m learning about this guy, I am fucking here for it.
I’ve barely looked at the menu, but I figure that I can’t really go wrong, and I’m sure stoking Toby’s ego right now will only go down well.
“You can choose, I trust you.”
His eyes widen with surprise but equally, they darken with my words.
He recovers after a beat and quickly rattles off our order before Louisa disappears once more.
“You surprise me at every turn, Demon,” he says, threading our fingers together once more.
“I could say the same thing about you, Tobias.”
He doesn’t react to my words, and that in itself speaks volumes.
My body begins to burn up, my hand starting to sweat where it’s twisted with his.
“Are you okay?” he asks, the concern I’ve become more than used to floating through my ears. “Did something else happen with your mum or…”
“No,” I say quickly.
“Okay. You’ve been so quiet this week, I wasn’t sure if—”
“It’s you,” I blurt like an idiot.