Page 58 of The Devil She Knows
“Love at first sight. Soulmates.” Hannah shrugged helplessly. “If I’m being honest, you kind of blindsided me at dinner, Sam. All of a sudden, you’re telling this stranger that our eyes locked and it was this—what words did you use?Instantandintensething?” Hannah bit her lip. “I know we never talked about it, but I guess I assumed we were on the same page about it being …”
“Beingwhat?” Sam wanted to know. Heaven forbid she make the same mistake as Hannah andassume.
Hannah laughed like she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Like Sam was being unreasonable.
“Are you seriously going to bite my head off the way you did Cassandra’s at dinner?” Her tongue pressed against the inside of her cheek. “You know,” she said, staring down at the bed, “for a second there, I think Tom and I both thought you two were going to—God, go at it right in front of us. Right in front of mysalad.”
She felt the blood drain from her face. “What the hell? I didn’t—Hannah, youknowI would never—”
“No, I know. I know.” Hannah sighed. “It was just intense. I swear if someone had told me you two had met before I think I’d have believed it.”
Sam bit her lip. “Han—”
“No, it’s ridiculous, I know.”
It was allkindsof ridiculous.
Sam loved Hannah. Even if she removed her from the equation—impossible to do considering Hannahwasthe equation, the entire reason Sam had met Daphne in the first place, or rather the whole reason Daphne had orchestrated their first encounter—the idea that she and Daphne wouldever… it was laughable.
Yes, Daphne was … pleasant to look at. Okay,pretty. She was pretty. Sam could admit that. But she was ademon. She had a tail, for fuck’s sake. And a forked tongue, a forked tongue whose two halves Sam had firsthand knowledge Daphne could move independently, and Sam was horrified to admit that when Daphne had pressed her up against the inside of the elevator, she’d gotten kind of … hot in a way that had nothing to do with the anger setting her blood on fire.Aroused.
But that had been biology. Physiology. Sam was attracted to women and a very attractive woman-shaped demon had been touching her suggestively. Nothing more to it than that.
“Baby.” Hannah looked up at Sam from beneath her lashes. “Do you seriously want to argue about something as silly as soulmates right now? It’s not like either of us can prove it.”
Sam frowned.
It wasn’t silly to her.
It never was, and it wasn’t doubly so now that her soul was a chip on some cosmic poker table.
“Hey, don’t make that face.” Hannah crawled across the bed and cradled Sam’s face in her hands. “Just because Ididn’t fall in love with you the moment I set eyes on you doesn’t meant I’m not crazy about you now.” She smoothed away Sam’s frown, stroking over her brows with her thumbs. “It just took me a minute.”
“When did you?” Sam asked. “Know. That you loved me?”
Hannah pursed her lips, thinking. “Hmm. Chicago.”
Sam had never been to Chicago in her life.
Not that she knew of, at least.
“You know,” Hannah continued. “That night at the James Beard Foundation Awards. When you got up onstage to accept the award for Outstanding Chef and the whole room was standing up and clapping for you and—I was so proud. Proud of everything you’d achieved, and I knew in that moment that you were going places. Places I wanted to go with you. I saw you standing up there and you looked so beautiful, and I just knew then and there that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you.”
It was like hearing someone else’s love story. Hearing those usually gave her a secondhand sense of butterflies. Made her chest all warm and her stomach fluttery the way watching a good romance movie did. Even hearing a love song.
But the butterflies never came, and her chest just felt … hollow. Tender, too, like something had been carved out, was missing.
“I love you, Sam.” Hannah tucked a strand of hair behind Sam’s ear. “Let’s just put this weird night behind us, okay?” She leaned in and pressed a kiss to the corner of Sam’s mouth and Sam felt a phantom flutter in her stomach. “Get some rest.”
Sam had a feeling she was going to need it.
“I was thinking,” she said the next morning when Hannah’s alarm went off at five thirty a.m. “What if I came with you?”
“With me where?” Hannah tied the laces on her black Nike workout shoes.
“What is it this morning? SoulCycle? Barre?”
Hannah shot her a look of fond exasperation over her shoulder. “I do flywheel, not SoulCycle. And it’s Thursday. Barry’s Bootcamp. You know that.”
