“So he would have been thirty-four.” Astaroth scowled. “I don’t like that. What’s his name?”
“Sam,” she said. “Sam Templeton.” He’d seemed so sophisticated to her back then. Someone had finally seen the worth in troublemaker tomboy Calladia, and it was a handsome, tenured professor who wore suits and had the ear of every person of influence in a hundred miles. The kind of man her mother respected.
He’d asked her to keep their relationship on the down-low on campus, of course. At the time, it had felt like a thrilling secret.
“We dated the entire time I was in college,” Calladia continued. “My mother adored him, of course. He came from East Coast money and had a job she respected, and I guess she thought he was a civilizing influence on me.”
Astaroth scoffed. “Bloody nonsense.”
“Not according to my mother.” Calladia picked at a stray thread from the blanket. “She didn’t know how bad it got though. She just saw me dressing nicely and spending less time at the gym and figured I was finally growing up. Becoming a proper woman, as she called it.” And Calladia, sick with the need for validation, had clung to that shred of approval. She’d gotten her ears pierced, started wearing pearls, even invested in a cream-colored pantsuit that Mariel and Themmie had helped her burn when the whole mess was over.
Astaroth made a low, angry sound. “What did he do, Calladia?”
“He didn’t hit me or anything.” Maybe if he had she’d have recognized his true nature earlier. “He just wanted me to be someone I wasn’t.” She bit her lip, despising how thinking about that time still hurt, when she was sure Sam never gave a second thought to the young women left in his wake. “It started small. He said I was too loud, that I swore too much. So I toned it down. Then he thought my fashion sense was childish and wanted me to look more grown-up. For my own good, of course,” she said sarcastically. “He said he wanted other people to respect me the way he did, and he didn’t like hearing them make fun of me behind my back.” Now she doubted those people had existed outside of Sam’s manipulative fantasies.
“If he wanted to date someone more grown-up,” Astaroth said tightly, “he could have chosen someone his own age.”
“Exactly.” She smiled crookedly at the demon. “But my youth was the point. He’d dated at least one undergrad before me, I found out, and after we broke up and before I blocked him on social media, I saw his new girlfriend on Pixtagram, and she looked so young. Even though I was the one to break up with him, it felt like he’d replaced me with someone younger and prettier.”
“I’d like to point out that no one is prettier than you,” Astaroth said, running his hand in soothing strokes over her side, “though I acknowledge that’s not the point.”
She laughed awkwardly. “You may need your eyes checked, but thank you.”
He frowned. “I’ve noticed you don’t like compliments.”
“I don’t get a lot of them.” She knew how to react to a challenge or insult—hit back—but she’d never quite known what to do with praise.
“Then clearly I need to compliment you all the time.” Astaroth ducked his head and pressed a kiss to her bicep. “Tell me more about this Sam wanker.”
Calladia sighed. “He didn’t like me working out. He thought it made me look too masculine for his tastes.” A sentiment her mother had echoed, so a younger Calladia had let them convince her that was a bad thing. “So I stopped working out, stopped speaking up, stopped swearing. Then he wanted me to lose weight. I made myself small and quiet and biddable, and it was never enough.” The critiques had grown crueler, until she’d dreaded the sound of his footsteps outside the apartment in the evening.
“It never would be,” Astaroth said. “Some bastards want power but don’t know how to get it without tearing other people down. If they can’t earn respect on their own merits, they’ll create a victim with no choice in the matter.”
His eyes held the weight of ages, and Calladia was struck by the vast difference between them. Astaroth looked young, and he could be as funny and petty and ridiculous as any human, but he was very, very old. “If Sam was problematic at fifteen years older than me, then what is this?” she asked, gesturing between them.
“The problematic part is when an older partner specifically chooses someone young and naive to take advantage of or demean,” Astaroth said. “I’m interested in you for who you are, exactly as you are. And you’re fully capable of . . . what did you threaten me with again? Exploding my testicles if I try any funny business.”
Who you are, exactly as you are. Flustered by the praise, Calladia scrambled for a joke. “It helps that you’re a very immature six hundred.”
“Precisely,” Astaroth agreed. “I’m fairly sure I haven’t experienced emotional growth since the Thirty Years’ War.”
That blatantly wasn’t true—because what had the last few days been, if not emotional growth?—but Calladia appreciated the attempt at humor. It made it easier for her to finish the story.
“Anyway,” she said, “I finally came to my senses, thanks to Mariel.” Mariel had staged a few interventions over the years, but Calladia had been too blinded by love to listen—and later, too browbeaten. “She wasn’t getting results reasoning with me, so she did something tricky after Sam proposed. She invited me to come hiking with her back in Glimmer Falls.” Mariel had never been a fitness nut the way Calladia was, but she loved hiking, and the two of them had spent countless hours wandering the woods together. “We hadn’t gone in a while, and Sam had been limiting the time I spent with my friends, but he was out of town one weekend. So I drove up to Glimmer Falls and joined Mariel on a hike to the hot springs.”
She could picture it clearly. Calladia hadn’t exercised in a long time, and her workout pants and tank top had hung loose. When she’d looked in the mirror, she hadn’t recognized the frail woman playing dress-up in the old Calladia’s clothes.
“I couldn’t keep up,” Calladia said. “I used to run half-marathons, but I was winded within minutes of starting a gentle hike. After fifteen minutes, I nearly passed out. It was then I realized Sam hadn’t been improving me the way he claimed to be. Instead, he had made me weak.”
She’d cried her eyes out at the side of that trail while Mariel had held her and whispered assurances that this wasn’t the end, and she would be strong again.
Then Mariel had driven back to Sam’s apartment next to Crabtree College, helped Calladia pack her things, and brought her home.