The first mistake Dante made was moving into the apartment next to yours.

The second was deciding your indifference was a challenge.

You’d been retired three years now. Retired in the mercenary sense, anyway — meaning you only took jobs that sounded entertaining enough to drag you out of bed. Most days, you lounged around your apartment with a cigarette hanging from your mouth and enough money tucked away to ignore the world comfortably.

Then someone had put a bounty on Dante.

You’d tracked him down expecting some overeager punk with a sword complex. Instead you found a loudmouthed jackass laughing in the face of a demon while getting thrown through a brick wall.

The job lasted fifteen minutes.

You called the client afterward.

“Not worth the paperwork,” you’d said, and hung up.

Apparently, that had been the wrong thing to do.

Because Dante never forgot it.

“You know,” Dante drawled from your doorway, “most neighbors say good morning.”

You didn’t look up from your newspaper. “Most neighbors wear shirts.”

“Wow.” He leaned against the frame dramatically, bare-chested and smug. “You wound me.”

The bastard was impossible. White hair disheveled from sleep, sweatpants hanging dangerously low on his hips, one hand scratching lazily at his stomach like he hadn’t deliberately engineered the entire scene.

You took a drag from your cigarette.

“No reaction again?” he sighed. “C’mon, old man, throw me a bone here.”

“You’re thirty-something.”

“And you’re ancient emotionally.”

A can of beer sailed across the room.

Dante caught it one-handed with a grin. “There he is.”

You finally glanced at him. “What do you want?”

“Bored.”

“That sounds terminal.”

“I was thinking food.”

“You were thinking freeloading.”

“Tomato, tomahto.”

He wandered into your apartment without permission — again — poking through cupboards like he paid rent there. You watched him silently over the edge of your paper.

Most people found Dante charming. Irritatingly charming. He flashed smiles like loaded weapons and flirted with anything possessing a pulse. Underneath all the arrogance was something restless, though. A mutt that didn’t know how to sit still unless someone forced him to.

Unfortunately, he’d decided that someone was you.

“You know,” he called from the kitchen, “normal people would’ve killed me by now.”

“I tried once.”

“Yeah, but you quit halfway through. Kinda hurt my feelings.”

“You were annoying even then.”

Dante barked out a laugh. Loud. Genuine.

It echoed strangely warmly through the apartment.

A moment later he reappeared holding a bag of chips he definitely hadn’t bought. “So,” he said, dropping onto your couch beside you like an oversized cat, “movie night?”

“No.”

“Pizza?”

“No.”

“Demon hunt?”

“Absolutely not.”

He slumped dramatically across the cushions until his head nearly landed in your lap. “You never wanna do anything fun.”

“You define fun as property damage.”

“And you define fun as glaring at walls.”

You shoved his face away before he could get comfortable.

Dante only grinned wider.

That grin faded slightly when he caught you staring.

Not at his face.

Lower.

A beat of silence passed.

Then Dante sat up slowly, silver brows lifting with unbearable smugness.

“Oh,” he said softly. “So you do look.”

You crushed your cigarette into the ashtray. “Don’t make it weird.”

“Too late.” He leaned closer, all sharp teeth and satisfaction. “This is the most attention you’ve given me in months. I’m savoring it.”

“You’re insufferable.”

“And yet,” Dante murmured, nudging your knee with his boot, “you still haven’t kicked me out.”

You stared at him for a long moment.

Then sighed heavily and folded the newspaper.

“Fine,” you muttered. “One pizza.”

Dante looked victorious enough to win a war.

“Hell yeah.”