must continue to be strong. Nothing you face will be easy, but I will always be watching over you.” He lowered his hand as he stood, addressing Seth. “And you…you are so very lucky.”
And then he was gone.
Just like that, there one second, and then gone the next.
“Well, that wasn’t as awkward…or as violent as I thought it would be,” Seth announced, obviously accustomed to Apollo popping in and out.
“What…what did he say?” My gaze shifted from the spot Apollo had stood to where Seth was. “In the other language? Do you know?”
He nodded as his face softened. “He said, ‘my child, my life.’”
My heart squeezed.
“I never thought he had it in him.”
“What?”
Seth scrubbed his fingers through his hair and then dropped his hand. “I never thought Apollo really cared about anyone other than himself. Not like I think—like I know he cares about you. He has compassion. I’ve just never seen him that way before.”
I don’t know what it was about that, but the tenuous hold I had on my emotions shattered. I broke wide open. My face crumpled as a sob ripped out of me, shaking my body. I smacked my hands on my face, but it did nothing to stop the tears. They wet my palms, streaked down my cheeks and shook my shoulders.
The bed dipped, and strong, warm arms circled my waist, and knowing that Seth had stayed here, that he hadn’t left, made it all that much harder to pull it back together, to stitch the rawness closed.
Seth made a deep sound in the back of his throat as he pulled me onto his lap, folding one arm around me. His hand curved around the back of my head, and without saying a word, he guided me closer, and I went. Having no experience with these kinds of tears, I burrowed in as close as I could, wrapping my arms around him, and I held on.
And he held onto me.
CHAPTER
25
OPENING MY eyes, I stared up at the bluish glow flashing across the ceiling from the TV. The volume was turned down to nothing but hushed whispers. I must’ve fallen asleep.
You‘re so very lucky.
I dipped my chin, my gaze traveling over the still form of Josie. Emotionally spent, she had fallen asleep in my arms. Hadn’t even woken up when I’d repositioned us at the head of the bed. She stayed in my arms, her body curled on her side, hips between mine, head on my chest.
I tucked a strand of hair back behind her ear. She stirred, but whatever she murmured was completely unintelligible. The arm I had draped over her waist tightened of its own accord.
Had I ever held a girl like this? Maybe once or twice with Alex, but with her it had never been a case of her really wanting to be there, with me. More so a case of her needing to be close to me, and that was a big difference. Honestly, Alex and I…we had needed each other.
We’d never wanted each other. Not in the way she’d wanted Aiden St. Delphi and not in the way I wanted—I cut myself off, even though it was pointless. But sometimes it felt like, if I didn’t allow myself to finish a thought, it wasn’t true. Dumb-as-shit logic right there.
Josie shifted again, curling her small hand into a fist against my chest. I wondered what she dreamt and hoped it was something peaceful as I stared at the faint bruises shadowing the insides of her forearms. Eventually her skin would toughen against the training, but would she? So far she had accepted everything tossed her way, but I knew she would still hesitate when it came to killing something. That last shred of morality would be near-impossible for her to leave behind and accept.
There weren’t a lot of things in this world that scared me, but knowing there was a good chance she wouldn’t be able to kill… Yeah, it terrified me.
I closed my eyes, sucking in an unsteady breath. If she knew everything about me, everything that I had done, she wouldn’t be lying in my arms like this. She wouldn’t be anywhere near me, let alone wanting me to kiss her. So, yeah, I was lucky right now.
I needed to get my ass out of there before…before what? Before this went any further. Before she got herself so deep inside me I wouldn’t be able to get her out. And before she found out what I really was.
“Seth?”
My lids lifted at the sound of her sleepy voice. Her head was tilted back, her blue gaze on my face. “Hey.”
She blinked slowly. “I fell asleep on you.”
“It’s okay,” I told her. “I didn’t mind.”
A soft smile curved up her lips, and my gut dropped a little. A smile…I’d never known a smile could have that kind of effect. Could feel like a kick to the chest. “Thanks for…well, for also letting me cry on you.” A pink stain spread across her cheeks. Fascinating. “And for staying with me.”
“It’s not a big deal.” I tried to shift inconspicuously. Now that she was awake and moving, so was my cock. “You hanging in there?”
She settled her cheek against my chest again, apparently going nowhere, and that…that was okay with me. “I think I’m better,” she said quietly as she wiggled her hips, causing my hand against her stomach to flex. “I needed to let it out, I guess. I was holding it in. But I…I really don’t know what to think about Apollo. I just can’t really think about him being…being my father.”
“Who would want to think about Apollo being their father?”
She giggled, and I felt my lips respond in a grin. “Yeah, good point.”
“Out of everything you’re dealing with, I think it’s okay to put that on the back burner for a little while. Just don’t be surprised if he pops up again.”
“Hopefully when we’re not making out,” she muttered wryly.
I started to laugh, because that made two of us, but the humor faded quicker than morning frost. “I should probably get next door.”
Josie jumped off my chest so quickly I thought there were springs under her ass. Planting her hands on my thighs, she twisted around so that she faced me. “You’re going to leave now?”
I opened my mouth.
“Think before you answer that question, Sethie.”
Caught between wanting to laugh and kiss her and getting the hell out of there, I stared at her for what felt like a full minute. “Josie, I…” I trailed off as her eyes narrowed. “I’m not trying to be a dick—”
“Really? You kissed me earlier. Like really kissed me, and it sounds like you’re about to write that off, and yeah, that makes you a dick.”
“Damn, you’re feisty when you want to be,” I murmured, kind of turned on by her display of attitude. But as her lips thinned, for a second, I thought she might hit me.
“Sometimes I really don’t like you,” she said.
“The thing is, Josie, if you really knew me, you wouldn’t like me.” Pulling my right leg up, I shifted so there was some space between us. “You wouldn’t be in the same room as me.”
Josie sat back on her calves, and I wanted to get hit with another dose of anger—rightful anger. “Why?” she said softly, surprising me. “I really would like to know, because I think I know you. I know you better than I’ve known anyone else. So tell me why.”
Shoving my fingers through my hair, I resisted the urge to pull on it.
“Come on, Seth. You saw me at my worst and didn’t run. Do you think I will?”
I lifted my gaze, meeting her steady one. “Do you know what I was doing for the last year? Before I was sent to get you? I was hunting down those who sided with Ares. And by hunting down, I don’t mean rounding them up to have brunch and crumpets, Josie.”
“I figured you weren’t having lunch with them,” she said, plopping back on her ass. Her eyes never left mine.
“Did you?” I rose, shifting my weight onto my arms as I planted my hands on either side of her legs and leaned in so that we were face to face. “Those I hunted down—they were living, breathing people. Some of them pures. Some of them halfs. And some were mortals.”
She still held my stare, and I wanted her to look away, to turn away and prove what I thought. “None of them were arrested or tried in a court. All of them were deemed guilty before I even laid eyes on them. My orders were to kill them. And I did.”
Her chest rose sharply, but still, she did not look away.
“I cannot even begin to count how many lives I’ve ended with these hands. These hands, Josie.” Lifting them, I curved them over her knees. “The ones you want touching you.”
Her lips parted. “It was your job, Seth, it—”
“It was who I was. An executioner,” I cut in, my voice pitching low. “I killed people. Sometimes I didn’t make it quick. Do you know what that makes me?”
She didn’t answer.
I gave her one. “A monster. It makes me a monster.”
“No.” Her hands landed atop mine, and when I started to pull them away, she held on. “You are not a monster, Seth. You did what you had to do. What you were ordered to do.”
“Josie—”
“There are people—mortals—who kill other people every day because they are ordered to do so. Does that make men and women in the military monsters? What about police?” Her slim fingers gripped mine. “And would you have done those things if you hadn’t been ordered?”
Of course I wouldn’t have. I’d learned my lesson well before I got my marching orders, but did that change the last year of my life? No. And it didn’t change everything I had done before then.
“Would you, Seth? Would you have done it if you weren’t made to?”
I closed my eyes and my response was barely above a whisper. “No.”
She squeezed my hands. “It’s terrible. I’m not going to lie and say that it isn’t a big deal, but I know you. You did what you had to do, not because you wanted to. There’s a difference there.” She paused as her hands slid up to my wrists. “I ran over a squirrel once.”
Blinking open my eyes, I drew back as far as she’d let me.
“What?”
“I ran over a squirrel the second time I ever drove a car,” she repeated. “I also hit a deer. And when I was seventeen, I clipped a cat. Before I left for college, I backed into a dog.”
“Gods,” I muttered.
She nodded, lips drooping at the corners. “His name was Buddy and it was a golden retriever. Like, the most friendly of all dogs.”
Oh my gods.
“And the owner’s five-year-old kid saw it. Buddy survived, but I’m kind of like a mass murderer when it comes to animals and me behind the wheel.”
My lips twitched. It wasn’t funny. I had to keep telling myself that. “Babe, that’s not the same thing.”
“I know.” She shrugged. “But still. I’m not happy about it, but it seriously made me feel like an animal serial killer. Like somehow that was my destiny. To kill all the furry, four-legged friends.”
I stared at her. No matter what, she was so…so mortal.
Josie bit down on her lower lip as she worked her hands up to my elbows, her thumbs pressing on the insides. “I have deeper, darker secrets.”
“You do?” My voice was low, rough. The constriction in my chest was lessening. “Did you cut off the heads of your Barbies or something?”
She laughed softly. “No, but I did cut their hair and tried to dye it with markers.”
“Of course,” I murmured.
Rising onto her knees in front of me, she tightened her grip on my elbows, and I was absolutely helpless to move. Made powerless by a girl who thought she had darker secrets than me. “I wished, more than once when I was younger, that I had a different mom. That’s pretty bad.”
I found myself leaning toward her. Our faces separated by scant inches. “I think most people would sympathize with that.”
“Maybe. I’m just pointing out that no one is perfect, especially me.”
Josie was the closest thing to perfect I’d ever met, and she had no idea. The realization was a shot to the chest. When had this happened? When had I gone from being a one-man show, always alone with nothing meaningful, to having this right in front of me, in me? I closed my eyes as I dragged in a deep breath. I don’t even know why I said what I did. Then again, I didn’t know why I’d told Josie all the things I had before. “I don’t feel that way.”
“What?”
When I opened my eyes, she was staring at me with those big, blue ones. “When I’m with you, I don’t feel like a monster. I forget.” And that was the damn truth—a scary truth. “I forget all the things I’ve done that make me not deserve this.”
Josie didn’t respond, and for a long moment, she didn’t move, but then I felt her soft lips brush my forehead. The gentle, chaste touch shocked me, and I jerked back, staring at her. My heart pounded like a jackhammer.
Her smile was hesitant, but her grip on my arms was strong. “You’re staying with me,” she said, flushing pink as she ducked her chin. “It’s settled, like it or not.”
Then she sort of climbed up, forcing me back against the headboard and onto my ass, her movements awkward and shy as she looped her arms around my shoulders. I stiffened as she wiggled down, getting herself comfortable in my lap. Once situated, she grabbed my arms and folded them around her.
All I could do was stare at her, but as seconds turned into minutes, and as my muscles began to relax, I stayed with her.
CHAPTER
26
“YOU RUN like a girl.”
I scowled at Seth’s back and huffed out, “I am a girl.”
“Doesn’t mean you need to run like one,” he called out, hitting the main pathway that led around the academic buildings.
This time I made a face that didn’t last long, because I felt like I might pass out. Luke had bowed out on the afternoon run. Not that I blamed him. A cold snap had dropped the temps into what felt like lung-freezing territory and I couldn’t feel my face.
I hated running.
However, I did not hate the view in front of me.
Long, lean muscles flexed under his deep-gray thermal. My gaze dropped to his butt, and I almost tripped. I could seriously stare at his body all day. It was a work of art.
But my attraction to Seth ran deeper than the physical. He was still that puzzle I’d only barely begun to arrange. Like I’d gotten all the outer pieces with the straight sides lined up, but the meat of the puzzle still needed to be pieced together. Those moments when he was unbelievably kind, or when he was patient during training, or when he stayed with me when I’d turned into a hysterical mess, or when his guard completely slipped, and I saw the teasing, easy-going nature that I knew was at the heart of him—all of them had lured me in.
I wanted to get inside his head. Maybe that was some of wanting to study psychology left in me. Maybe it was just Seth. I didn’t know.
It had been two days since I’d seen Apollo and had a minor mental breakdown, and two days since we kissed. There hadn’t been any more of that, but Seth hadn’t left the last two nights. He stayed, and I guessed that was progress—frustrating progress.
I had gotten somewhere with him that night. I knew that, but I also knew there was so much more than what he’d shared with me. And I couldn’t help but think back to what Erin had said, to how Deacon and Luke behaved around Seth.
There was more.
The strange—but becoming more and more familiar—feeling unfurled deep inside me as we passed the library. Without meaning to, I slowed down, and then I just stopped in the middle of the pathway, unmindful of the brutal wind whipping through the statues and olive trees.
My gaze crawled up the long, wide set of marble steps beyond the veranda, and to the heavy, unmoving doors.
“Hey.” Seth had circled back to me, his body blocking the wind. “You okay?”
I nodded. “Yeah, it’s…” Shaking my head, I smiled up at him. “Never mind.”
Rays of sunlight caressed his high cheekbones as his brows knitted. “What?”
Glancing back up at the library, I shrugged. “It’s just… Every