Every word bit into him, chewing, chewing...
She’d spoken softly, without any emotion at all. As if she believed that. As if she’d believed it for years.
Maybe she’d done exactly that ever since that day at the airport. After his failed attempt to explain himself to her, standing outside the plane with his head still ringing from her slap, Ares had given up the idea of it. Explaining had seemed too much like making excuses for his choices, and there was no excuse. But there was a truth to be told. And she claimed to want truth between them.
Maybe it would help her to know. Maybe it would make things easier. Or maybe it would make it easier for her to accept how it would go if she told Theo...how her brother would feel when confronted with something from the past—a mistake—he couldn’t fix.
He spoke quietly, not out of choice, but because just above a whisper was all the volume he could give his words. It took everything he had inside him to get them out.
“I would’ve married you, Eri. In a registrar’s office. At a church. In Deakin’s boathouse. I would’ve given up my trust fund, worked as a dishwasher, lived simply... I’d have given everything to be with you and raise our daughter.”
She was wrong. Confession didn’t make him feel better. It didn’t make her feel better either. Her brows, fiercely pinched together, etched pain on her face. Tears filled her eyes. She breathed too fast and too shallow, clearly anguished.
His words chewed into her, as hers had done to him. And that was how it would be for them—pain spreading and rippling out until neither of them were whole again.
“Ares...”
Her voice wobbled over his name, in a plea or a prayer... But it was one he couldn’t answer.
He handed the lantern to her, because taking care of what was before him was all he could manage. “Be careful going up the path.”
She said his name again. Only, he’d already turned to head up the other, steeper trail to the cottage. He knew the way well enough to trust his feet in the dark. She’d be safer with the light.
* * *
Ares sat in the clinic’s office on Friday morning, his head on the desk, door closed. It had taken him only fifteen minutes to fill out the required paperwork and make the call to summon the air ambulance from Athens for a quick transfer of his latest patient, but he was still running on yesterday’s energy reserves.
Sleeping required closing his eyes, and therein lay the problem: his closed eyes provided the perfect projection screen for his brain to replay the highlight reels of his biggest Erianthe failures.
The sound of the door opening jerked him back upright to find Deakin standing there, looking at him with challenge.
A challenge Ares just wasn’t up for navigating right now.
“The ambulance will be here in another fifteen minutes. Is Mr. Halkias ready?”
“We got him ready before you came down here to call,” Deakin reminded him, moving to perch on the side of the desk. “What’s going on with you?”
“Just had a little trouble sleeping last night, that’s all. I should’ve asked if his wife is ready too. I remember getting his wounds dressed and setting up the morphine pump...”
“She’s there, pushing the button every ten minutes,” Deakin confirmed, but he still had that challenging expression, now with shades of concern for his brother-in-all-but-name.
Ares was too tired to deal with some kind of talk in which he was apparently supposed to moan about his problems. He should just lay his head back down.
“I’m onto you,” Deakin said, his voice low enough not to carry through the closed door.
Right. And that could mean anything.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You look like hell. Even worse than usual. And, since you’re taking no hints, I’m just going to say it. You should talk to someone about whatever the hell is going on.”
Like that was so easy. “There’s really nothing going on that I want to talk about.”
“Fine, then shut up and listen.” Deakin stood up from the desk and instead leaned over to brace his hands on the polished wood opposite him. “I get it. Something bad happened, there’s no way of undoing it, so dwelling on the bad thing does no good, et cetera.”
God, when had Theo and Deakin turned into dudes who talked such crap? Historically, this was not the kind of talking they did. They complained and commiserated with one another, with anger being their primary way to express unity in the face of whatever their friend was suffering—something he’d already told them about. It was a time-honored tradition, and even Erianthe generally respected it.
“You don’t want to talk to me about it—that’s fine. Don’t want to talk to Theo or Chris either? Still cool. But you should find someone to talk to.”
Ares turned behind him to the fax machine and grabbed the pages he’d faxed to the ambulance company, then the folder they needed to go in, and stood up to take care of the filing.
“Talk to Lea,” Deakin said from behind him, bringing up the woman Ares had recently overheard Deakin calling ángelos mou.
Ares slipped the file into the appropriate drawer—which should at least earn him some points with Petra, since he seemed to be losing points with everyone else.
“She’s not going to tell me about whatever you discuss. And she’s good at what she does,” Deakin said over the silence.
A silence that was clearly doing no damned good to create a boundary between them.
“I’ve seen the garden, and the patients she’s been able to help, and those are great things. I don’t doubt that she’s very good at what she does, and I would definitely describe her as an excellent doctor,” he said.
“But you don’t want to talk to her about it,” Deakin added flatly.
Talking about it was the reason Ares looked the way he did today—as if someone had blacked both his eyes and his scrubs had been crammed into a suitcase for a month.
No, that wasn’t true. Talking with Erianthe hadn’t created the rot inside him. It was closer to being like the first slice in to clean out a pocket of infection and becoming overwhelmed by how extensively it had festered. To the point where there might be no hope of healing. Maybe all he had left in him was disease.
He shook his head, even though it confirmed the existence of an it to talk about, and faced his friend. Doing battle on his feet, no matter how exhausted he was, was better than doing it on his ass.
The look he suffered went on and on—enough for dread to rumble through his guts. That look was pointed. That look said something. How onto him was Deakin?
“Is there anyone you want to talk to about it?”
Erianthe.
Her face rushed into the front of his mind, and he would have said her name but for the general sluggishness of the day working in his favor.
Deakin’s gaze sharpened. He’d seen it—that moment where his mind had shouted the answer.
He saw too much—or Ares was getting terrible at hiding his feelings. Deakin hadn’t suggested Ares talk to Erianthe about his issue. Did that mean something? Did he know already that it involved her? Or had he just not suggested her because they’d worked so hard to make it appear they’d never been that close?
“This is the last time I’ll mention it, but find someone. Hell, you could talk to Petra. Talk to those damned sheep on your land. Write it down and throw it into the sea.”
Deakin didn’t look at him with the exasperation he’d heard in his friend’s voice, but with a muted concern that lingered uncomfortably.
“There’s really nothing to write about.”
Deakin rolled his eyes, shook his head and left.
CHAPTER EIGHT
ARES SAT IN his boat, waiting for Erianthe at the end of the day. He’d finished on time, but she still hadn’t come out.
After Deakin�
�s one-on-one intervention he hadn’t been able to decide what, if anything, to tell her. He suspected Deakin knew about them. Or knew something about them. Maybe it was common knowledge about them having been together before. Maybe he should be up front about that part.
But the problem was the conversation that would inevitably follow might lead to worse parts than they knew. Parts that were at the heart of his whole dilemma.
Ares prided himself on being able to handle whatever life threw at him—because life had thrown a hell of a lot at him and he was still standing. But when it came to Erianthe, no path seemed clear.
This morning on the way to the clinic she hadn’t said a single word to him. Not even good morning. Every time he’d looked at her he’d seen his confession from last night in her eyes. And then she’d avoided him all day.
A glance behind him at the building confirmed he still had some time to think about that. Not there. For all he knew she’d decided not to take him up on a lift home. She might be with a patient, or she might just be avoiding him still.
Nothing in who he was wanted to cause pain to anyone, but last night he’d made himself think like a doctor. Would a little bit of pain now save a lot of pain down the road? It was a gamble he’d take.
Another glance back. No Erianthe.
But someone else was there. Two someones. A man and a woman. Loitering.
He stood up to get a better look and his stomach hit the deck. Mr. and Mrs. Nikolaides. And not the newlyweds. They’d stopped at a junction where Erianthe wouldn’t see them in time to turn the other way. She’d just be rounding the corner and would stumble over them—the parents she was not yet ready to deal with. He’d given her enough to work through yesterday without them piling in today.
The expression on her pale face at the wedding, when she’d looked at them... She’d had to be strong to get through the past ten years, but her parents had a special power to hurt her.
And he’d be damned if he stood by while they ambushed her. Again.
Leaping from the boat, he made a quick jog toward them.
“Mrs. Nikolaides.” He addressed her mother first but focused on her father. “Mr. Nikolaides. Tell me you’re not lying in wait for Erianthe.”
“She won’t see us,” her mother said, and to her credit she sounded forlorn enough to stir a pang of sympathy in Ares.
Except he knew how hard this was for Erianthe to deal with, and he doubted they knew what would come from seeing her deal with it.
Dimitri turned toward him, his expression hard as flint, his face turning deepening shades of red. “This has nothing to do with you. You can’t keep our daughter from us, boy.”
Boy? That was supposed to upset him?
Dimitri Nikolaides had always had a tendency toward bullying—something he’d used on Ares at eighteen, to put him on the back foot, from where he had managed to trip up. Or at least had started the long, complicated exchange that had dismantled all Ares’s defenses and thrown in a few metaphorical kidney punches to seal the deal.
But today’s taunt sounded too schoolyard to do more than make him... Well, he’d be amused if he weren’t in a hurry for them to leave.
“I’m asking you politely,” Ares said, as it seemed the speediest way to get them gone. “But I can become less civil. This is where your children work. Don’t sully it, or your daughter’s reputation, by making her react where anyone could witness it. The wedding was hard enough on her.”
“You suddenly care about her reputation?” Dimitri snorted, and Hera Nikolaides seemed to just fade into the background, for reasons Ares didn’t have time to analyze. “She’s living with you. Outside of marriage. Are you planning to give her another child to lose?”
Another attempt to dismantle him. And that was the one that got a reaction.
Ares stepped forward so quickly, so aggressively, that Dimitri stepped back to avoid being touched. He wasn’t a small man, but Ares was tall enough that he tended to tower over most people.
It took some serious effort on his part, and some mental reminders of Dimitri’s age, but he resisted the urge to beat the man to death.
“You can’t take care of her. Look at you—you can’t even take care of yourself,” Dimitri added caustically.
* * *
Erianthe hurried down the walk to the docks, checking the time as she went. Ares would no doubt be irritated with her. Ten years ago he’d told her he loved her. It had made her happy at the time, but in hindsight it seemed too easily said to remain real after things got so hard.
Last night he hadn’t used the word love, but all the other words he’d said, they’d been so much more real. They’d added up to love.
His sudden relocation to the cottage had left her with little confusion about how much he wanted her around, but it hadn’t really surprised her. What had surprised her was the feeling of loss that had come at his declaration of past love. That was what still burned in her chest.
“I can take care of you.”
A man’s voice, cold and threatening, drifted to her from around the corner of the building, and a chill washed the burn right out of her—along with all sense of how to use her body.
She stumbled, and had it not been for her closeness to the building, she wouldn’t have been able to keep herself from sprawling at the feet of the men in confrontation around the corner.
It wasn’t until a second later that she realized the voice she’d heard was Ares’s. His threatening voice. She almost hadn’t recognized that low, almost sinister monotone.
Her hand still braced on the building to hold herself up, she ignored the tremble turning her bones to cartilage.
“Now you’re threatening me?”
And that was her father.
Her bones firmed up a little, along with an increased heartbeat and the need for oxygen. It was like some kind of alternate reality—a live-action fantasy that had played in her head so many times. They were fighting over her. Or Ares was fighting over her. Her father just seemed to be fighting.
“Not yet. Would you like me to threaten you this time? If you think I wouldn’t put your ass on the pavement to protect your daughter, you’ve lost your ability to size up an opponent, Dimitri. Leave before she sees you. Write her a letter—send it to my house.”
Threaten you this time?
This time.
Ares had had threats from her father in the past? Had they fought when her world had been turned inside out ten years ago? That was not the picture painted for her by either of her parents at the time. But the knowledge fitted in a little better after last night’s declaration from Ares.
“How about I just go tell your beloved business partners what scum you are?” Dimitri countered.
“Yeah, how about that? I thought you were concerned about her.”
Ares had always had an expressive, almost musical quality to his speech. When he spoke with his patients, his words were hymnlike: comforting, inspiring. When he spoke to her...well, they swung between being discordant and off-key to something as sweet as a lullaby.
Lullaby. He’d have sung to their daughter.
That realization hit her as hard as the next: he was fighting for her. And she was letting him do it alone. No one should ever have to fight alone.
It took her precisely three steps to round the corner of the building, and another two to put herself between them, with Ares at her back. Her mother, whose presence she’d been entirely unaware of until that second, didn’t join her father in fighting. She hung back to the side, out of the way, almost invisible.
“Erianthe, agapiméni, your mother wants you to come home,” her father said, using his voice like a weapon now—one of fatherly adoration. Calling her his beloved. Until he focused over her shoulder at Ares and all attempts to persuade her evaporated in that one look. As if she couldn’t see the visible switch from sweet smile to sc
owling squint.
The utter ridiculousness of the situation overwhelmed her suddenly and she started to laugh. Only, it didn’t sound joyful or amused even to her own ears.
By the time she recognized it as a small step away from hysteria, Ares’s arm had wrapped around her waist and he’d pulled her back against him.
“If you want to repair your relationship with your daughter, stop threatening me and send her a letter. She’ll decide.”
Was it kind of funny?
The rising volume and pitch of her laughter swallowed the rest of whatever else was being said. The next thing she knew, Ares had picked her up and they were moving down the docks to his boat. In the last image she had of her parents, her father’s face was so red it had to be on the verge of explosion and her mother wept.
He hopped on board, set her down on the bench and directed her to lean forward, one hand rubbing her back, the other taking her own hand.
“You don’t have to see them. You never have to see them again if you don’t want to.”
She met his eyes and the laughter faded, but behind it she gulped air like someone who’d nearly drowned.
“Slow down your breathing, Erianthe.”
Doctor voice. Commanding someone to breathe in a different way than their body demanded. Such a strange thing to do to someone. But they did it. They all did it.
She tried, holding her breath, which was the only way she could think to control it: stop it cold. All or nothing.
What did she tell her patients? She made them control their breathing all the time. Laboring mothers depended on breathing techniques to focus and control pain. The technique seemed insane now.
Ares crouched before her and leaned in until his forehead was braced against hers, his warm, strong hands cupping her cheeks, holding her there.
“They’re gone, Erianthitsa. Breathe, honey. Slow and deep.”
She closed her eyes, following his instructions as his thumbs stroked back and forth over her cheeks.
Her chest burned. Her throat. Her eyes. She normally reacted to tense situations with fire, but this time the fire had turned inside her and it wanted to burn her alive.
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