He described all the measurements in terms of her hands, but only touched her briefly, more often gesturing than actually touching. Then he stopped to look at her but said nothing else, just waited for her questions.
“Why did you shave?” she asked. Probably not the question he’d expected—which was fair, seeing as she hadn’t expected it either.
For a moment she didn’t think he was going to answer, but then his long look turned into a few words. “I wanted to feel more like how I was. How I would have been when I met her.”
One sharp, quick breath drew his gaze to her mouth. It was just short of a sob, and neither of them pretended it hadn’t happened.
She tilted her chin to hold his gaze. She had more questions, but not about the flowers. The flowers she got. The depth of his regret she finally understood. The acute feeling of loss that had finally caught up with them both ached in every breath. But she still had questions. Although there would have to be time to ask them later, because her throat had closed so tight she couldn’t have spoken even if she’d had the words.
Instead she took the spade as directed, knelt and began to dig.
He said nothing else—just gathered plants and returned to his line of holes with them, two at a time, setting them up so he could methodically place them into the holes he’d dug.
The earth was hard and she had to lean into it, mashing her palm atop the spade with all her weight behind it to get it moving.
“If your hands start to hurt, stop digging.”
“Watering the ground might help,” she managed to say.
She didn’t know what had prompted this decision, but she knew he needed to do it. Truthfully, she needed it too. She carried around that picture of her daughter’s gravestone on her phone, taking it with her wherever she went, but it wasn’t the same. A memorial in this place where she’d been conceived—that felt real. Putting something living in the ground...something that had meaning to her and to them...that was real.
A watering can appeared at her side, and then Ares went back to his plants, not talking beyond the absolute bare minimum required.
The earth softened with the water, and she dug her holes as deep and far apart as he’d instructed. By the time she’d reached her last one, he stood beside her again, this time with a bottle of water for her and a hand towel.
She wiped her hands on the towel, then took the bottle and drank as he began shifting the next lot of plants to the holes she’d dug and finally knelt beside her.
“What’s the design?”
“A simple labyrinth. Just a few walls...”
The lines of flowers were walls. She’d probably not have come up with this if she’d spent the next month trying to think of an idea...not that she would have done that.
The cool water alerted her to how hot she’d become, but everything here was an overload of sensation. If she wasn’t drowning in memory, she was buoyed on a sea of scents so powerful and deep she didn’t have words to describe it.
“Will you grow your beard back again?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
He carefully seated each plant in the holes she’d dug and then, holding the flower stems with one hand, began pushing the wet dirt in behind them.
The salt sea spray below, the scent of earth and flowers—she’d even swear the sunshine had a smell. And all of it smelled like him: sweaty, rich, covered in dirt and blanketed with grief.
She’d suffered. There had been six months of angry, bitter confinement in the convent, where she’d cried every day for him. Followed by even more months where she’d cried every day for Ariadne. Then nothing. Nothing had gotten through to her because she hadn’t wanted it to get through. She’d grown so sick of feeling bereft and lonely she’d just stopped letting herself feel at all.
Instead she’d put her mind to her studies, taken her picture of the gravestone in the convent grounds, and when the next school year had begun, she’d never gone back. She’d tried never to look back ever since—only forward.
But he’d suffered too. She’d blamed him, and he’d blamed himself. She was so tired of hurting every time she looked at him, and she didn’t have to ask if he hurt when he looked at her—he’d moved to the cottage to get away from that pain.
It was a pattern he’d learned from his father, who had put painful relationships away from him, one after another, for years, by moving there as soon as the fire between himself and his latest bride had started to die.
“We can’t get her back.”
She hadn’t even known what words were coming before they came, or even where they came from.
He stopped planting and answered, his voice quiet. “I know.”
But maybe we can get us back.
Those were the words that wanted to come out next. They bashed at her teeth and she clamped her mouth shut to keep them in. Wishful thinking. And far too dangerous. Stupid. Sentimental, probably.
She swallowed the words down and instead of further talking, or saying stupid things, she knelt back down beside him and helped bed in the last two plants as he’d been doing.
He marked off two more walls with his tape, then they watered the ground and dug, and within an hour the flowers had all been planted and she felt...better. Not good. But better than she had. With some semblance of peace settling over her. She wasn’t alone in mourning her—their—daughter anymore. Until she’d come home, she’d always felt alone in that.
Where Ares was concerned, everything was just too hard to think about. Some days she didn’t want to imagine him suffering, and some days she did. Some days the idea that he was alone with his pain was salt in a wound she couldn’t rinse, and then there were days when she turned to anger just to stop herself crying. Anger burned bright and hot...anger got things done...anger let her pretend her broken pieces were glued back together again. But seeing the pain, seeing the regret in his eyes, in the way he held himself apart from everyone, felt almost as bad.
He crouched down at her feet, putting a bit more dirt around the base of one listing plant, then stayed there, surveying what they had done from down low, one knee on the ground, his attention focused on the empty box at the middle.
“What goes in the center of the labyrinth?” she asked, prompted by the line of his gaze.
All the flowers had been planted, but there was no headstone, nothing permanent to put there, just an empty center ringed by flowers that would bloom perennially.
“The heart of the labyrinth.” He didn’t rise, neither in his body, nor his voice, just stayed there, not really answering her question.
She knew that state, lost inside himself...
Pull him back.
His long, messy curls had grown tangled from the number of times he’d shoved them back from his face while working, and she reached out to comb them free. Damp with sweat, but strong and silky, unrefined...
He’d been so urbane when they were young. Haircut every three weeks. Shaving every day, even when his facial hair had only been visible to him via a magnifying mirror. Charming. Confident. Cheeky.
Now it suddenly became clear to her that this was all his broken pieces—which he’d never even pretended to hold together. He’d shattered, and this hollow man was what remained. How had he gotten through medical school? He was an excellent doctor, but all other areas of his life seemed empty or just missing entirely.
He swayed under her hand, letting her brush his hair back several times before he got hold of himself and surged to his feet so fast he nearly knocked her over.
* * *
“Ares?”
Since she’d come home and seen him again, every time Erianthe said his name she spat it out as fast as she could. Two syllables? She made it one and a half—which was to say fast and kind of mumbled. But now she took her time and let the sound of it linger in her mouth, savoring the feel of it. The tex
ture. The taste...
And he heard that. He’d been busying himself picking up the garden tools they’d been using, but he went completely still as she spoke, his back to her. His head swiveled and tilted just enough to make it clear she had his full attention. That he wanted to hear whatever she had to say.
She just hadn’t thought of what to say besides Stop. Come back. Don’t leave me...
Covering the physical distance between them took only a few small steps, but could the emotional chasm that yawned between them be navigated the same way? If they could find the right steps to take to get them there...get them somewhere other than where they currently were...
She stepped around to his front, and the heartbreak and vulnerability she saw on his face almost robbed her of breath.
“Did you launch yourself away from me just then because you don’t want me to touch you?”
“No.” His voice rasped, choked with emotion, “Yes.” Then he spoke again. “No, but we shouldn’t.”
“But we are.”
Just because she recognized it, it didn’t mean she knew how to feel about it. Some minutes she was right back there, when there had been no one in the world she trusted more, and at other moments...hours...she couldn’t even think his name without a white-hot seed of rage burning through her belly.
Those moments might have been days or weeks—until Friday. Then they’d started to subside.
“It’s not the plan.”
She snorted a little. “To be fair, your plan was to show up long enough to get credit for helping out, then run straight back to Timbuktu. What’s the new plan?”
“That wasn’t the plan—that was the method,” he said. “My plan hasn’t changed. First, do no harm. To you. To them—my brothers. I haven’t figured out yet whether I’ve failed at that, or if it’s futile to keep going... But I just don’t want to hurt you.”
“I don’t want you to leave.” Her neck began to ache from craning to look into his eyes.
“It would be better if I did.”
“We won’t get another shot at this.” Still the words weren’t easy to come by.
“At what?”
“I don’t know. Healing?”
She finally got out one word that made some sense, then let her gaze drift from him to the physical manifestation of that healing that they’d begun over the course of the day—planting and building something meaningful together.
“The labyrinth needs something in the center. There has to be a reward for venturing into the danger inside a maze.”
He watched her with a kind of wariness that made her chest ache. More than her chest. The need to touch him was a living thing, churning her thoughts, scouring away reason.
“Our walls can be stepped over.”
“Can they?”
She came closer, until she was close enough that a gentle sway would bring her body into contact with his bare chest. The wind blew in off the Aegean, ruffling her T-shirt, and it billowed against his flesh. But he didn’t move away. Just stood there, so much taller than he had been, so much broader, so much a man.
Slowly, as though any sudden movement might startle him, she reached for his face with one hand and didn’t stop until her palm connected with his cheek. The same hand she’d slapped him with on that airstrip, the same cheek, where not a scrap of youthful plumpness remained, just an overly square jaw and sharp cheekbones. No longer hidden by hair.
This time his head didn’t snap back. He said nothing. Not verbally. His eyes closed and he leaned into her like a man starved of contact, but the look on his face said he was craving something that he expected to kill him. Need and resignation. Not happiness, but yearning.
Her palm burned, and so must his cheek. The heat spread from her hand up her arm. It should feel wrong, doing something that so obviously hurt another, and it did—but that guilt was washed away in a tide of needing to be close to him.
Before she knew it, her other hand was on his face and she was up on her toes, pressing her mouth to his.
She couldn’t actually remember who’d started it last time, when the darkness had hidden them both. But she could see him now, and she wanted to see all of him. He was lean, but strength had built the breadth of his shoulders and the definition she’d spent the day trying not to ogle, which now her hands craved.
They left his face to stroke down. He groaned into her mouth and deepened the kiss, pulling her so tightly to him she had to wrap her arms around his shoulders or be pinned. He was sweaty, dirty, and she knew it wouldn’t stop her kissing and licking him anywhere. Everywhere.
He bent deeper toward her, his tongue stroking into her mouth, wrapping his arms beneath her butt and lifting her up.
As she’d followed his tool-gathering trek, they’d ended up at the cottage corner. A few steps from where they were now hidden. She clung to his shoulders as he carried her, blindly staggering but never breaking their fevered kiss. In the shadow cast by the building he fell to his knees, lowering her in front of him as he did.
His hard length strained at the front of his trousers, nudging at her belly as he pulled her more tightly against him with arms that had started to shake. The shaking spread to his torso, his breath, and finally to his kisses.
Hot need twisted her insides, leaving her with parts that only wanted to get closer to him, that had grown clumsy with the fight to do so. The liquid, syrupy heat building low in her belly countered the frantic, jittery greed to get at him. She yanked at his belt, determined to free the thick, wanting length of him.
Unable to kiss him and get her fingers to obey her at the same time, she pulled back enough to catch her breath and look down. As soon as she got his belt open, the trousers were no match for even her clumsy fingers, and she slipped her hand into the front to stroke her fingers lightly along the heavy, straining flesh, base to head, then around, then more firmly.
A tortured groan ripped from his throat, sounding far too much like suffering for her not to pause. She had to look at his face, to see his eyes, but they were clamped shut. As soon as she started to release him, his hand flew over hers outside the material, then gripped her hand so that she squeezed him again. He began to rock his hips. Not a lot, just enough to stroke against the hollow of her palm.
The last time they’d been together, before the world fell apart, it had been loving and fun, playful. Now, touching him once made her crave him more. Like an addict falling off the wagon. Because this hurt.
His eyes opened, clearer than they had been, but intensity still darkened them, and she felt no less conflicted as he guided her hand to wring pleasure from him after a desert of loneliness.
“You’re bigger,” she said, unable to keep from saying the words as she teased the pad of her thumb over that sensitive ridge of flesh.
The smile he gave her said he remembered the same spark of playfulness and exploration that had always mingled in with the tenderness and hunger they’d shared. Then he let go of her hand. But even on his knees in the grass he swayed with the effort to stay upright.
“I think...” His words faltered as she gave him a squeeze, and the sounds became just a bunch of stuttering, strangled, gasping noises that might have started as words, but failed to form.
“What do you think?” she asked, kissing up the corded side of his neck.
Knowing she could still affect him like this was everything in that moment, when she’d been living on doubt all weekend. She’d not even asked him whether he was leaving the island. She just knew the answer. No. Or at least, Not yet.
He curled his hands over her shoulders, bracing himself as he tried for deep breaths, but couldn’t slow down his panting enough to pull it off.
“I think that I’m taking advantage of you.”
She stopped stroking him and waited for him to open his eyes and look at her before she answered.
“I s
tarted this.”
“I know—but why? Is it part of mourning?”
Slipping her hand from his pants, she pulled her tank top off, and then her bra, then grabbed his hands and placed them on her ribs.
“It’s not that. It’s something bright and needed. I’ve been without moorings for too long.”
“Are you sure?”
He looked so afraid to hope, but his hands had already started to move up, cupping her breasts, then giving them a warm, rolling squeeze that felt so good she almost regretted asking for his thoughts. He might be using his mouth for something besides talking right now.
“I need this,” she said, and a shiver hit her as he continued exploring, tracing her curves with what she could only call wonder in his eyes. “I need this. With you.”
Nothing else needed to be said. He simply pulled her with him into the grass, rolling until it bent beneath her.
Clothing was tugged and removed, one of her shoes came off, and he gripped his length to urge it through her slickness, pausing at her opening to swear.
“What?” Her legs strained wider, welcoming, begging. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t have a condom.” He choked out the words.
She couldn’t help but laugh. “I’m an obstetrician. I’m a fan of the pill. No accidental...”
The word pregnancy refused to form, and they both locked gazes, the simple aborted statement bringing back into focus the differences between those kids who’d been so in love and full of hope and the people they were now. She’d never have touched him if she hadn’t been incapable of conceiving. It was too much of a risk.
“Do you want to stop?”
His question, incomprehensible even to consider, came with a kind of bittersweet understanding that made her eyes sting and her throat burn.
“I don’t want to stop,” she rasped out, grabbing him and pulling him more fully against her so she could taste his mouth again, feel his face against hers. In truth, she couldn’t even stop touching his face with her hands, gazing at the starkly masculine beauty—the wide angular jaw, cheeks that were still a bit too gaunt contrasting with such soft lips.
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