* * *
Ares’s body thrummed, his heart beating with a vigor he’d often thought would never be repeated again. Erianthe rolled with him, naked on a naked bed, too warm and too content to worry about clothing. It was like that now.
Three days since they’d flipped that switch from unsteady allies to lovers too consumed by and for one another for clothes to be a part of their time together at the end of the day after work, and after Erianthe had spent some time catching up with Nyla. And they’d been with each other every day so far this week at work, hidden somewhere in the clinic.
His breathing started to slow and he hugged her to him a little tighter, so that he stretched on his back, her head fitting into the hollow of his shoulder, and didn’t have to let go of her. Even if he should let go of her.
She’d be asleep soon, if he was still and quiet. Not repeating the things he’d said to her when he was inside her and the madness had taken him over.
“Say you’re mine.”
And she’d said it. More than once. But he knew she’d ignored the second part of his request.
“Don’t mean it—just say it.”
“You’re freaking out about something,” she murmured, breaking into his spiral of panic over whether or not he was leading her on. Over whether or not they should even be doing this.
“I was thinking it’s silly for us to both be living here at the cottage.” Which they were. She changed for work in the morning at the villa before they left for the clinic.
“You’re thinking we should go back to the villa?”
“I don’t really want to...”
No, what he wanted was for things to continue just as they were. In secret, with no pressure from outside and a naked Erianthe in his bed every minute of their off-hours.
“Me neither,” she said. “It feels private here. And...nostalgic. No, that’s not exactly the word. You know what I mean. It feels like it’s ours. And the labyrinth is here. I like being where it is...seeing it when I look out the window or get some air.”
She didn’t want to go back to the villa because somewhere along the way she’d gone all in with him again. As he’d known she would if she ever stopped hating him. Which she seemed to have done.
He needed her to take in his next words, but every inch of him wanted to do it gently. “If the guys show up here, they’ll be opening up a big bucket of worms.”
“Don’t call her that.”
Her voice had gone quiet, and he’d heard the hurt before he tilted his head to look at her.
“I wasn’t calling her that. I just meant...”
“The secret,” she clarified. “You’re talking about our secret. But she is our secret.”
“She’s part of the secret,” he ventured, shifting onto his side so he could face her. So he could look into her eyes and she could look into his, so there would be no room for misunderstanding. “I mean the whole thing—all that we’ve hidden that compounds the original secret.”
“The cover-up is worse than the crime?” she asked, those shining black eyes still wary, as if she wanted to trust him but it would be an act of will.
He didn’t know of anything that scared Erianthe, but she was afraid of him right now, of what he’d say. No matter how many years passed, no matter if she forgave him, if they got married...had a family...she’d still be waiting for him to betray her again. He wouldn’t. But if the situations were reversed, he’d never trust himself either. Not really.
“We’ve been lying to them about our relationship for eleven years now. In addition to our...our sad story, our bad decisions...”
She gazed into his eyes for a long, terrible moment, clearly wavering about something. He saw the instant she decided how to face it. Her gaze sharpened and her brow took on a determined furrow. Sitting up, she folded her legs and leaned her elbows on her knees, still facing him. Uninhibited. The position let him see...everything. And even though they’d just come down from a sweaty tangle, the urge to take her again erupted back into life.
He could kill this conversation by attacking her and reminding her not to taunt a bull with something red—or him with that deep, luscious pink...
“Ares?”
“Huh?”
She squinted at him. “I said I want to tell Theo what happened. He’ll understand. I know he will.”
He sat up, draped the sheet over her lap, buying time and bolstering his willpower. Then he briefly considered tying the sheet around her neck to hide her breasts as well. He couldn’t concentrate and have this conversation when all he could pay attention to was places he’d like to kiss or...
Focus. This was an important conversation.
“Why do you think that?”
“He’ll understand about us having kept our secret for a long time.”
She looked down at his body as he rearranged the sheet again on her lap, then slapped his hand away.
“Good grief—you can’t be that aroused already. We just finished. Concentrate.”
“Trying. Cover your breasts.”
She rolled her eyes, pulled the sheet up and tucked it under her arms. “Better?”
No.
“Yes.”
He worked hard to look at her face, because now that they were covered he was entirely aware of how well her nipples showed through the fine white linen sheet.
“Theo has at least two secrets. One that I just found out from my mother, that he’s been keeping from me for years.”
That sounded somewhat promising. Ares nodded for her to continue, his attention effectively diverted for now.
“He told me you guys were all funding my schooling. So I wouldn’t have to work two jobs and take loans after I cut contact with my father and his money.”
“He said we paid your tuition?”
She nodded. “And that he’d given me a small monthly stipend.”
“Who was it really?”
“My mother and your mother.”
“My mother?” he repeated.
His parents had barely got involved in his life, but his mother had taken a part in seeing to Erianthe’s needs? He was both proud and a little annoyed.
“Why?”
“Because she lost a grandchild too. And because you loved me. And because my mother needed someone to do alternating months with her so she could hide the expenses from Dimitri. Theo lied to me about it because he knew I wouldn’t have accepted the money from Mother and he was worried. He did the best he could to take care of me. He doesn’t know that I know about this—at least not that I’m aware.”
Ares leaned back on his palms and looked at the ceiling. It made a difference—or might have done without their daughter and the circumstances of her birth...their breakup...all that... He didn’t know if he could forgive it, were he Theo. Hell, he couldn’t forgive it and he was the villain in this story. Him and Dimitri.
“We don’t know what we’re doing, Eri. We haven’t discussed this—whatever it is.”
“Do they still think you’re leaving in a week?”
Erianthe’s voice rose and so did she, until she was upright, straddling him, and he was fully aware of the shock and anger conveyed in her reddening face and wide eyes. She wasn’t even trying to hide it.
“I’m not leaving in a week,” he said, absolutely not answering her question, and thereby confirming it.
“You haven’t called them back to say Hey, that stuff I had to sort out for a couple more weeks wants me to stay?”
“I just haven’t gotten around to it. The clinic has been busy, and we’ve spent a whole lot of time naked,” he said, shifting her off his hips and onto the bed beside him.
His response and rearranging of her to put some space between them spoke the truth. And the heat on her cheeks erupted into an inferno.
“You miserable liar! You’re just mai
ntaining your escape hatch.” She grunted her disgust. “And you said you wouldn’t leave until I told you to go. I’m not going to tell you that.”
“You did tell me to leave the other day.”
She kicked him in the shoulder. One second her legs were crossed—the next he had the flat of her foot against his arm and the sheet fluttered down in a way that just exposed everything again.
“I gave you permission the other day—to be a jerk and follow your original plan to leave. That was before.”
He jerked the sheet back to cover her and abandoned the subject. “I know.”
“Answer the question.”
“Fine. The answer is I know all this is temporary. And when it’s done, I want to have the ability to become busy again, doing the work I’m used to. That’s what I know.”
“When what is done?”
“This.” He gestured between them, the scowl he’d been wearing 24/7 before “this” finally returning.
Her blood pressure shot up. “Being with me, you mean?”
“You want the whole story out there. And I know what happens then.”
“Say it. Say you want to be with me.”
“Eri...”
“Don’t say my name like I’m being unreasonable. But fine—you don’t want to say it? I’ll say it, then. I want to be with you most of the time. Because I love you. I want life and truth and a man whose stupid name makes me go weak in the knees whenever I hear it. That’s you.”
“I know.”
Which part did he know? That she loved him? That he made her weak in the knees? Most of the time...
“You don’t love me?”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Yes, it is. You either do or you don’t.”
“I do,” he said, softer, more gently than he had spoken before. “But you know that’s not the only consideration.”
“Explain it to me.”
* * *
His twisting guts didn’t lie. Ares knew beyond provable facts that telling Theo would be a mistake.
“I’m not ready. What’s the rush if you’re not going to tell me we’re over? I can postpone my leaving date again. We don’t have to make these decisions right now.”
“The rush is the possibility of them finding out from someone else. That would be worse.”
That was a point he couldn’t argue. But that was something he’d lived with for years. It had become background noise for a long time—until he’d seen her face again.
“We don’t know what we’re even doing. Aside from...” He almost said a lot of sex, but that wasn’t even it. They were doing much more than that, and that was what scared him.
“Sleeping together three or four times a day?”
“Well...”
Her face crumpled, and before he could process the complete loss of color in her cheeks and the shift from mildly argumentative to tearful, she’d crawled off the bed and now was going about grabbing the clothes he’d ripped off her the second they got inside.
The monster in his gut grew teeth and started gnawing at him.
“Eri, I’m not saying that’s all this is. I’m trying to figure out exactly what it is before we make any announcements.”
He followed her to where she wiggled into her underthings, wanting to touch her but not sure whether he had a right to comfort her if he was the one who’d made her cry.
“I wasn’t as cautious about us as I should have been last time I was with Dimitri. Let’s be cautious this time.”
Bra on, she grabbed her T-shirt, then turned it right side out as she spoke.
“You don’t want to commit to there being a current us.”
Her voice wobbled a little and tears slid down her cheeks slowly. She was resigned. As if he’d hurt her and she wasn’t even a little bit shocked by that.
He caught her around the waist before she could put the shirt on, and tugged until her back touched his front.
“I’m not rejecting you. I’m not saying I don’t want there to be a ‘current us.’ I didn’t say it voluntarily, but I should have. I love you. That’s never been an issue. Never.”
“Then you’re just keeping her a secret.”
The gut monster broke through, and the rush of acid into his throat would only have been worse if he’d actually vomited. He didn’t let go of her—just dropped his head until his nose was buried in her dark silken tresses, breathing in the sweet, fruity scent of her shampoo and the special Erianthe kick to it.
“Not forever.”
“The labyrinth...” she said, pulling out of his arms and turning to face him, holding the shirt like he’d made her hold the sheet—tucked under her arms so her chest was covered. Hiding herself this time. “I know you wanted to honor her in the place where love made her and let love lay her to rest...”
She croaked and whispered and damned near whimpered the words.
“I love that you even thought of it. But it’s up here—where she’s still a secret. I’m not ashamed of her. I was never ashamed of her. Or of being pregnant. Or us. We kept it a secret only because we were trying to protect the people we loved—and ourselves by extension. But we should’ve been protecting her. That’s what I’m ashamed of.”
He’d known this conversation would come. They’d danced around it since that very first day. But he had no winning hand to play—just as he’d had no winning hand then.
“What was the solution? I still don’t know what the right call would have been—what would’ve kept us together. I don’t know what I could have done to take care of you both...to take care of us.”
“There was one thing we didn’t try,” she whispered, as if her voice had given out on her.
The tears he’d felt burning his eyes finally slipped out. He knew what she meant, of course. Telling the other guys. His brothers in all but name.
“How could they have helped? How do you know they even would have? Theo would have done what he could to help you, that’s true. Although I don’t know how he could have taken you anywhere, since you were not an adult. But, no, we didn’t try asking them.”
“I know they would have helped me. I don’t know if having someone more attentive around me would have helped Ariadne in time. But I know that when teenage mothers’ pregnancies end in stillbirth, their emotional well-being is tied to the outcome. Not afterward, but before. Loneliness and isolation contribute to increased rates...”
Her voice grew a little steadier as she detached herself and moved into the world of medical facts. Enough to firm up her resolve.
“I don’t know if it would have made a difference. I don’t even know if we could have hung together as a unit back then, because we were so young. I can’t know that—and you can’t know that either. But I know the others can withstand knowing now and they deserve to know.”
The tears kicked up again and he held out one hand, praying she’d take it. Now wasn’t the time to crowd her—not until she wanted him to.
“I can’t have her be a secret anymore from the people who mean the most to me,” she whispered, and then took his hand. “It’s eating me alive and it’s eating you up too. We can’t go on like this. Please, even if there is no future for us, I can’t live like this anymore.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THIS WAS HOW relationships ended.
Ares sat at the small kitchen table at the cottage, his coffee untouched before him and Erianthe keeping watch out the front window.
The one comfort he could take was knowing that he was about to blow everything up for the right reasons. For her. Not because he wanted out of what they had together. He didn’t want out. He would never want out. If nothing else, he’d broken the Xenakis relationship mold.
Theo was on his way to Shepherd’s Cottage, unknowingly to hear Ares’s confession. It was what Erianthe needed, and it was
time to put her well-being above his. Not every hurt was equal, but that was how he’d been treating it—hurting as few people as possible instead of causing the least amount of damage overall. This step would lead to him losing her, he was certain of it, but it was also what would finally let her heal.
“He’ll understand,” Erianthe said from the window, looking at him with such hope he didn’t have the heart to tell her how this would play out.
There was only one way for it to play out. Theo would want to murder him. At the very least he’d never want to set eyes on Ares ever again.
“I know,” he lied, then took a drink of his long-neglected coffee and grimaced.
“Cold?”
“Yep.”
She needed this, he reminded himself again. She’d come home after a decade of loneliness and isolation. He’d give her this and then he’d go straight back to work. So it was good that he’d failed to reschedule his departure date until now.
“You’re lying. You always say I know when you have no idea.”
She left the window for a moment, to slide up behind his chair and wrap her arms around his shoulders from behind. Her cheek pressed to his temple and he leaned his head back, enjoying the feel of her for as long as he could.
“So all the time, then?”
“He’s here!” she said, watching her brother make his way down the cobblestone path through the window.
She kissed the side of his neck—one last offer of comfort—and hurried to the door.
She’d have Theo after today. Fully. Without secrets. And Chris, and Deakin, and their families. They’d understand when things got hard for her and be there to support her. Ares wouldn’t let her choose him over them. They’d help her get through. Find her someone worthy of her.
His stomach churned at that.
She opened the door and launched herself at Theo, who caught her in a bear hug that left her feet dangling and waddled with her into the room.
“Whoa! Much better welcome than the last time I was here.” He laughed, looking over her shoulder at Ares. “You know, I think that was when we were...what? Eight? We’d knocked your dad’s work computer into the pool and couldn’t captain a boat, so the farthest we could run away was up here to the cottage.”
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