We Will Heal These Wounds

by Nicole Thorn

  “Are you going to hide in the loo all night?” Verin asked.

  “I’m not hiding,” I protested.

  “Looks like you’re hiding.” He smiled at me, leaning back against the pillows. He put his hands behind his head, and I momentarily forgot what we had been talking about because . . . shirtless. All kinds of naked skin that looked very tempting in that moment. He smirked. “All you have to do is come over here,” he said.

  “Don’t get cocky,” I told him.

  He grinned. He had shadows in his eyes that he couldn’t hide. They darkened any expression that he had, and whatever thoughts went on behind those eyes didn’t get shared with me. But I still climbed into the bed with him, because I didn’t care what he had done. Nothing reverse the damage inflicted, and I didn’t care.

  He could have killed a thousand people, and I wouldn’t have cared.

  Bad people come in a variety of ways, and I didn’t delude myself into thinking I was a good person. I would have done a lot of dumb, violent, and dangerous things if it meant keeping Verin to myself.

  I snuggled up to his side, tucking my face against his neck. I felt his pulse against my forehead. Nothing had gone our way these last few weeks, but the tides would eventually turn. For now, I just wanted to keep Verin all to myself.

  EPILOGUE:

  There’s No Place Like Home

  Verin

  I rubbed Juniper’s back as she looked on in horror at her backyard. I found it unfortunate that she thought her panic meant she hadn’t made progress. It seemed so obvious to me that it had been shock that she didn’t see it too. The fact that she let the yard get torn up for a big change said it all. Because although I didn’t know her, Juniper from, say, six months ago, would not have let this happen. She stood there right then, losing her mind over it, but allowing people to make a permanent change to her life. She’d understand soon enough.

  Now, I personally thought the pool had been a wonderful idea. With Nemo in it, I didn’t know how much we would be able to swim, but surely, we could get some fun out of it. Maybe put up some chairs to sit in. Something for Nemo to play with so that he wouldn’t get bored. Poor fella would be out there all alone now, and that seemed unfortunate. At least we would all come check on him. We would also have to do something about making sure no one saw him if they looked over the fence. That would make for a bad day and an awkward conversation. Probably with crying humans, and Zander erasing their memory.

  “Still tense?” I asked while we stood in the kitchen, watching everyone in the yard. Jasmine and Zander enjoyed a water balloon fight, Kizzy and Hephaestus worked, and Jasper sat on the porch, painting a small figure. I suspected that he didn’t want to be away from Kizzy for as long as this would take. He’d been doing it for days.

  “Little bit,” Juniper said, strained.

  “I suggest you let me take off all your clothes. That’ll fix it.”

  She turned to me with a smirk that changed into a soft, nervous look. “Actually, I was thinking we could go to the store today.”

  “Sure. What do you need?”

  Pulling at her white shirt, she wrinkled her nose. “I thought I could get some new clothes. Something not white.” She said the last word with all the hostility in the world, and we very nearly didn’t make it out of the house.

  Before I could drag her up to our bedroom, I decided that this needed to be taken care of first. I took her hand and started leading her out of the kitchen and to the living room. Which would have worked out fine, if a god hadn’t been sitting on the couch.

  “Hermes,” I said flatly to the man that helped cause a fucking lot of trouble. “You could knock.”

  “I could.” He rose, setting aside the book he’d taken from I knew not where. “But why would I do that?”

  The man shoved his hands into his pockets and sighed heavily, as if we put him out. Did he know that he didn’t live in this house, and that we didn’t want him here? Probably not. Why would that occur to a god?

  “Did you need something?” Juniper asked him, forcefully polite.

  He pulled his hand out of his pocket, and held it in a fist. “Hades has decided to be a huge dick, and to make my life a living hell. I’ve been delivering flowers to Persephone for literally days.” He sighed. “Days. He has me bring her a single flower, and then she makes me bring him back food. And then he wants me to bring her another flower, and she wants to give him food! It never ends!”

  Surely, he knew that he deserved worse than this for letting an evil man break into the underworld, steal from my father something that could get thousands killed, and then take his dog. But again, the gods didn’t think like that. It would’ve been too human a thought for them. At least Dad had something to hold over his head.

  “And?” I asked, not caring for his plight.

  Hermes huffed, and then held his hand out. “He said this is for you guys.”

  I took what he handed me, and held it flat on my palm. A coin. Gold, and bent, and looking older than anything I’d ever known. I couldn’t understand the carvings on the surface, but I supposed I didn’t have to.

  “It’s for a favor,” Hermes told us. “You hold that, click your heels together three times, and then I come and fix your washing machine or whatever.”

  “Whatever?” Juniper asked.

  “Whatever,” he replied.

  I turned the coin over in my hand, and looked up at the god. “Click my heels together?”

  “Or call me. Call on me like you’d call on any other god, give me this, and your father says I have to do whatever you ask of me. As long as it’s in my power.”

  I slipped the coin into my pocket, hoping that we would never need to use it, but knowing better than that. Argus still wandered about somewhere, and that meant trouble in our future.

  “Do you have any food?” Hermes asked, glancing over his shoulder at the kitchen. “I smell food . . . ”

  “No,” I said, flat again. “You stole my father’s dog, so go away.”

  The man frowned at me. “I didn’t have a choice.”

  Juniper shrugged. “You could have been a little more careful with that girl.”

  Hermes scoffed. “Humans are so fragile . . . . Whatever. I have flowers to bring people.”

  We watched him shuffle out of our house, mumbling about how he only wanted a sandwich, and that we were selfish.

  Juniper and I took my car out to go shopping, because I wanted to drive. The day out felt nice for this time of year, and I thought it would be pleasant to get to look over and see my girlfriend staring contently out the window at a blue sky.

  We passed my home, and it took a great deal of effort not to look at it. I hadn’t been in more than once, just to gather up some clothes. I couldn’t live there again, and Aphrodite said that she would take care of it all for me. Once we finished the pool, we would all go over together, and they would help me pack up my and my mother’s things. I would have to pick what I wanted to get rid of, but at least I would have five other people with me to remind me that those objects were just things.

  “Are you okay? Juniper asked, voice soft as her hand rested on my leg.

  I lied, nodding and smiling. “Fine, luv. Just wondering if we’re going to hit traffic.”

  I didn’t think she believed me.

  When we got to the clothes shop, she let me hold her hand while we walked in, and I found it quite lovely. The prettiest woman in the world belonged to me, and I got the joy of showing her off. Awful behavior? Probably. Did I care? No.

  “I want colors,” Juniper decided. “Bright colors.”

  I nodded, and we went off to find her some bright colors.

  As the boyfriend, it turned out that I had to hold all of the clothes. I didn’t mind it, because I could sneak whatever I wanted into the pile, and she wouldn’t know. Juniper picked out a light green dress, and I hid a skimpy slip of a nightie under it. She’d like it, I knew she would.

  Looking perplexed, Juniper stood in fr
ont of me, hands on her hips. “What do normal people wear?”

  “Hardly anything,” I told her. “You should probably stick with very short dresses that show a lot of cleavage.” I picked up a little red dress that I thought would look nice on her. It had almost no fabric, my favorite quality it had.

  She rolled her eyes at me. “Not a chance.”

  I pouted, sighing as sadly as I could until she caved and threw the dress onto the pile. Ah, that felt good.

  Juniper picked out lavender shorts and a top that she said went with it, but it all just looked like clothes to me. I didn’t come to consult, I came because she wanted company, and knew I’d be a damn delight. So, I kept my mouth shut and held the clothes like a good boy.

  Since we replaced all of Juniper’s wardrobe, it got to the point where I could no longer hold them all and function at the same time. We kept them up at the counter, and a kind young girl helped us, knowing that she would be getting the commission of a lifetime.

  When we finished, Juniper had a whole lot of clothes that all had one thing in common. Not a scrap of white in the whole bunch. She picked out some pretty dresses with patterns, some new shoes, and other things of the sort. She stared at me each time something she didn’t pick would get rung up, but I didn’t react. Best not show guilt, or I would lose this battle. Is it so wrong to want to see her in silk that hardly covered her body? I didn’t think so.

  I carried the bags out to the car so that Juniper wouldn’t have to, and it earned me a kiss on the cheek. Ah, a nice gift.

  “If you think I’m wearing those skimpy pajamas to bed,” she started as we got in the car. “ . . . then you would be mostly wrong. Special occasions.”

  I frowned. “Not fair, but I think you’ll change your mind about it once you have them on. They look comfortable.”

  She didn’t comment. We’d gotten her some more practical sleeping clothes as well, but these looked fun. I suggested she either sleep naked, or in my shirt, but she wouldn’t go for it. Odd.

  “It’s just a little weird wearing that in a house with my siblings in it,” Juniper said as I drove.

  “Sure, but we’ve had sex in that house. Why is that okay if the clothes aren’t?”

  She made a face. “Because you’re pretty, and I can’t keep my hands off of you.” Obviously, those words had been true, so I didn’t know why she delivered them so sarcastically.

  “I am pretty,” I agreed with her.

  I wanted to take her out for lunch, so I found a place that would have something she approved of. She had her pop tart already, so I didn’t want to push it. One day, she’d be ready for the bigger steps, but I was pleased with how far she’d come. In such a short amount of time, she wore new clothes, let changes be made to her house, and let me move into her bedroom. We hadn’t yet talked about where my things would go, but I didn’t know what I would keep.

  The drum set would be a fun talk.

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  Sarah Hall has been writing since her early teens and plans to continue long past her death, via robot body. She spends her days daydreaming about conversations between fictional characters and ignoring the condescending looks she gets from her cats when she does so. During her day in the unforgiving Arizona heat, she juggles her pets, writing, and her neurotic sometimes writing partner. She has no problems with said juggling, as the Force is with her.

  Nicole Thorn is a writer in her twenties who spends her days discussing fictional characters with her writer friend, and having very serious opinions about which house she would want to be sorted into at Hogwarts. Spending most of her life in sunny California and now trapped in sunny Arizona, she likes to write about rainy towns that are infested with the things that go bump in the night.

  Nicole Thorn:

  Twitter: @NicoleThorn

  Instagram: @CappieThorn

  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NicoleThornAuthor/

  Tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/blog/nicolethorn

  Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/NdThorn

  Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Nicole-Thorn/e/B014BL5YD6

  Sarah Hall:

  Twitter: @SarahMHall33

  Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Sarah-Hall/e/B01JFAZPHI

  Facebook: Facebook.com/SarahHallAuthor

  Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/15515336.Sarah_Hall

  ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

  Burning Willow Press was founded in 2014 with the sole purpose of sharing dreams. Based in Spartanburg, South Carolina in the US, we have reached every country in the world in a short time. We do all they can to ensure that the reader is satisfied with the purchase of the story because that is what matters. Our motto is, “It’s all about the story.” Keeping in true of that, we here at BWP have painstakingly done as much as we can to put together stories that the readers will love and share with everyone they know. The process is not flawless as we are still humans, most of the time, and tired a lot of the time, so we make mistakes. If you find one, please let us know so we can take care of it.

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