She says it as if it’s so simple. Maybe it is. Haven’t I decided to do exactly that? Enjoy everything they give me this week? I didn’t expect it to be so complicated. That was naive of me. I swallow hard. “Okay.”
“Good. Let’s get ready. We’ll need to leave before too long for the Underworld.” She smiles at me and then climbs off the bed and walks out of the room.
Leaving me alone with Alaric.
I should turn to face him, but my courage fails me. “You heard that.”
“I heard it.”
He starts to shift away, but I grab his arms, keeping them wrapped around me. It’s easier to speak without looking at him, to admit how foolish I was that I let him close enough to cause me pain. “You hurt me badly when I realized that it was all a lie.”
“It wasn’t all a lie.”
“Alaric, you’re not the man you pretended to be. You’re not a nice guy who made a mistake. You’re not a devil, but you’re not an innocent, either.”
“You’re right.” He huffs out a breath. “But that doesn’t change the fact that I did enjoy my time with you in Olympus. And I’ve enjoyed my time with you here, too.”
I smile despite everything. “We’ve spent most of the time fucking or fighting.”
“What can I say? I have a bit of a masochistic streak.” He chuckles. “I won’t pretend that we both didn’t say some hurtful shit, but verbally sparring with you? I like it.”
I finally force myself to turn in his arms so I can see his face. “It’s that simple for you.”
“Yeah.” He shrugs as much as he can in his current position. This is the first time I’ve seen his blue eyes unshielded without some kind of kink involved. He looks almost…earnest. “I like you, Zuri. I liked you in Olympus. I like you even better now.” I open my mouth, but he cuts me off before I have a chance to respond. “Don’t you fucking dare tell me it’s because I like your pussy. I, of all people, can keep sex and messy emotions separate. I’ve been doing it for years.”
It’s really, really none of my business but I can’t help asking, “Do you think you’ll miss it?”
He blinks. “Miss what?”
“Working at the Underworld. Having sex with so many different people. All of it.”
I half expect him to answer quickly, but he takes the time to really think it over. “I don’t know. I haven’t really considered it because I’ve been so focused on getting free of Hades’s leash and moving my relationship forward with Ursa. Maybe I’ll miss it. Maybe I won’t. However I feel, I’ll talk it through with Ursa, and we’ll figure it out.”
Somehow, his words reassure me more than if he rushed to tell me that he would never, ever miss the sex work. He’s being honest, rather than telling a soothing lie. Nothing in this world is so cut and dried, and Alaric might have chosen to make a deal with Hades, but he also chose the method of his repayment. I know enough to know that. “Okay.”
Alaric studies me. “Does that bother you?”
“I don’t know.” It’s the honest answer, if an unsatisfying one. I don’t know what I’m feeling right now, only that I’m swinging madly from one emotion to another. Elation that Ursa wants me. Fear of what the future might bring. Confusion on how this could possibly work. “You and Ursa haven’t even had a chance to figure out your relationship now that your debt is paid. You don’t have a problem with her inviting me to stay?”
Alaric’s smile is surprisingly tentative. “I’d like you to stay, too.”
I can’t fault him for being an asshole last night, not when I was more than a little bit of an asshole on my own. “What if we can’t make it work?”
“Then we can’t make it work.” He sits up, bringing me with him. “No relationship is guaranteed, Zuri. Not even the happy ones. We might fall in love and fall out of it again. I might be hit by a truck tomorrow. A meteor could destroy the world.”
I blink. “That is an exceedingly dark way of looking at it.”
“Not really.” He shrugs. “Knowing that it could end only makes it sweeter while you have the good stuff. Life is hard. Really fucking hard. Hell, you know that. You haven’t been untouched by death.”
He means my mother.
“That’s not the same thing. I barely remember her.” Is it possible to miss someone you only have the faintest smudge of memories of? I don’t know. I’ve never been able to figure out if I miss her or just the fantasy of the mother my sisters say she was. Kind and strong and fierce at times. My father always says I looked the most like her, was the most like her, but how can I live up to the memory of a woman I only remember as a soft hug that smells faintly of orange blossoms?