The Return (Titan 1)

I started to laugh, because that made two of us, but the humor faded quicker than morning frost. “I should probably get next door.”

Josie jumped off my chest so quickly I thought there were springs under her ass. Planting her hands on my thighs, she twisted around so that she faced me. “You’re going to leave now?”

I opened my mouth.

“Think before you answer that question, Sethie.”

Caught between wanting to laugh and kiss her and getting the hell out of there, I stared at her for what felt like a full minute. “Josie, I…” I trailed off as her eyes narrowed. “I’m not trying to be a dick—”

“Really? You kissed me earlier. Like really kissed me, and it sounds like you’re about to write that off, and yeah, that makes you a dick.”

“Damn, you’re feisty when you want to be,” I murmured, kind of turned on by her display of attitude. But as her lips thinned, for a second, I thought she might hit me.

“Sometimes I really don’t like you,” she said.

“The thing is, Josie, if you really knew me, you wouldn’t like me.” Pulling my right leg up, I shifted so there was some space between us. “You wouldn’t be in the same room as me.”

Josie sat back on her calves, and I wanted to get hit with another dose of anger—rightful anger. “Why?” she said softly, surprising me. “I really would like to know, because I think I know you. I know you better than I’ve known anyone else. So tell me why.”

Shoving my fingers through my hair, I resisted the urge to pull on it.

“Come on, Seth. You saw me at my worst and didn’t run. Do you think I will?”

I lifted my gaze, meeting her steady one. “Do you know what I was doing for the last year? Before I was sent to get you? I was hunting down those who sided with Ares. And by hunting down, I don’t mean rounding them up to have brunch and crumpets, Josie.”

“I figured you weren’t having lunch with them,” she said, plopping back on her ass. Her eyes never left mine.

“Did you?” I rose, shifting my weight onto my arms as I planted my hands on either side of her legs and leaned in so that we were face to face. “Those I hunted down—they were living, breathing people. Some of them pures. Some of them halfs. And some were mortals.”

She still held my stare, and I wanted her to look away, to turn away and prove what I thought. “None of them were arrested or tried in a court. All of them were deemed guilty before I even laid eyes on them. My orders were to kill them. And I did.”

Her chest rose sharply, but still, she did not look away.

“I cannot even begin to count how many lives I’ve ended with these hands. These hands, Josie.” Lifting them, I curved them over her knees. “The ones you want touching you.”

Her lips parted. “It was your job, Seth, it—”

“It was who I was. An executioner,” I cut in, my voice pitching low. “I killed people. Sometimes I didn’t make it quick. Do you know what that makes me?”

She didn’t answer.

I gave her one. “A monster. It makes me a monster.”

“No.” Her hands landed atop mine, and when I started to pull them away, she held on. “You are not a monster, Seth. You did what you had to do. What you were ordered to do.”

“Josie—”

“There are people—mortals—who kill other people every day because they are ordered to do so. Does that make men and women in the military monsters? What about police?” Her slim fingers gripped mine. “And would you have done those things if you hadn’t been ordered?”

Of course I wouldn’t have. I’d learned my lesson well before I got my marching orders, but did that change the last year of my life? No. And it didn’t change everything I had done before then.

“Would you, Seth? Would you have done it if you weren’t made to?”

I closed my eyes and my response was barely above a whisper. “No.”

She squeezed my hands. “It’s terrible. I’m not going to lie and say that it isn’t a big deal, but I know you. You did what you had to do, not because you wanted to. There’s a difference there.” She paused as her hands slid up to my wrists. “I ran over a squirrel once.”

Blinking open my eyes, I drew back as far as she’d let me.

“What?”

“I ran over a squirrel the second time I ever drove a car,” she repeated. “I also hit a deer. And when I was seventeen, I clipped a cat. Before I left for college, I backed into a dog.”

“Gods,” I muttered.

She nodded, lips drooping at the corners. “His name was Buddy and it was a golden retriever. Like, the most friendly of all dogs.”

Oh my gods.

“And the owner’s five-year-old kid saw it. Buddy survived, but I’m kind of like a mass murderer when it comes to animals and me behind the wheel.”

My lips twitched. It wasn’t funny. I had to keep telling myself that. “Babe, that’s not the same thing.”

“I know.” She shrugged. “But still. I’m not happy about it, but it seriously made me feel like an animal serial killer. Like somehow that was my destiny. To kill all the furry, four-legged friends.”

I stared at her. No matter what, she was so…so mortal.

Josie bit down on her lower lip as she worked her hands up to my elbows, her thumbs pressing on the insides. “I have deeper, darker secrets.”

“You do?” My voice was low, rough. The constriction in my chest was lessening. “Did you cut off the heads of your Barbies or something?”

She laughed softly. “No, but I did cut their hair and tried to dye it with markers.”

“Of course,” I murmured.

Rising onto her knees in front of me, she tightened her grip on my elbows, and I was absolutely helpless to move. Made powerless by a girl who thought she had darker secrets than me. “I wished, more than once when I was younger, that I had a different mom. That’s pretty bad.”

I found myself leaning toward her. Our faces separated by scant inches. “I think most people would sympathize with that.”

“Maybe. I’m just pointing out that no one is perfect, especially me.”

Josie was the closest thing to perfect I’d ever met, and she had no idea. The realization was a shot to the chest. When had this happened? When had I gone from being a one-man show, always alone with nothing meaningful, to having this right in front of me, in me? I closed my eyes as I dragged in a deep breath. I don’t even know why I said what I did. Then again, I didn’t know why I’d told Josie all the things I had before. “I don’t feel that way.”