Chapter 18 Ares
Ares
His legs are numb when he wakes.
He glances down, frowning, his thoughts still half hazy, and finds Chanel Cao asleep on top of him. Suddenly he’s wide awake,
the events of last night trickling in like the pale sunlight through the curtains. The fear that had pierced his lungs when
he first spotted her at the Cave, stumbling home together after, the kiss that tasted of blood and cherries, the unreality
of seeing her grab towels from his kitchen like she belonged here, like their lives were irrevocably tangled. He must have
dozed off at some point—he isn’t sure when, which is . . . strange. He normally struggles to fall asleep to the point where
his body shuts itself down from physical exhaustion, and even then he’ll spend much of the night tossing around, waking every
hour or so with a start and struggling to relax again.
Yet the last thing he remembers is closing his eyes, and now this:
Chanel, her dark hair spilling over her shoulders, her head resting on his stomach. There’s no blanket around either of them, but he isn’t cold at all, not with her body pressed so close to his.
She breathes slowly, her features soft, her lashes dark against her skin, her makeup smudged and beginning to fade. He never
imagined he would get to see her this way, and only in comparison does he realize how alert she always is. Always scheming,
calculating, showing off her best and brightest sides.
So while the pins and needles in his legs are starting to feel more like a thousand tiny daggers, he holds himself very still,
careful not to shift his weight on the couch. He doesn’t move at all until she stirs, her eyes fluttering open.
“Morning,” he says.
She seems, briefly, surprised to see him there. She looks around at the room, then down at herself, and sits up, swinging
her legs off the couch like a gymnast, lithe and soundless. “I need a new shirt,” she declares.
“What for?”
“Because,” she says calmly, “there’s blood on my dress.”
So there is. He hadn’t noticed it last night, but in the brilliant light of day, his eyes draw down to the rust-red stains
in the white fabric, the bloodied fingerprints that have dried like a morbid pattern around her waist. Criminal evidence of
everything that had happened to them, and between them.
“Sorry,” he says, meaning it. “Was the dress new? I can wash it for you.”
“Oh no, you can’t wash this dress. You can’t actually clean it at all. You’re not even really supposed to wear it outside—it’s
very delicate, this fabric.”
He frowns. “What’s the point of a dress you can’t wash or wear?”
“It’s fashion,” she says, like that explains it. “Though this was from last spring, so it’s about time I retired it anyway.”
He opens his mouth. Realizes that any questions he asks now will only lead to more questions, and that he really isn’t interested
enough in the world of clothing to find out. “I’ll get you a shirt,” he says instead.
In his bedroom, he rifles through his limited selection of T-shirts and tank tops, all black and dark gray, no branding or
logo or even a splash of color on any of them. The opposite of Chanel Cao’s closet. He picks out his newest shirt, his favorite
one, and heads back out into the hall—
Then freezes.
She’s standing with her back turned toward him, her dress lifted over her head. He catches a flash of her shoulder blades,
elegant and symmetrical as butterfly wings, the moon-white skin between them, the smooth indents at the base of her spine,
before he averts his gaze, his blood beating too hot and thick through his veins. The shirt is crumpled in his hand, and he’s
wondering if he should just set it down somewhere and leave when he hears her footsteps approaching.
“You’re allowed to look if you want,” she says casually, her dress falling with a faint rustle onto the floorboards behind
her. She makes no attempt to cover her body as she steps into his line of view and takes the T-shirt from him. “What?” she
asks, her gaze fastening on his as if daring him to break eye contact. “Don’t tell me you’re suddenly shy.”
“I was trying to be a gentleman,” he says, and is aware that the quality of his voice has changed.
Her brows arch. “Didn’t seem that way last night.”
She’s slow to put his clothes on, bunching her hair up and pulling it free from the collar. As he’d expected, his shirt is
far too big for her, the short sleeves hanging loose around her arms and the hem falling past her bare thighs.
The sight of it makes him want to do something awful and irrational, like kiss her again.
“Think I can pull this look off?” she asks him, gesturing to herself.
The answer slips from his tongue: “You can pull anything off.”
She rolls her eyes, but she’s clearly biting back a smile. “I know. Where’s the bathroom, by the way?” she asks, stepping
past him. “I’m going to get ready.”
“It’s first to your right, down the hall,” he says. “Do you have your things?”
“Yeah, I bring my makeup bag everywhere with me.”
He contemplates the possibility that he’s still sleeping, that this is all a dream, as he watches Chanel Cao get ready from
the bathroom doorway.
She ties her hair at the base of her neck with a ribbon.
Sets her phone down on the bathroom counter, scrolls through her Spotify for a good few minutes until she stops at the right playlist, presses Play.
An upbeat Chinese pop song he’s heard at a restaurant before blares through the tiny speaker.
Then, shoulders moving naturally to the music, she dumps the entire contents of her makeup bag out on the other side of the counter, letting the mascara and eyeliner and other pencil-like products he doesn’t know the names of spill over the marble.
He watches her dab mysterious white powders onto her skin, cover the lines under her eyes with a brush, then carefully draw
the lines again with a darker brush. That seems to be the pattern here: erasing the shadows around her nose, then retracing
it. Blotting concealer around her eyelids, then smearing a dusky brown dust on top of it. He doesn’t understand it, but there’s
something ritualistic about the whole thing, and oddly intimate too—witnessing Chanel transform into Chanel Cao before anyone
else can see her.
So he continues watching, mesmerized, careful not to even breathe too loud.
She takes her time, her movements sure and deliberate, her eyes focused on her reflection. Both sharply aware of herself and
unselfconscious in a way that he’s come to realize is rare for her.
When she’s almost done, she frees her hair from the ribbon, runs her fingers through it to comb and fluff it out until it
falls over her shoulders in glossy black waves. Uncaps the Chanel No. 5 perfume bottle, adjusts the nozzle, and spritzes it
behind her ears, on the pale underside of her wrists, at the hollow of her collarbones. He can smell it from here, the floral
curl of jasmine and the warm vanilla notes beneath.
Two fresh bruises bloom like small violet flowers against the skin just above her chest. She seems to notice them too. She
doesn’t try covering them up, but rather tugs the collar of her shirt down an inch farther, tracing over the bruises with
her fingers. His blood quickens at the memory of his lips there.
Then her gaze swings to him in the mirror.
“You want to help me?” she asks, in the voice of someone offering a once-in-a-lifetime deal he’d be a fool to miss out on.
He pauses with one foot over the threshold. “Help you how?”
“With this.” She holds up her lipstick. Before he can choose his answer, she hoists herself up onto the counter, legs dangling
off the side, her back pressed to the mirror, and beckons him forward. “Come here.”
Maybe the answer was never his to choose. He isn’t aware of himself stepping forward, crossing over the cerulean tiles, but
it’s like he’s moving in a trance. The nearer he is to her, the stronger her perfume grows, enveloping his senses.
She spreads her knees out, letting him walk closer still.
An invitation. A trap.
Definitely the latter. The second he’s positioned before her, his eyes level with hers, she grins like a cat and wraps her
legs tight around his waist. An involuntary breath escapes his throat, and he’s fighting hard to keep his expression level,
to not notice the heat and pressure and weight of her body when she shifts against him to rebalance herself on the counter.
“Hmm? Something wrong?” she asks, her mouth bare inches from his.
“Course not,” he says, and accepts the lipstick like a challenge.
It’s practically a foreign object in his hands, but he unscrews it, lifts it up to her chin.
She purses her lips, waiting, baiting him.
Now it’s her turn to watch him, and he hears himself swallow as he traces the edge of her full lower lip, his heart beating far less steadily than his hands are moving.
It wouldn’t be so difficult to remain calm if he didn’t remember with such aching clarity the softness of her mouth from last night.
“You’re good at that,” she says, twisting around to examine his work once he steps back.
He’s pleased that she’s pleased. Feels the sickening, pathetic urge to do anything to please her more.
She smiles up at him. Then her eyes fall on the paper half tucked into one of the bathroom drawers, and her body goes still.
“What’s this?”
“Oh, that. It’s just a design,” he says, taking it out to show her the sketch of a crescent moon. “I’m getting it tattooed. . . .”
With a start, he remembers the vision he’d seen in the lake. Him and Chanel together at a tattoo parlor, her sitting down
beside him. His pulse quickens. He’d feared that his chances were ruined after what happened at the Cave yesterday, that he
was further away from finding Long Ge than ever. If they don’t let him go back, he’ll never be able to win the final matches
and secure his favor. But is it possible that this is how things were meant to fall into place? Chanel showing up last night?
Coming back home with her, and waking up to this?
Chanel leans closer to study the sketch. “It’s pretty.”
“Do you want to come with?” he asks, and he feels the rightness of the question as he asks it, a sense of forward motion, the gears of time turning and clicking. The future will come true.
He will make it come true, using the vision as his blueprint, his map, guiding him to his brother.
“Where?”
“The tattoo appointment,” he says, hoping he doesn’t sound too eager. “It’s next week . . . I don’t know if you’d be bored, though.”
“You really want me to be there?” she asks.
I need you to be there, he thinks, a little desperately. For whatever reason, you being there is a crucial part of the vision. “Yeah. If you’re interested, I mean. I’d like that.”
“Okay, sure,” she says. “Could be fun.”
“Cool,” he says, and realizes belatedly what it sounds like he’s asking her for. A date. A proper date with him. Which he
guesses it is, in a way.
She’s quiet for a moment, maybe realizing the same thing too. Then, “Did you really mean what you said last night?”
“About what?”
“That it wouldn’t happen again. That you wouldn’t let anyone hurt me,” she says. “Does that include yourself?”
“Of course. Why would I ever hurt you?” he asks, confused.
“Yeah,” she murmurs, half to herself, it seems. “Why would you?”
For the first time, he feels a frisson of fear. On the outside, nothing has changed. She’s still smiling up at him, her makeup
fresh, her dark hair tumbling over her bare shoulders. But there had been a shift just now. A glimpse of something moving
underneath Chanel Cao’s perfect, polished surface, like a creature flitting beneath a moonlit lake. It should send him running,
but he’s strangely compelled to inch closer, dip his hand into the cold waters, see what’s really there. Even if it bites
him.
“Are you okay?” he asks. It’s the wrong thing to say, not the question he meant.
“I’m fine. I’m just thinking.” Her voice is light, so light that it seems to detach itself from her and float right over him, revealing nothing of the intricacies of her mind.
“You sure? I mean . . .” He pauses. He has this encroaching feeling that he’s upset her somehow, brushed against a nerve without
realizing. It normally wouldn’t affect him so much; he’s used to people being upset with him, or disappointed, or angry. He
normally wouldn’t pursue the topic with such desperation. “Are you tired?” Again, the wrong question. But he doesn’t know
how to ask her outright: Did I say or do something wrong? Could you stop pretending for just a moment, and let me know you as you truly are?
She blinks those large, liquid-lined eyes up at him. “I’m not tired at all. I slept very well last night.”
“Okay,” he says, but he still can’t shake the sense that he’s missing something.