CHAPTER ELEVEN
HEHADWON. It was really that simple, and that complicated. His brother was dead, and he had claimed the woman that he had always wanted.
A victory. And not a Pyrrhic one. A complicated one, yes. One that mixed grief and regret with no small amount of triumph. But it was the single greatest achievement of his thirty years.
Ariadne was his.
He woke up each morning holding her in his arms, and he relished it.
When she would walk out of their shared room entirely nude to eat breakfast in the courtyard with the sun shining down on her skin, he gave thanks.
Like a wood nymph. An incredibly sexy one.
He had her.
And you don’t know what to do with her.
He shut off that voice inside of himself. He absolutely knew what to do with her. He kept her panting and crying out his name as often as possible. If they had lives at jobs outside of this place, they had both done a good job of forgetting. Yes, they devoted a bit of time to making sure that things weren’t on fire. But mostly, they were dedicating themselves to conceiving a baby.
At least, that was how they framed it. In truth, he felt as if they were making up for the lost years. Her, for her virginity which had overstayed its welcome, and him for all the years he had everyone but her.
In this place, it was easy though, to forget that any years had passed at all. It was like that kiss on the balcony had led to this moment, instead of the ten years after, which had been...
He had been dead, basically.
It was why it had been so easy to put everything into starting his company. To put everything into defying his father, and perhaps trying to prove that he was a better man than his brother.
That thought hit him especially hard as he sat there, drinking his coffee and looking at Ariadne’s beautiful profile as she sat with her face upturned toward the sun and her eyes closed.
Yes. Maybe a not insignificant part of himself had wanted to prove that the way he had done things was better.
She said Theseus had hated himself.
But Dionysus couldn’t say he was an avid fan of his own behavior.
Everything he did came from a place of rage. Anger.
Everything he did was about... Her.
Her eyes fluttered open, and she looked at him. “What?”
“I didn’t say anything,” he said.
“You were thinking. Loudly.”
“You can hear my thoughts now?”
“I’ve always been able to hear your thoughts.”
He shook his head. “No. If that were true, then you would have run away from me back then.”
“I did run away from you,” she said, her words soft. They hit him in a particularly vulnerable place. And the truth they carried had implications that echoed in parts of him he didn’t want to examine.
“And now you have nowhere to run to.”
“I chose this,” she said.
She stood from her chair and came to him, sitting on his lap. He was instantly hard, the feel of her soft, lush body pressed against his more than he could bear.
“Then you are a fool,” he said.
“Don’t be like that. You want me.”
The certainty in her eyes hit him low in the chest.
“You know I do.”
He was tangled up in this. In her. What a strange thing to finally have what he craved.
To have what he had wanted all this time.
And still feel like there was something... Missing. Something that he couldn’t quite grasp.
“In some respects these past weeks have been the saddest of my life. How could they not be.” She looked down, and then, back up at him. “And in other ways, they have been the best. And I don’t know how to untangle those things from one another.”
His heart did something shattering. Something he didn’t want to name.
“Why?” He couldn’t stop himself from asking. Even if it was selfish. Even if it was a betrayal.
“I have spent my life taking care of myself. Taking care of other people. I loved Theseus. But I see now that I loved him like a sister. I protected him. I was his shield. And I didn’t do it because I’m so good, because I’m so altruistic. Far from it. I did it because by building a safe place for him, I built one for myself too. I did it because it made me indispensable in a way that no other relationship could have. By protecting him, I thought I was protecting myself. By protecting him, I thought that I was making sure that I would never end up alone.” He watched as tears welled up in her eyes. He found himself angry again at his brother for putting them there. “But since I collapsed at the Diamond Club, you have taken care of me. No one has ever taken care of me before.”
He moved toward her. And put his hand on her cheek, just in time to catch a tear that spilled from her eye and tracked downward. “I’m very sorry that I’m your only option for care, Ariadne. You deserve better than that.”
Because when had his care ever accomplished much?
Historically, it hadn’t.
It hadn’t been enough to protect Theseus from their father. Hadn’t been enough to protect him from the feeling that something was wrong with him. It hadn’t been enough to make him want to trust Dionysus with the truth.
“I don’t want anyone else.”
He would have argued with her, but he didn’t have the strength. Because he had wanted her all this time, all these years, and he had never been able to have her. And he did now. It felt selfish, and yet, he couldn’t fathom releasing hold on her now.
This was complicated. But he’d lived simply for a very long time. Had pleased no one and nothing but himself.
Part of him had always craved this. The chance to care for her.
He had told her that he had wanted her without end all of this time, and it was true.
But the desire to care for her was even more pronounced. Even more driving than the lust, and that was saying something, because it was quite simply the most powerful need he had ever experienced.
But there was no point discussing that. Because he didn’t know how to define these feelings, and the only thing he knew for sure was that if she married him, he would have her. If they had a child together, she would stay.
She had stayed with Theseus all that time out of loyalty to him. She would stay for the loyalty to their child. Of that he was certain.
And in this way, she would hold onto him.
He would have her.
And if he felt a strange sense of disquiet over the truth that Ariadne had been kept for far too long by a man who couldn’t give her everything she deserved, he pushed that to the side. She had made her choice. She wanted certain things that pushed him toward demanding this.
She knew what she was getting into.
She was wild like he was. And she had made her choices. She might deserve more than him, but she herself had said she didn’t especially want it.
Of course, she had also thought that she didn’t need passion.
But there, he was giving her that at least.
He could give her freedom.
That determination bloomed inside of him. “You know that with me you don’t need to present the fa?ade of the perfect wife. With me, you get to be the girl you were here.”
A smile curved her lips. “Why do you think I’m out here in the sun and nothing else?”
“You are not beholden to those old rules anymore.”
She sighed. “I always will be until your father dies. He can always revoke my position at the company.”
“And it means that much to you?”
For the first time, a small crease appeared between her brows, and she looked just slightly like she might not know the answer for certain. When before she had been so... Ruthlessly direct. He could see now, though, that she had spent these past years as Theseus’s personal Joan of Arc. And with his actions, he had fundamentally tied her to a stake, and put her at risk for being burned alive.
Because she was right. Their father would hold her hostage, endlessly. And to release hold of it would be to let go of all her work. It would be to lay her sword down after all these years in battle.
He could see why she couldn’t do that easily. But he wanted her to. But that was where he had to acknowledge the limitation of what he offered her.
If he could be everything, then he would demand everything in return.
But he couldn’t.
He didn’t deserve to ask for everything.
“As long as I have a place where I can be myself, then I’ll be all right. I haven’t had that.”
That realization broke him. “You said my brother was your best friend. But you... You couldn’t be yourself with him?”
“I couldn’t be everything with him, no. Because of course we didn’t share this. This part of myself was pushed down so far, and it wasn’t him. Not only him. He can’t shoulder the blame for the decisions that I made. For my fears. I let myself get bogged down in what I saw as my own flaws.”
“You thought your passion was a flaw?”
“Yes. So I buried it.”
He saw again the image of her in full armor, with a sword.
And he saw her clearly.
“You never repressed your passion, you just channeled it into a different place. You were a warrior for him, all this time. You kept everybody away from the thing he was most ashamed of. You stood between him and all of the enemies that he saw around him.”
“Some protector,” she said. “He’s still gone.”
He gripped her chin. “You were the fiercest of protectors. That it ended in a way no one would have wished doesn’t change that. Your passion shines too brightly to have ever been suppressed entirely. And passion is more than one thing. Your passion was never dangerous.” He leaned toward her, his mouth a whisper from hers. “I envy that. I wanted your passion for myself. Of course, I wanted to use it differently, even if I didn’t realize. But you could never have suppressed that. It was what I saw from the beginning. Whether you express it by running freely here, or putting on a suit and going to work, and advocating for the people that you employ, you are all passion, Ariadne Katrakis. And it has served you well. It’s what makes you strong.” He kissed her then, lightly. “Never forget that.”
Ariadne thought about what Dionysus had said to her all day. She thought about her own core beliefs, the way that she thought she had successfully taken her passion and extinguished it. He was right. She had simply channeled it into something else. Relentlessly.
It was why protecting Theseus had become her everything. Because it had become her sole mission. Because she had taken that part of herself that had a constellation of dreams and built the dam, so that it was all contained into one pool. She had done it to protect him. She had done it to protect herself.
And she recognized that it wasn’t serving her.
Yes, she wanted to continue her work. But she was going to have to allow her passion to be multifaceted again.
Because she was going to have a husband who...
She looked out at the ocean, feeling the sand between her toes as she walked. It was warm. Perfect. She paused, and relished the feeling of the breeze moving over her skin. The way that it made her dress flutter around her ankles.
She and Dionysus had both declined to label what they were.
But he needed more than protection. So did she. That was one way to keep somebody with you.
But it wasn’t them.
When they talked, they were always trying to get beneath the surface of each other’s skin. When they touched, it was like they were trying to find a way to melt into one.
He had said he imagined her in armor. That was accurate. Because she had found a way to make sure that nothing much hit her. She couldn’t feel it. It bounced right off. That was how she lived in a house with a man who she...
She had cared for him more than he cared for her. It might not have been romantic love, but the realization that the investment had been largely hers was a painful one. So of course, she had learned to walk through the world protected. To make sure that she was keeping herself safe. But she couldn’t do that with Dionysus.
That wasn’t the relationship they were having. It wasn’t one where they lived separate lives with walls both inside and out between them. It wasn’t the role of protector and protected.
She couldn’t have armor, because she needed to be able to be changed by what they were. By what they were finding with each other. And she found she wanted that. She wanted caring for him, being with him, to change her.
Because of course, she wanted to have a child with him. And if she wanted to have a child, she had to be willing to shift and change for that child as well.
It was hard. To try and shift things that had kept her protected for so long. That had protected her from crumbling.
She had wrapped herself in purpose. And that purpose was protecting Theseus. It had kept her from having to deal with anything too multifaceted, anything too difficult.
It had kept her from having to reckon with that shift and feelings she had experienced with Dionysus.
Dionysus had been her friend. Purely. When they had been younger, that had been all it was.
But as they had gotten older, it had changed. And if Theseus hadn’t been there to stand between them, the reckoning would have been...
Well, she was afraid of that reckoning. At least, she had been. Until she had lost her safety, until she had lost her comfort, until it had felt in the moment like she’d had nothing left to lose.
And in that bravery, she had found something brilliant. Something beautiful.
She could feel that there were other steps to take. Steps beyond the ones she had already accomplished.
There was further to go.
But it was just... Even if she could fix her own issues, she couldn’t fix his.
No. You can’t fix his. He has to do that himself.
Well. That left her with very little in the way of reassurance.
Except that she had been trying to fix other people’s problems for a very long time. Or at the very least, act as a Band-Aid for them.
She was struggling. With the realization that there was no safe love.
But without love...what was it?
So if she let go of that. She hadn’t been able to protect Theseus from that accident. How could she have?
She couldn’t heal Dionysus either.
And if she tried, she would only be back in the exact same situation.
She took a long, solid breath and stopped walking. She thought about who she had been. Before she had been taught to be different. Before she had been shown how disposable women were to her father. Before she had been taught that she was easy to abandon, by her mother. With Theseus she’d flung herself into earning her place. She’d loved him, he’d loved her. Their friendship had been deep and real and yet she’d had a role to play within that and in many ways she’d found it comforting. It had been a way to make herself useful.
Dionysus had simply existed with her.
They had run together. Swam together. Smiled together. Laughed together.
Somewhere, in that time with him, he had shown her that she was just fine as she was. And yet it was a lesson that she hadn’t wanted to learn. A lesson she had been afraid to learn that, for some strange reason or another.
It scared her even now.
She couldn’t say why.
She was still enough for him.
Even in the state he was in. He wanted to marry her. He wanted to be with her. And even if that didn’t mean love to him, it meant something. Because he didn’t have to do that.
What was love, then?
She wished that she had an answer to that. For her, it had meant a lot more giving than receiving.
She thought about what she knew about Dionysus. He loved being outdoors. He was sentimental. He had that car that he had gotten at seventeen. He had this island that had belonged to them. He had that cave, a sanctuary that was quite literally at the heart of the island, and he had built his house around it.
And yet he was alone. So often in his life, he was alone. She wondered if that was why he took so much care with his surroundings. Maybe it was his way of not feeling so alone.
She had been alone too. She understood. The ways that you went about trying to build community. She had done it through the business. She had tried to make her friendship with Theseus enough.
For him it was sex. And solitude.
Two things that didn’t go together, not when you were actually trying to foster intimacy. But he wasn’t. Because he was afraid of it. With her, he touched the surface of it. As she did with him.
They were like two wary creatures, cautiously circling each other. Wanting to get closer. Not knowing how.
She had an idea. She knew how to cook, she enjoyed it, in fact. It had been a way that she connected with Theseus, when things were good. They would cook a meal together, and share stories about their day.
She gave the household staff the rest of the day off, and drew on her memory of him. Of what they used to eat together when they were young. She found fresh strawberries, and champagne. And she smiled, thinking of that memory of when they had been so reckless together.
She made fish—his favorite, locally caught from around the island—and risotto, which was more to please her. She set out a fruit platter, similar to the one he had made for her when she had first arrived.
She could remember that night well.
And she knew that he was a nostalgic man. So she just had a feeling. She had a feeling that if she looked in her closet, there would be a white dress, similar to the one she had worn on her eighteenth birthday.
She looked through all the dresses, and found the one. Whether he intended it or not—but knowing him he had, it was strikingly like the one she had on that night.
She wanted to find the words. Inside of herself, between them, to express what she wanted. To express what he meant to her. Right now, this wordless seduction would have to do. This digging in to what mattered to him.
And as she put that white dress on, she mentally imagined taking her armor off. She had been working on that. On being unguarded. On being herself, with nothing between them. But tonight, she was doing it deliberately. Tonight, she was reaching for vulnerability, not just accepting it. Because her armor did a good job at keeping wounds at bay. But it also did a good job of keeping everything else out too. And she didn’t want that. Not now.
She left her hair loose, just as she had that night.
She and Theseus had announced their engagement that night.
It was a memory she didn’t allow herself to have often. She stood there, in front of the mirror, and let it play out.