26. Artemis
26 ARTEMIS
I have a new house guest. His name is Reese Avery, and I’m pretty sure he and Saint are either going to become best friends or kill each other.
He’s made himself at home on the couch, which I guess has dried to an acceptable level.
I slept for over twenty-four hours.
When I stumbled out in search of something to eat, my stomach growling, Reese was passed out on the couch.
Shocking, ’til I remembered telling him to stay here.
And Saint didn’t object?
Anyway, I found cheese and crackers, sat on the counter chewing slowly, then made it back to bed.
I was asleep in minutes.
Now it’s Saturday, and there’s a fight at Olympus tonight.
I’m just mustering the energy to get out of bed when a soft tap comes on my door.
“Come in,” I call.
Reese enters.
He pauses at the foot of my bed, his gaze drinking me in.
This is really the first time we’ve been awake at the same time.
I had a whispered conversation with Saint the other morning, but it was so early, Reese was asleep.
Or pretending to be.
“How are you feeling?”
I lift one shoulder.
“About as well as I can, I guess.”
“Headache?”
“Mostly gone.” I draw my knees up.
“Want to sit?”
He nods, but he closes the door before he ventures closer.
Just that small action sends my heart into overdrive, and my chest tightens.
He gives me space, sitting out of reach.
His hair is messed up, the waves flopping down on his forehead and nearly getting in his eyes.
Even as I watch, he rakes his hand through it and offers me a glimmer of a smile.
The fact that he’s attractive isn’t even fair.
“Saint was telling me about how he found you.” His gaze shutters.
“The guys who… had it out for you.”
“The Cyclopes.” I make a face.
“We still don’t know anything about them. I really need to tell my brother?—”
“I know them.”
I stop.
“What?”
He shifts.
“Um, I know them. Knew them, really. In Emerald Cove. They weren’t established there by any means, but they were getting organized. There just wasn’t space for them, but then rumors about the war between gangs in Sterling Falls caught wind.”
“And they decided to come here,” I finish.
“Who are they?”
“Their leader is a mystery. No one speaks about him, and there are layers of leaders before you get to the top.” He rubs at his eyes.
“I was involved with them. A little.”
“No.” My throat closes.
“I needed money off the record, Tem.”
I can’t believe I’m letting him call me Tem.
It feels closer than I want him, but at the same time, heat curls in my belly.
He’s being honest.
And if I’m honest, I’ve been judging him on our past. But there’s almost a decade of the unknown between then and now.
“Why?” I wave my hand.
“Don’t feel like you have to answer that. God knows I’ve done my fair share of fucked-up stuff.”
He smiles.
“I want to hear about that.”
“Are they… Are the Cyclopes here to stay?”
His smile fades.
“Unless something is done about it, yeah. That’s why I’m here.”
“You’re here because you want to stop them,” I repeat.
Reese sighs. “Something like that. Sometimes it feels like they’re the oncoming tide. They’ve got the numbers, and their momentum is impossible to stop.”
I don’t love the sound of that.
“But then I found you. And what you’ve done…” He meets my gaze.
“Bow & Arrow is beautiful, Artemis. Sincerely.”
My face heats.
“Thank you.”
“I went down to confront my own demons, and then I found the bomb.”
Right.
That.
“And you disabled it?”
“I’m a former Marine.” He sighs.
“I worked with bombs overseas. It wasn’t… it was in my wheelhouse, I guess you can say, to examine it and stop it.”
“You were deployed? And you just so happened to find a bomb that you could disarm.”
I lean back against my headboard, considering his words.
That it was just a coincidence he was down there?
That he has demons of his own—as I started to suspect.
It doesn’t mean it’s easy information to swallow.
“The bomb had dust on it,” he says in a low voice.
“Someone set it up and then left it. They had to get back down there to trigger the timer… or not. It could’ve had an hour, a day, two weeks set on the timer. There’s no telling what it started at. But I’m telling you, in my opinion, this wasn’t just some spur-of-the-moment thing to incite fear.”
“Why call the sheriff?” I reach for him.
He takes my hand automatically, without even thinking about it.
Like my touch doesn’t freak him out.
Not like how I thought I’d react to his touch.
But his calloused fingers are warm and dry, and it grounds me.
— hand reaching out for mine ?—
I jerk back.
He just looks at me.
I suddenly feel the need to apologize, but he cuts off my attempt.
“I wanted someone to know about it, so I reported the bomb,” he says.
“It wasn’t my intention to make you go down there again, but I waited to see if you would. And you did.”
That headache I thought was going away?
It’s back. I thought, out of everything, Reese would be the thorn in my side.
From the moment he arrived, from the panic attacks, everything screamed that he would be my enemy.
But he’s not. It’s Kade.
“If you’re lying to me, I will find out,” I warn.
He softens. “I know what it’s like to be lied to. I won’t do that to you.” He rises.
But instead of leaving, he steps closer.
Leans over me.
His lips touch the top of my head, and my traitorous heart fucking skips.
And then he’s gone.
“Are you sure you’re up for this?”
I glare at Saint.
His bruises have all healed from his fight with Kade, and with it he has apparently suffered a memory lapse.
Unlike me, because I still look like I got in a fight with an ogre.
“Of course I’m up for this.” I scoff.
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“You just spent the week in bed,” he replies.
“It’s common fucking sense.”
“She’s okay.” Reese comes out of the bathroom.
He’s been wearing his own clothes, which means at some point during this week, he snuck back to his place.
There’s a black canvas duffel bag tucked against the wall I can only assume is his.
I adjust the necklaces hanging down my chest. I layered them extra thick today, intending to cover the scabs and bruises, but it’s still uncomfortable.
My shirt is a silky gold halter top, and I added elbow-length gloves to cover my forearms. Brown leather pants.
“I made you both masks,” Saint says, retrieving boxes from the counter.
“Don’t read into it, I just don’t want to stand next to cheap generic shit.”
I take the box and roll my eyes.
Reese takes his, but he doesn’t open it until I’ve flipped the lid on mine.
The mask is gold and brown, a perfect complement to my chosen outfit.
It catches the light.
I examine it, and it dawns on me that he used real arrowheads.
Gold ones. The brown is soft, like velvet.
Deer fur .
A wicked combination that seems to tell a story in and of itself.
A hunter and the hunted.
“Thank you. This is beautiful.”
Not to mention, it’ll hide the healing cut on my forehead.
The back of the mask, which will sit against my skin, is a creamy silk.
The ties to secure it are suede cords, not unlike the ones that hang from Apollo’s mask.
I hold it to my chest, not really sure what else to do.
Saint dips his head in acknowledgement.
“We talked about who you would pick,” he says to Reese.
“And I kind of jumped off of that.”
I’m intrigued.
Reese’s clothing doesn’t give away who he intends to go as—but I’m glad Saint explained the masquerade portion.
More than I did, which was not at all.
He removes the lid and stares down at the mask.
I creep closer and peer in.
“Wow.”
“I…” Reese licks his lips.
“This is stunning, Saint.”
I smile.
He knocked it out of the park.
And judging from the satisfied smile on his face, he’s happy with how we accepted them.
“Who are you?” I ask Reese.
He lifts the mask of fire from the silk bed, setting the box aside.
Truly, I don’t know how Saint managed to make it look like actual fire .
It gleams in the light, a million pieces of slender, delicate stained glass that form flames.
Reese holds it up to his face, and his green eyes meet mine.
A grin curves his lips.
“I chose Prometheus.”
The titan who gave humans fire .
I wonder if that says more about him than he’s letting on.