Chapter 12
WHEN THEY TELL YOU TO GO SOMEWHERE YOUR FAMILY'S NEVER BEEN, AND YOU GO TO THERAPY
Finding a good therapist.
THANATOS
KANE
When I complete my descent into hell, it’s going to be because I can’t get Percy fucking Lovelace out of my mind.
I used to think my fatal flaw was avarice. Ambition. My greatest sin would be my obsession with being the best.
It was never going to be sloth. Not gluttony. Nor wrath.
No, it’s the fucking envy at envisioning her with another man.
Because we aren’t even dating!
I blast the treadmill incline higher. Notch up the speed, feet slamming against the tracks. I’m panting, sweating, hyperventilating.
It’s not enough.
Big, inquisitive eyes. Steady, careful hands. Her fucking body—
I kick up the speed further.
It’s 8 P.M., for God’s sake, I should be enjoying my rare time at home, not hitting the gym to try to run my sins off.
Physical strain is supposed to be good for you, Family Med claims. Supposed to being the operative word.
I blast the music higher, praying something, anything, can get my mind off her.
Sweat drips down my body at this point—the first time I’ve been on a proper run in ages—and it’s not helping.
I can’t do this.
The same angels that cheered as I was baptized and entered the kingdom of heaven must be screaming at 4x speed at my ongoing descent into madness.
For a woman who doesn’t even like me!
Who would agree to this? Why would I agree to this?
25 years of being alive, I’ve seen more women than I can even count, and none of them came anywhere close to what it feels like to be unequivocally seen by a woman who’s my equal.
No, not my equal.
I’ve seen her handiwork.
She’s my better.
My arms itch to wrap themselves around her, land on the small of her back, and tug her home with me. The way I crave being able to smooth my hand over her hair, trace the heart shape of her face down to her chin, melt her supple lips closer to mine, and—
That kiss ruined me.
I hit the mute button and call my last friend, who, coincidentally, is also my cousin.1
Jeremiah’s chipper voice answers the phone. “How’s your term as God of the Underworld?”
“Great,” I gasp. I shouldn’t be surprised my cousin knows who I’m dating. Who doesn’t? We’ve made it public enough.
Between gasps, I pant, “The shadows are darkening, my nights are only getting longer, and my captive is comically out of my league.”
He laughs at my suffering. “Congrats, man. I’m happy for you. Never thought I’d see you doing this well.”
“Don’t laugh. This is serious.”
“Are you on the treadmill? You’re wheezing like a smoker. Trying to get in shape for her or something?”
“Worse,” I admit. “Much worse.” I pause, debating how to tell him I agreed to fake date a woman I actually want to date. “I’m trapped in some real shit,” I say instead, the words tasting like ash in my mouth.
“Send a pic,” he says.
“What?”
“I want to see her! The woman everyone is talking about!”
I’m so jealous, I want to throttle him. “No.”
“Oh, please, now is not the time to be all macho and protective.”
I hit the cooldown and let my legs slow, the scent of burning rubber fading, to send a quick screenshot of her from social media, ditching my phone on the treadmill.
His voice laughs at me through my Airheads as I fly through the room.
“Oh, you’re fucked, dude,” he says.
I move to the weights, pick up the heaviest dumbbells, then immediately double over from being out of practice. Damn, I’m weak.
“Wow,” he says. “How’d you get her?”
“Don’t talk about my girl like that,” I say, grabbing a jump rope and whipping it.
“Your girl?” His laughter kicks up again. “Why are you still exercising, man?”
“Because I’m going insane. I have to do something.” The rope cuts through the air, faster and faster, as if breaking the sound barrier is going to help me.
“Wait, why did you call me?” his voice turns serious. “Because you’re scared she’s out of your league? Just be nice, Kane.”
“Jeremiah, this woman has me…” I toss the rope and continue pacing around the gym, frantic. “Do I need an SSRI for my anxiety? A mood stabilizer?”
Jeremiah’s silent.
The rope swings on, in pace with me, my insanity, and his lack of response, and when he finally speaks, I can almost hear the smirk in his voice. “Did you call me… a board-certified, fellowship sub-specialized, Ivory Tower psychiatrist… because you want to be medicated for your crush?”
“You don’t understand,” I beg. “I had a dream—”
“Oooh, a dream!” he mocks. I’m glad my torment is making his day. “What was it about?”
“This is serious, Jeremiah. The worst possible thing, considering I woke up, and she was RIGHT THERE!”
“Right there? IN your bed?”
“No, in the elevator!”
His voice goes up a pitch. “The elevator?!” He bursts out laughing. “So it’s you I have to do all these professionalism modules about!”
“We didn’t—we haven’t—she’s too religious for that, Jeremiah. We aren’t going to do anything before marriage.”
“How you suffer so,” he teases. “Just get a ring, then.”
“It’s not so easy.”
I’m hot all over, losing my mind, exploding like the last remnants of a black hole. “Aren’t you trained in therapy? Can’t you fix me? Or medicate me? There has to be something you can do—”
“Love is not a pathological condition, Kane.”
If he were in the room with me, I’d be pummeling him.
“Jade mentioned offhand they have suppressants for this kind of thing—”
“Jade has read way too many werewolf books,” he laughs. “And I imagine you need a break from the public PDA if she’s mentioning it to you.”
“It wasn’t in public. We were in an elevator—”
“And she still heard you two? What were you doing in there?”
“All things unholy, nothing expressly forbidden,” I respond, unwilling to taint Percy’s reputation further.
My stomach’s churning, and I’m sweaty all over. “I—Jeremiah, I really want this woman.”
“Okayyyy, and this is a problem because—”
“Because—because—” I keep scrambling, ambling to mask why we aren’t together. I skirt the truth as close as possible.
“She’s about to match somewhere else, and I don’t want to hold her back. It’ll never work out.”
“Bullshit, Kane. Just let her match on her own and do long-distance.”
“I can’t—I don’t—” my voice breaks, helpless. “I don’t want to do long-distance.”
“Aww. You really do have a crush.” I hear him hollering for his wife in the background. Then there’s not one, but two people poking their heads through the screen, watching me suffer.
“I’m losing my mind, Goodyears,” I tell them.
“Put that energy into ring shopping and house hunting,” Jeremiah’s wife, Lily, suggests. “Maybe you can buy a house between where both of you match.”
“I refuse to be the one holding her back,” I insist. “She’s smart, and she’s talented, and she’s going to do great things—”
“Then pay for the plane tickets to propel her forward,” Jeremiah says, like it’s easy. “You’re overcomplicating things.”
He doesn’t get it. He’ll never get it.
How do I tell him that when she sees me, she sees the equivalent of a human shield?
And when I see her, I’m utterly consumed?
I don’t have to explain to her how the stress of the match haunts me. She understands why I don’t fit in at the hospital, and why I can put nothing—except for my family—above matching again.
She deduced by herself how lonely I was. How desperate I was to make friends and not coast by, succumbing to my bitter, self-imposed self-hate.
She has no idea how immeasurably her proximity has healed me, made me appear better because I feel better, just a straggling intern down on his luck, no longer the hospital phantom, emerging from his lair to steal the hospital’s souls.
She’s a veritable genius. Her plan is working.
But it came with an irreversible outlier—I wasn’t supposed to actually fall in love with her!
And she sees me, in the truest sense of the word, only to what?
Think I’m just some hulking asshole who scares off exes?
At my silence, Jeremiah says, “Take a cold shower and carry on, Kane. If it’s meant to be, it will all work out.”
“It hasn’t worked out for me in the past.”
“Well, people hit by lightning are rarely struck down twice.”
“Actually—”
“Don’t fact-check me now, asshole. Plan a date or something. Put that energy somewhere positive. That is my official advice. Take it or leave it.”
I hang up.
For better or worse—probably worse—I don’t want to fake date my fake girlfriend anymore.
The worst part is that it isn’t a mere physical attraction. None of my exes ever gripped me like this. I saw them, they were real; they receded from sight, they vanished from my mind.
No, I know, every time I see her flying down the hallway, that Psyche had pierced my heart with her arrow to the point of irreversible hemorrhage.
The appeal of a fresh start, with a new body, even a new career in surgery, wouldn’t be enough to resuscitate me, to bring back the person I was before I met her, before she took up permanent residence in my mind, imprinted herself on my soul, and sewn webs of inescapable grip all around my heart.
She’s stressed out; my heart bursts.
She’s happy; my heart earns the privilege of beating.
She lives, and my blood rushes round and round and round, just to move my body to chase after her.
I’m ensnared by a woman I’m irrevocably in love with, but she’s just using me to break free of another man’s prison.
I’m so fucked.
1 Narrator’s notes: Ironic, because Hades’ best friend is his cousin Hecate, too.