40. Artemis
CHAPTER 40
Artemis
W hen I leave Athena’s room, my body sags. I’d been holding myself upright against my will for the last few minutes. Ares is already gone from the room—that’s going to be problematic, and Apollo is still in there with her.
I close the door leading into the living space, brace myself against the back of the couch with one hand, but I’m not sure that’s even strong enough to hold me up right now. It feels like my insides are crumbling like a sandcastle that’s suddenly devoid of the liquid that’s been holding it together, and all that’s left are tumbling grains of sand.
My heart hurts. Like, it tangibly hurts, more than any injury or physical pain I’ve ever sustained in my entire hockey life. My heart is so sore I want to plunge my fingers into my chest, rip open a rib or two, and cast out the offending organ.
Who the fuck thinks it’s okay to do this to another human being?
I grip the couch with my second hand, but still, I’m not sure it’s enough. The room spins.
Who would do this to someone?
My stomach churns.
Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and my full stomach of food is threatening to make a reappearance after having seen my sister’s beaten face.
I bend over the back of the sofa in a bid to slow the thundering pulse in my veins, or help the nausea swimming in my gut, but nothing’s helping. All I can see is the image of Athena’s traumatized face, her distressed features, the way she stroked Scott’s hand with one of hers, even though it was in a cast, and the other pulled at imaginary lint from the comforter on her bed.
I don’t envy Scott. What he saw must have been so much worse, so much fucking worse than seeing her tucked up cozy in bed with a banged-up face.
How am I supposed to be okay with this? How am I supposed to go to classes knowing that my sister is lying here having escaped a fucking brush with death? Because let’s face it, the list of her injuries tells me those fuckers weren’t at all concerned with her wellbeing or whether she lived or died.
Scott says she bit one of their dicks, and that sent them running. If she hadn’t been able to retaliate as she did, would they have stopped this side of death?
My head spins, stomach lurching at the thought of losing Athena. We never say it out loud but she’s the one we all aspire to be, our leader in a way, and our protector in many others.
She’s what we all should be, what sometimes we strive to be. She conducts herself with poise, patience, she shows grace when the rest of us fly off the handle. And the thought we could have lost her… shit.
I lean my elbows on the back of the sofa and drag my hands through my hair. How do I stop the whirlpool of emotions cascading through my mind and body?
Mercifully, Athena’s apartment has more than one bathroom, so I make my way back through the door to where the bedrooms are and into her guest room. I’m hoping she can’t hear me through her expensive and well-insulated walls as I grip the edges of her toilet and hurl my guts up.
It takes a good twenty minutes before I’ve emptied everything out of my stomach, and I can stand without dizziness engulfing me or my body swaying, but I can’t say I’m feeling great.
Athena’s always well prepped for guests, so I steal a disposable toothbrush and some toothpaste from under her guest sink and clean the inside of my mouth for a few more minutes.
Part of me is procrastinating. I’m not sure how I’m going to handle looking into my brother’s eyes knowing what our sister just survived. Even the thought of it makes me want to scrub my skin raw. Two men had their hands and bodies on my sister. Two men forced their dicks on my sister.
By the time I return to the living room, I’m crying, thick, heavy tears pour down my face and I don’t know how to turn them off, to make them stop. I don’t know how to make my chest not hurt anymore.
Apollo stands when he sees me coming into the room. He takes one look at me, picks up the pace, and meets me partway across the space. He’s been crying too, his eyes are red-rimmed, bloodshot, and his light grey t-shirt has wet splodges over it.
He pulls me into a massive hug, bracing me against him with both arms. I’m not sure if he thinks I need him, or he needs me, or maybe this hug is symbiotic, maybe we both need comfort and support. If it wasn’t for him holding me, I’d probably have slunk onto the floor.
“I know,” he murmurs against my shoulder. “We’ll figure it out.”
The two of us stand there for a long time, grasping each other, crying, and holding space for one another. When we eventually pull back, Ares’s name falls from my lips.
Apollo shakes his head. “It’s okay. I texted him. No answer, but the find my friend thing has him at Eloise’s place. Or at least in that direction.”
If he doesn’t want to talk to us, he won’t. He’ll come back when he’s ready to, and not a second before.
I shake my head. I don’t even know why, to dislodge the block in my brain that’s fixated on my sister’s frail and bruised body, or what, but I shake it again for good measure.
“How do we get through this?”
Apollo’s face tells me he doesn’t know any more than I do, that he’s every bit as distressed and upset as I am.
Usually, when the sky falls, we turn to Athena. But no one knows what to do when she’s the one who is in trouble.
I look at the door, then back to my brother. Neither of us wants to leave, but neither of us brought our laptops, any clothes, or provisions.
Hopefully, Athena will be out for a while or at least be in her room. She’ll know that now she’s told us, we won’t want to move.
Both Edith, and one of our trusted sophomore members of the team, each have a key to our apartments. Usually, runaround kind of work is left to the rookies on the team, but we don’t trust them not to break something, or hell, even steal something. At least by sophomore year, we know their characters a little better.
Edith would ask too many questions and undoubtedly be upset. The guys on the team will do as they’re asked, bring the bags and leave. So, Pollo sends off a quick text to one of the guys to ask them to go to our apartments and grab go-bags for Apollo and me.
We need to figure out how to navigate this, who to tell, when, and how. How to alleviate as much pressure off Athena as we possibly can. How to keep her as level as we can. How to keep it out of the press. Which lawyers to hire.
And not least of all we need to figure out some therapists because we all need fucking therapy. Every last one of us. If any of the guys tries to wiggle out of it, I’ll put them in a damn headlock.
In less than thirty minutes, we have go-bags and laptops in hand, pho is on the way, along with a cosmic amount of summer rolls, and a couple of rice bowls. Athena loves a rice bowl, but there’s every chance she won’t be able to eat much of it, so we’re also ordering some vegetable soup and some ice cream.
Apollo also asked Penelope if she could throw together a couple of her infamous recovery protein smoothies for him. She’s bound to be curious as to the why, but she’s a good soul with a kind heart, and being part of the UCR Raccoons family often comes with strange requests.
She says she’ll bring them over in about an hour. We have all our bases covered.
Ares has made his way back to the flock, without Eloise in tow, but from how red-ringed and bloodshot his eyes are, there’s no way she doesn’t know, and I get it. If I had a partner right now, I’d probably be crying to them as well.
A burden shared and all that.
It takes about forty minutes to decide on which of our pool of lawyers we think should take on Athena’s case. We’ve made a list of therapists for each of us to reach out to, except Ares, he says he’s happy with his current guy. Apollo was in the process of changing his therapist, and I’ve never had one before, so going through their profiles and picking out ones who have expertise in trauma or sexual assault took a lot of time.
We both have a short list, three therapists each to reach out to, and by the time Penelope stops by with smoothies in hand, we’ve both emailed all three therapists on our lists.
By the time Athena—or Scott, it’s hard to tell until someone opens the door—starts to stir and we hear a toilet flush in the other room, we have food for her, we have a top three list for lawyers, a top three list for therapists, and we’ve made a firm camp in her living room.
No matter what she says when she walks through that door, we’re determined to let her know that she’s not alone, and we’ve got her back.