Chapter 25
Artemis
Mistakes were made.
Shit.
Every breath I take is a reminder of how badly I wanted it. The house door shuts behind me with a soft click, but it lands like a gunshot behind my ribs. Am I bleeding out into my chest?
I make it to the car without breathing, without thinking, without feeling—No, I can’t even lie to myself. I’m feeling too much, feeling fucking everything.
My fingers twitch like they’re still digging into his hips. The steering wheel is cold under my hands. My palms are hot. My pulse is a riot. I sit there, unmoving, waiting for something inside me to settle before I start the car to head back to Iowa.
Spoiler alert: It doesn’t.
I can still taste him. Salt-slicked skin.
Breath. Heat. Like he tattooed my fucking tongue.
My jaw flexes so hard it aches. My hips want to shift, to chase the fading glimmer of pressure, and it pisses me off even more.
I don’t lose control like that. I don’t let myself lose control like that. Not with anyone.
I start the car just to have a noise in the silence. It takes another ten minutes before I’m on an even enough keel to face the road. It’s the middle of the night, roads are quiet, and everything is shrouded in darkness.
Shit. It’s the middle of the night. I should have taken him home.
The drive should calm me. It doesn’t. Every stoplight flashes memories across my vision like taunts.
Xavier’s mouth going slack as he melted for me.
His back arching. The breath he punched out when I pushed him open.
The sound he made when I—I grip the wheel harder.
If I squeeze any tighter, the wheel’s going to crack—or I am.
It was a mistake. No. Worse than that. It was… indulgent. Stupid and reckless. The exact thing I don’t allow myself to be. The exact thing I can’t afford to be right now.
After driving around aimlessly for who knows how long? The sun is fighting to come up by the time I pull into the grocery store lot—because I can’t go home like this—I’m unsettled. I need something normal. Ordinary and routine. Something that doesn’t feel like Xavier’s skin on mine.
The cold air bites my face when I step out of the car. Good. I deserve the sting. I walk inside. Fluorescent lights, the hum of freezers, the early morning crowd before work… It’s all painfully normal. All fine. Except I’m not fine.
I head straight for the drinks aisle because grabbing a protein shake is muscle memory, the closest thing to grounding I have. I grab the bottle, my hands still shaking.
“Jesus, Artemis, who died?”
I freeze. My stomach swoops like I’ve been caught doing something I shouldn’t even though there’s no way anyone could know what I did.
My best friend, Scott, stands at the end of the aisle, a basket of ramen, Twizzlers undoubtedly for my sister, and energy drinks in hand, looking at me like I’m a bomb he’s debating poking with a stick. Or running from.
“What? Nothing. No one. Why?” Smooth, man. Real smooth.
His eyes narrow as my best friend inches toward me. “Uh-huh. And I’m the Queen of Sweden.”
“Okay, Ares.” I turn away, wincing at the snipe though there are worse things I can call my best friend than my youngest brother. “I’m fine.”
He dodges an elderly couple manoeuvring a cart with a squeaky wheel.
“Sure you are.” He falls into step beside me like he’s used to chasing me down.
“So. Who pissed in your cereal? Or was it sex? It looks like sex.” He reaches a hand to my hair and gives my loose, shaggy locks a ruffle with his splayed palm.
My whole body locks up. Heat flashes up my neck.
He notices. Of course he does. “Oh shit. It was sex.”
I slow my breathing, scrambling with both hands to find some of the composure I’m renowned for, but it’s nowhere to be found. “It wasn’t anything.” I grit the words out around my tightening throat. Because it might have been everything.
Scott whistles low. “You haven’t had that particular brand of post-coital trauma face since—”
“Don’t.”
“Nah, Claudia didn’t even leave you looking like this, man.” He’s not scared of me, and he’s not pushing to be a dick, it’s because he cares. That almost makes it worse. I’d rather he rib me over getting laid because it’s what we do, not because he’s concerned.
Not to mention, Claudia was just messy. This is catastrophic.
We stand in front of the refrigerated section. My reflection in the glass looks… wrong. Face too flushed, eyes too bright, and my mouth swollen. I look like someone who’s been kissed within an inch of their sanity.
Not wrong. I look ruined. I think I am. Worse still—I look satisfied. I most definitely am.
Scott bumps my shoulder. “You want to talk about it?”
“No.”
“You need to?”
Absolutely not. Yes. I don’t know. Do I? Shit. I might. I rub the back of my neck which prompts a nod from my best friend.
I exhale through my teeth. “I shouldn’t have done it.”
Scott lifts a brow. “Did you hurt someone?”
“No.”
“Did someone hurt you?”
“No.”
“Then what’s the issue?” Sometimes I wish things could be as simple as Scott makes them out to be.
My throat tightens. I look away. “I wasn’t supposed to want it.”
Scott stares. Genuinely stunned. “Oh. Oh—shit. You didn’t?”
I blink.
“It was him, wasn’t it?” His jaw drops. “You slept with the enemy.” His dramatic whisper is designed to make me laugh, or at least smile, but my stomach sinks even lower because he’s not wrong.
My silence answers.
He lets out a long sigh. It’s not judgy. It’s concerned. Gentle. Too goddamn gentle. I hate fucking gentle. I don’t know what to do with it. It pokes at places I keep locked down. Places that don’t feel quite so locked down right now.
“Well.” Scott’s voice is low. “Not going to say I told you so.” He steps back when my head snaps up. “But I’m still not on board with this, Cap.”
It’s weird hearing him call me Cap when we all called Apollo that for so long first. But not as weird as not having my best friend’s support over something that could well be important to me.
“I don’t think he’s good for you. He’s after something.
He’s a trickster, Artemis, he can’t be trusted.
I know we’re grown adults, and we make our own decisions…
” He doesn’t need to say anymore, that judgment that was missing is now hanging between us like a friggin’ monster ready to claw my eyes out.
“I know what you think.” I snap at my best friend. I swallow. “It doesn’t matter.” If I let it matter, I won’t recover.
Scott studies me like he’s trying to read a language he’s never seen before. “Artemis… do you actually like him?”
The world slants. I put the protein shake back with so much force it almost bursts. “I’m going home.”
“Artemis—”
“I said I’m fine.” I walk away before he can follow, before he can look at me like he sees something I don’t want him to see, something I don’t want anyone to see, even me.
I make it to the car. Sit. Grip the wheel again. My hands still tremble. Xavier’s voice ghosts through my head—laughing, teasing, and warm. I close my eyes.
It can’t happen again. It already has too much power over me. It already hurts. And yet… all I want is to turn the car back onto the interstate and drive back to the man whose ass I filled only hours ago. To say sorry, tell him I’m a fucking mess, and I want to try again.
The thing that stops me is that he deserves more, more than I have time to give him, more than I’m ready to give anyone, just… more than me.
I’ve never been enough, always the spare, the second place, the runner up… but with him? Failure feels more inevitable than usual.
And to punish myself just a little more, I order a cinnamon maple latte and go home.
Until Xavier crashed into my life, I was a clean eating, lean protein consuming athlete.
I wonder what’s turned me into a candy-obsessed preteen like my older sister?
No amount of sugar can’t touch this ache in my chest, but it’s the only comfort I’ll allow myself because I can outrun the calories on the ice.