Chapter Nineteen
Oh shit, this is worse than I thought. How the hell am I going to dig myself out of this fucking hole? Ares expected Marty to be feeling a bit deflated. He felt much the same way, and he’d been the one who created the mess in the first place. Ares had even expected Marty to show signs he’d been crying – which he clearly had been. If Marty had spoken to him the same way Ares had, casually reduced their relationship to nothing, Ares probably would have cried as well, although not where anybody could see him. Ares was fairly sure he’d never cried, but he felt that he might do, if Marty turned on him like that.
But it hadn’t been Marty who’d been so cruel. It was Marty who’d been affected by what Ares had said. The sight of Marty curled up on the couch, cuddling a cushion, looking like his whole world had collapsed, was kind of what Ares expected. What he didn’t expect to see was the slice of three-tier chocolate cake on a plate on the coffee table with just one bite taken out of it. That one solitary bite from a pristine slice hit Ares harder than anything ever could.
Marty would never turn down anything sweet, even if it meant every one of his teeth would rot and fall out. Marty adored sweet foods with a passion, and to see that…to know that his little mate was so upset that he couldn’t even eat cake…Ares was suddenly hit with a lead ball in his stomach. What if this can’t be fixed?
“I’m guessing I fucked up in a major way,” he said, letting himself into the pool house, noting how every curtain and blind were drawn. It gave the small house a depressive air. Ares really wanted to take Marty back to the main house, but he couldn’t assume Marty was keen to go. Especially when Marty didn’t even jump up and hug him the way he always did, even if Ares had spent longer in the bathroom than usual.
Marty just looked at him, then went back to staring at the fire. “I don’t know what you expect me to say,” Marty said.
“You could yell at me,” Ares suggested. “Tell me how much of an asshole I was back at the house.”
He was well used to having people yell at him. He was sure he could handle it for Marty, for a short while, if it meant that his little mate got all his upset out of his system and into the open. Then they could work on the forgiveness side of things and Ares would work on not being such a dickhead the next time he put his foot in his mouth, or more to the point, took his foot out, letting shit come out that should never have been said.
“I just don’t understand what happened,” Marty said. “I’m thinking and thinking, and I don’t understand. The only thing I can think is that you’re not proud of me.”
Ares, who had been about to sit on the couch, had to stop and consider that. He perched himself on the edge, seeing as hovering above it was just going to make him look more of an idiot than he already felt. “I never questioned whether I am proud of you or not. It’s not something I’ve ever considered.”
Marty just stared at the fire.
“I only told Athena you were a visitor because I didn’t want her to know how special you are to me.”
“So that’s how it’s going to be? If any member of your family comes around, I’ve got a slink off like a raccoon caught among the trashcans and pretend I live somewhere else? No, that’s not going to happen.” Marty went back to staring at the flames. “I’m not living like that.”
Panic started creeping from Ares’ guts, moving into his lungs and spreading fast. Marty was always the happy one, always the one who could make everything right. But this time, it didn’t seem like he even wanted to try. “Look, I know I did the wrong thing by saying that you were just a friend. But you have to believe me. I was genuinely trying to protect you. The gods are so snotty about mortal mates.”
Marty flicked his eyes to the ceiling and Ares got the impression he was talking to his raccoon side. Then Marty said flatly, “You’re making a generalization that’s not true. You said yourself that Zeus has a mortal mate, Hades has a mortal mate, and Poseidon has a mortal mate. My raccoon tells me there are other gods from other Pantheons who have mortal mates. That doesn’t sound like they’re snotty about mortals at all.”
“Yes, that’s true, but that’s not all of them.” The panic was making it impossible for Ares to think now. He realized in that moment he had expected Marty to make things right, for Marty to want to fix things between them, but clearly the hurt Ares had caused had struck far deeper than he’d originally thought. “Tell me what’s upsetting you exactly,” he said, trying not to let that panic seep into his voice. “Tell me, and I’ll do my best not to do it again.”
“It wasn’t just that you said I was a visitor in a house I thought we shared together.” Marty finally looked at him. His eyes were flashing, and Ares could see his raccoon behind them. “I wouldn’t have even minded the deception so much if you’d warned me beforehand that I was never going to meet any members of your family.
“That’s fine. I mean it. That’s absolutely fine. I never wanted you to meet any of mine, either. I haven’t had anything to do with my family for the longest time, since I was a youngster, because they’re all horrible thieves, and they would see you as an easy mark and steal from you for the rest of our existence, and I didn’t want that for you.
“But you never told me that there was family that still visited you. You never said anything about family that was still talking to you. You made it sound like your family was the same as my family. That they were horrible people who didn’t want to be around you, so they never visited you.
“I understood that. I thought we were in a bubble of you and me, and yes, that’s probably silly of me, but I liked having that bubble of you and me. But then that person comes – Athena, who apparently is your sister – and I didn’t even get the option of getting to know her. You didn’t tell me who she was. No, all you said is that’s just Marty. He’s just visiting.
“A visitor - when I believed we were living together as mates. I’ve been living in that house for three weeks. In that one moment, you took away the security of my home as well. You showed me you weren’t proud of me. You dismissed me as if I was the scruffy urchin that Athena said I was. That’s just not fair.”
Marty looked down at the cushion he was holding. “It’s not fair, and I don’t understand, and I don’t like that big house and I’m not going to go there anymore. If you want to see me, you’re going to have to come here because you told me this was my house. You’re not going to take that away, too, are you?”
“No, I would never do that. Marty, mate, we share half of everything. I told you that when we claimed each other. Half that big house is yours, too.” Ares hadn’t even considered that Marty would feel insecure about the house as well. That’s probably because you’ve never been without a home. You dick!
“Yeah, well sharing half of everything includes snotty family members. What did you think was going to happen if you told that woman that I was your mate? Was she going to blast me off the face of the Earth? Was she going to blow me into a million pieces? What would be so bad if she knew?”
Ares shook his head. “No, Athena doesn’t have to fight with weapons. She’s got a sharp enough tongue as it is.”
“So what? Was she going to talk me to death? Or is this another example of you thinking that people were going to hurt me by the things that they say? The only person who hurt me today was you. You didn’t even catch me.” Marty’s voice caught on a sob and Ares felt his hope of being forgiven slipping away.
“You were the one who told me you didn’t want me sliding down the banister on my own. You told me that you wanted to be there at the bottom to catch me. I yelled at you that I was coming. You didn’t yell for me to stop. You didn’t tell me we had company. I didn’t even know she was there until I was halfway down that banister and then I did fall – something I hadn’t done before. And that was the one time you weren’t there to catch me. As my mate, you told me that’s what you wanted to do, and then you didn’t do it. You let me down.”
Ares wanted to hug Marty so bad he ached with it, but he hesitated, unsure if his touch would be welcome. The problem was he really hadn’t had the time to let Marty know Athena was coming. He felt the tingle letting him know a god was coming through his wards just as he was getting ready to catch his mate – as Marty had expected him to.
When the tingle came, Ares’ mind had gone blank. He’d panicked then as well, his only thought was to get rid of Athena in the time it took for Marty to get down the banister. In hindsight, that was a stupid hope because Athena would never have visited without an agenda, as she’d proven, but none of that excused what he’d done to Marty. “I’ll introduce you to my family if that’s what you want,” he said.
“I don’t care about meeting your family,” Marty said. “I hate that they hurt you and hated you and apparently you hate them back and that’s all fine because we don’t have to have anything to do with them. I totally respect that because I don’t want anything to do with my family, either.
“I truly believed that was something we had in common, another point that proved we were perfect for each other. Just you and me against the world. Woohoo! That’s what I thought. I thought I had a mate I could trust to catch me. I thought I had a mate who was proud of me. I thought I had a mate who thought it was fun to be with me.
“But now I’m thinking about it, and I’m not so sure. I don’t have strawberries anymore. I never got that phone. You don’t play on the scooters with me anymore, either. All you want to do is have sex, read your books, and eat, and while I love doing those things, what happened to us going out to clubs and pubs and wherever else it was you said you wanted to take me?
“Surfing.” Marty pointed his finger at Ares. “That’s what it was. You said you would take me surfing, but you’ve done none of those things. How can I believe that you’re happy to be with me, when the moment we come across someone else, I’m suddenly a friend who’s just visiting?”
“We can go surfing.” Ares had totally forgotten he’d even mentioned it. “We can go right now if you want.”
“Why, if I’m just going to be your friend who has to disappear anytime you meet someone you know. Remember, you said you couldn’t wear ragged clothing like I had when we met, even though I wouldn’t have cared, because you wanted to take me to nice places? But all we’ve done is stay in that house. I love being with you, that’s not the problem at all, but now when I look back on it, I realize you never wanted to take me out because you didn’t want to be seen out with me.
“Didn’t you trust me?” Marty was on a roll, and Ares hated what he was hearing because it was all true. “Did you think I didn’t know how to behave in public? Or were you just ashamed to be seen with me? You know, maybe back when we bought those scooters, it wasn’t that you were upset because that man thought that you were my sugar daddy, and you thought that might upset me.
“You said you didn’t want people to hurt me. But maybe all along, it’s that you didn’t want them hurting you, and that maybe you felt insulted because that’s what that man thought - that I was the best you could do, and he thought he was a better fit for you. I don’t know anymore.”
Staring back off into the fire again, Marty said, “I think that’s one of the things that hurts me most, apart from the fact that I have a headache because my mate didn’t catch me, but also that you’ve never even given me a chance to show that I can be the mate that you deserve. You’ve never wanted to take me out. You’ve never said anything about it since that first day.
“And then dismissing me as a friend so quickly, the moment somebody from your past zaps into your life, apparently, all of a sudden I’m nothing. That’s telling me I’m not important to you. What’s worse, is that you think you can say things like that, and dismiss me so rudely, and then expect me to make this right, for you.”
“It was one statement, made in a thoughtless moment,” Ares said, his words and tone sounding as bleak as he felt. “I just wasn’t thinking. I didn’t realize until you went out the door, how badly I’d hurt you. I was horrified when you fell, but I knew that if I showed you one ounce of kindness, one ounce of affection, then Athena would use that against me.”
“Why does everything have to be about you?” Marty yelled. “What about the hurt you caused me? Is that okay, just so that Athena doesn’t get her hooks into me for whatever reason? For goodness’ sake, Ares, people say bad things. They think they’re being clever, but they’re not. When people say bad things, especially when they say them to your face, they are simply showing you who they are. Those words have nothing to do with who you are inside.
“I thought we’d solved this problem. I thought that was enough – that I was enough. Are you telling me now that I’m not? Are you telling me that you want to go back to your godly realm, where everyone looks amazing and has nothing else to do with scruffy urchins like me? Is that what you want?”
“NO!” Ares exploded, his fear shooting up like a volcano, his yell bouncing off the walls in the little cottage. “No, gods, please no. If you left me now, I would cease to exist, I would wither away and die. Even though gods are not supposed to be able to do that, I would plead with the Fates to take me out of the weave. I could not live without you, don’t you understand? With all the hate there is in the world, you’re the one bright light of sunshine in my life – the only wonderful reason for living I have. To lose you would be to lose everything. I couldn’t go on. I couldn’t live without you by my side.”
To Ares’ shock, tears started to fall down his face. “By the Fates, I’ve never cried before, I’m sure I haven’t. Not even when Aphrodite dumped me and my father told me he hated me. Not even the countless times my mother cursed my name. But for you, the tears fall – I don’t know how to stop them. That’s what you mean to me.” Ares quickly covered his face with his hands and sobbed as if his heart was broken because, in that moment, it truly felt as if it was.