Chapter Twenty-Seven #2
We always had steak. Helios kept the freezer stocked, and he made me go shopping with him once a week to the busiest grocery store in our area, which was the one I hated the most. “We do.”
“Great.” He deposited me in the kitchen before turning toward the hall and raising his voice. “Ares! You’re fucking grilling tonight!”
My eyes welled—with relief, with gratitude, with emotions so stacked that I didn’t know how to balance them all—and I took a deep breath.
“Copy,” Ares called out from the bedroom he rarely slept in anymore. “Showering first.”
Helios glanced back and immediately zeroed in on my eyes. “No more tears, Haven.” He winked, but he didn’t smile. “Living, remember?”
“Living,” I agreed.
He tipped his chin, then disappeared into his bedroom.
I fussed over Helios’s stitches that he’d said were too tight, but there was nothing I could do except change his bandage. Then I’d curled up with a book in the big lounge chair in his room as he got ready for bed.
Same as he always did, he first unholstered the gun that he carried everywhere, even in the house.
Then he unceremoniously dumped a cell phone that looked new, his wallet, and the original key to the house that Ghost had given him all those years ago.
Taking off the sling, he reached over his shoulder to remove his shirt one-handed.
“Don’t need a fucking babysitter, woman. ”
“I know.” It was hard to resist watching him as he got into bed shirtless, but I didn’t look up from my book.
“How long you gonna sit there?”
I ignored his grumpy tone. “Until you fall asleep.”
A grunt his only response, I could tell he was hurting, but he’d never admit to it. He’d also never take pain medication. So I didn’t say anything, and neither did he.
A few minutes later, he adjusted his position and threw his good arm over his face. A mere minute after that, his breathing became long and steady.
Closing my book, I watched him for half an hour before Ares appeared in the doorway fully dressed and raised an eyebrow.
I nodded once, then turned out the light and walked out of Helios’s bedroom as quietly as possible.
Ares was waiting in the hall. A few feet from Helios’s door, he spoke even quieter than he usually did. “Are you okay?”
I didn’t know what I was. In shock? Relieved? Not fully trusting something I didn’t know any details of? “I’m good.”
Ares placed a calming hand on my shoulder. “It’s all right if you’re not.”
I sagged under the weight of his silent compassion, and he immediately stepped forward. In a ritual that had become ours alone, I leaned my forehead into Ares’s chest while he stood steady, allowing me the comfort of his quiet strength.
Years ago, Ares used to wrap his arms around me.
Now it was rare if he did. I never asked why.
I didn’t ask Ares a lot of things because the relationship between us had shifted so much over the years, and the closeness we once had was now more rote than communication.
But most of all, I didn’t ask because I was afraid if I pushed, Ares would just stop coming to the house.
Or worse, stop making time for me at all.
Waiting with his arms at his sides, leaning in just enough to let me know that he was both present and giving me his new brand of comfort, I took what Ares was offering.
Then I told him my fears. “I felt that something was wrong. I was worried neither of you were coming home.”
“I’m sorry.”
Taking a deep breath before I leaned back, I nodded. “I know you are.” I looked up into his eyes, but I couldn’t read Ares anymore. Maybe I’d never been able to. “You’re leaving?”
“Yes.”
I didn’t ask where. “Are you okay? From… everything?”
“You don’t need to worry about me, Feralyn.”
“I always worry about you.” It was ingrained. He may not be my brother by blood, but he was in my heart. Which was a distinctively different feeling than how I felt about Helios.
“Get some sleep tonight.” Reaching out, he gently ran a finger under one of my eyes. “You need it.”
“I could say the same about you.”
“But you won’t.”
I sighed. “You’re right. I won’t.” I was too afraid of pushing him away, and we’d had a good dinner tonight, the three of us.
It’d been a while since that had happened, and as soon as I thought about it, I realized Ares had intentionally stayed for dinner tonight.
Which suddenly made me worried. “Are you coming back?” I didn’t just mean later.
With the same slight upward tilt of half of his mouth that mirrored his brother’s expression, Ares smiled, but the effect was entirely different on him.
Making him look more handsome, more approachable, and less like a lethal operator, it almost softened his expression.
Whereas Helios’s smile made him look like he was up to no good. “Don’t I always?”
“You do.” I didn’t return his smile. “Please remember that.”
He tipped his chin, same as how Helios tipped his, but again, it looked different on Ares. “Message received.”
“Thank you.” I took a risk and threw my arms around him. “I love you.”
This time, he gave me one arm. With a quick, hard embrace, Ares hugged me back. “Love you too.” Releasing me, he nodded toward my room. “Get some sleep. Helios will be fine.”
“And you?”
“I’m good.” He kissed my forehead once, then walked around me and aimed for the garage.
“Good night, Ares,” I whispered.
“Good night, Feralyn.” He disappeared around the corner.
A moment later, I heard the garage door go up, go down, then the distinctive sound of a Ducati engine before it quickly faded away.
I glanced into Helios’s room, but he was still asleep, so I went to the living room. Turning on the TV, I flipped to a national news station.
I watched for an hour, but there was nothing.
Some gas explosion in Venezuela. A Navy SEAL operation near Sudan.
Politicians being politicians. Taxes, the economy, oil prices.
There was no mention of anything remotely close to what Helios had said.
I hadn’t expected there to be, but I selfishly wanted to hear it.
I believed Helios with every fiber of my being. He was my being. My world had become irretrievably linked to his presence, no matter how much I wanted to deny it.
My heart beat for him.
But I could never, ever tell him that.
I turned the TV off, then I did the most selfish thing I could do. I went back to Helios’s bedroom, tiptoed in, and as slowly and gently as possible, I crawled into his bed.
“Christ, Haven,” he murmured. “You’re about as quiet as the reverse thrust on a C-17 short field landing.” He held out his good arm. “Come here.”
“That’s insulting.” Snuggling into his side, I rested my head on his bicep and inhaled.
“That’s teasing,” he corrected, pulling me in closer. “You don’t have to fucking sneak around me. You also don’t have to whisper in the hall with Ares.”
He’d heard us? “You were asleep.”
“I never sleep on the job.”
“You’re not on the job.” He was thankfully here, in a house that had never felt like mine, but it did feel like ours—mine and his.
Picking his head up so he could look pointedly at me, his intense gaze cut right to my soul. “Woman, I’m never not on the job with you.”
I dared to speak a truth that toed the line of being too close to everything I never said because I couldn’t. “I don’t want to be your work.”
“Good.” He held my gaze. Then he carved into my chest and gripped my heart. “Because you’re my fucking haven.” Leaning his head back, he closed his eyes. “Now go to sleep.”
Warmth bloomed through my entire body. “So you can sleep?”
“Exactly.”
I smiled.
“I heard that.”
“I didn’t say anything.” I was still smiling.
“Didn’t have to. You’re giving me that shy-as-hell closed-lip smile.”
How did he know? “You’re not even looking at me.”
“Don’t need to see you to fucking feel you, woman.” He drew in a deep breath. “But under the same roof, hearing your breathing?” He exhaled. “Yeah. Needed this.”
I needed and felt him too. His body heat, his heartbeat, the solid mass of his muscles. “I’m glad you’re home.”
For a long moment, he didn’t reply. Then his voice was so low, it was almost all vibration and no tenor. “You’re safe now, Feralyn.”
My heart flatlined, and suddenly it was harder than it’d ever been to suppress three words I desperately wanted to say to him that had nowhere near the same meaning as when I’d spoken them to his brother.
Instead, even though it broke his earlier edict, I said the only thing I could. “Thank you.”
“Sleep, woman.”
I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply. Soap, fresh laundry, the heated musk that was distinctly Helios. I was home.
And I was safe…. All but my heart.