Chapter Four #4
‘What are you doing?’ Her voice came out louder than she expected. His head snapped towards her in the half-light.
‘I thought you were asleep.’
‘I was.’ She slid the door open. ‘I don’t know how. Did you get any sleep?’
But even before he shook his head, she knew that he hadn’t. ‘No.’ The word moved between them like a stone skipping across water. ‘I don’t sleep much anyway.’
She had seen him in the middle of a spiralling, terror-inducing chaos when the helicopter had felt like an atom about to split. His voice had been calm, his hands steady, even as the world fell away beneath them. Now he sounded strained.
She glanced through the window, her throat tightening. ‘Is there something out there? Is that why you’re worried?’
‘Who says I’m worried?’ As he shifted in his seat, the pale light threw his features into relief, turning his face into a masterclass of light and shade.
‘Tense, then. You seemed so calm before.’
‘I told you. I had training.’
‘For loading a rifle. Not a helicopter crashing.’
‘Not specifically, no. But the army make you take part in exercises and drills to get you ready for a situation where there’s a lot going on.
Mostly it’s combat-based, but there’s also training for emergency situations.
Like forest fires. You’re taught not to panic.
To take yourself out of the chaos and stay calm. ’
‘And you did both of those things,’ she said slowly. Was he worried he hadn’t?
Some of the tension in his shoulders seemed to soften fractionally. ‘I know, but this, now—’ he gestured towards the stillness inside the cabin ‘—this is when you have time to think about all the things that could have gone wrong. All the decisions you made. All the decisions you should have made.’
He looked young suddenly, and she realised that he was young to have achieved everything in his life.
Realised too, that his competence and certainty were almost entirely born out of necessity.
But here in this half-light, she could see the twelve-year-old boy who had lost everything steady in his world.
She took a breath. It would be easy to let Antaeus feel responsible. To tell herself that he deserved to feel that way.
But easy would mean being like her father.
Henry was an expert at slipping through the cracks like quicksilver, if quicksilver was gold-coloured.
He’d had no qualms about lying to someone’s face, and most people were so dazzled, so flattered to be the object of his dancing blue gaze that they failed to notice the lie.
She knew, because until the age of fourteen, she had been just as inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Despite his tantrums at home, she had been proud of her handsome father.
Been proud of his popularity, proud when people said how alike they were.
And then that day in Tribeca, she had seen him getting out of a taxi with that young, dazzled woman.
For hours after, she had walked and kept walking.
Finally, still reeling with shock, she had gone home determined to confront him.
But when her mom had asked her if she’d had a lovely brunch with her father, she had covered for him.
And in that moment of pain and shame, she realised not only that she wasn’t like him, but that Henry had used her, used his relationship with her, just like he used everyone else.
Her chest tightened suddenly with panic that something of what she was thinking might be visible on her face.
The last thing she needed was for Antaeus to be reminded of Henry’s duplicity and to have to watch his whole demeanor change and harden like the surface of a lake freezing over.
She took a step forward. ‘But nothing went wrong. Aside from a huge, terrifying storm appearing out of nowhere.’ She hesitated. ‘And that wasn’t your fault. You might act like Zeus, but I know you don’t control the weather.’
There was a muscle pulsing in his jaw. ‘I wouldn’t put you in harm’s way.’
‘I know.’ She spoke automatically, but even as she said the words, she knew they were true.
He made her angry, and he’d definitely made her anxious about her staff and the future.
He was edgy and autocratic and intense and more intensely male than any man she had ever met.
And yes, there was that whole prisoner thing.
But for all his talk of punishment, what he wanted was to fix the past, not hurt her.
‘You should get some more sleep—’ He got to his feet.
‘No, you should.’ She stepped towards him again, then stopped.
They were close now. Not touching, but close enough to touch, and the cockpit felt smaller.
Warmer.
The air thrummed with an energy that was different from the energy on the other side of the glass. It felt like an unspoken question that neither of them wanted to ask but both needed to be answered. Behind him, the console lights flashed as though in warning, and she was shivering again.
He noticed. Only this time he said nothing. He just reached out and took her hand. A jolt, a current, ran between them. It stung, but he didn’t pull away, and neither did she.