Chapter Twenty-Two
Olympia
Daylight was not my usual operating hours but, since Milo was convinced his precious witnesses were just as likely to get a knife in the ribs in the middle of the afternoon as they were after dark, here I was.
I watched the shift change from the shadows of the entrance to a Third Ring carpentry shop.
It so happened to be directly across the ring from Adrian Bexley’s former apartment.
I’d dressed in my oldest clothes, a charcoal sweater that slouched at my shoulders and a pair of nondescript black jeans.
I’d done everything I could to blend in on the Third, but they still knew.
Young men and women passed by in groups on their way up to the Second or into various shops here on the Third.
They all glanced my way and fell to whispers as they went.
The old man in the carpentry shop kept inching closer to his own door, glaring at me beneath bushy eyebrows as if I were costing him business.
A woman in an apartment next to Adrian’s had been sweeping the same spot on her porch for twenty minutes now.
Rolling my eyes and sighing, I pushed off of the wall just as Harrison exited the apartment building across the street. He glanced around once before he spotted me, rolled his eyes, and walked off in the opposite direction. I wasted no time following him.
This had been our routine for the last week.
Ever since Milo had heard what had been found in that burned down house on the Second and reasoned out exactly what I’d had to do with it, he’d been on my ass about this little protection detail.
Since I outright refused to inform my cousin about the incident which had occurred between his witness and myself, I had no choice but to suck it up and follow Harrison around his ring day in and day out.
For the first two days, I’d managed to remain unseen, following him from the shadows, around corners, and even on rooftops on occasion.
But then I’d grown tired of the sneaking and, frankly, bored.
So I’d waited until he vanished inside the apartment building I knew his brother lived in, the one he shared with that girl Adrian had always hung around with.
I’d positioned myself in front of the door so he would see me but far enough away that he wouldn’t expect interaction.
Harrison had come out of that apartment a few hours later and froze on the spot. But, when I’d made no move to intercept him, he’d scoffed and walked away. He figured out quickly enough why I was here once I started following, hands in my pockets and keeping a safe distance.
For the most part, he’d ignored me. He simply went about his daily life, glancing my way from time to time and becoming increasingly annoyed every time he looked up to find me there, but he never said anything.
That was why I was so surprised when he halted, halfway down the street, and whirled around.
A few long strides had him nearly face to face with me.
“Are you avoiding me because of who I am or because of who you are?” he snapped, not bothering to keep his voice down.
I turned to the gaggle of teenage girls gaping at us from a bench outside of a nearby apartment building. They looked away as soon as I caught them staring but that didn’t keep them from eavesdropping. I grabbed Harrison’s arm and pulled him into an alley between two old shops.
“I’ve been following you for a week,” I grumbled, releasing him once I was certain we were alone. “I’d hardly call that avoiding you.”
“Olympia.”
His eyes tightened when I met his gaze.
“It was a mistake,” I said.
“Didn’t seem like you felt that way at the time,” he argued, crossing his arms and leaning back against the wall behind him. His eyes roved over me in a way that made me hyper aware of the space between us, the clothes burning against my skin.
“You and I cannot happen. I had a momentary lapse in judgement. I won’t again.”
“I don’t play games, beautiful. I say what I mean and I stick to what I say so let me make this perfectly clear to you.”
His gaze darkened as he leaned toward me. He placed one hand against the wall at my back and leaned over me until he was looking down into my eyes. He let his gaze linger just long enough to make me uncomfortable before he continued in a voice that was rougher than it had been before.
“I want you,” he started. “I knew it from the moment I saw you dangling out the window in my apartment. Whether you’re First Ring or Deck doesn’t mean shit to me.
My intention is to have you in my bed, as often as I can, until we either make or break each other.
And should I go to my own destruction, I will do so knowing it was my choice, you were my choice. Not theirs.”
I couldn’t speak. I didn’t trust myself to open my mouth and move my lips so close to this man. He seemed to sense how quickly the hold I had over myself was coming apart and a corner of his lips twisted into a smirk.
I panicked.
My whole life had been a fight for control but holding onto it was like gripping rope that kept slipping out of my hands.
I thought I had a partner in Dante but the trials ripped him from me.
I thought I had a future with Luca but fate drove him toward another.
I thought I had a place in my House but my grandmother pulled me in another direction.
I’d never made a single decision in my entire life that could be called mine.
Even burning down that damn rebel’s hideaway had been something I knew I had to do for my family, for my House, and for Sanctuary.
Having no control over my own life had always been my biggest weakness. Until him.
Now he was asking me to take that elusive control I’d never been able to grab onto before. He was asking me to choose him, above all else, to choose weakness. The concept was so foreign to me I was shaking my head before I realized what I was doing, what I was saying.
Arm dropping back to his side, he took a step away from me, lips pressed tight as he broke eye contact with a heavy sigh.
“Make a choice,” he said. “Decide what you want, beautiful, and who you want to be. It may not always matter what ring you’re on.”
Something flashed in his eyes as he turned and walked away, a spark I’d seen before. It was a dangerous thing that had my heart in my throat as I rushed after him, the last of his words playing over in my mind.
It may not always matter what ring you’re on.
First, the symbol painted on the side of his apartment building, then the rebel sitting at the Bexley’s own table, and now this. One thing was becoming increasingly clear: Harrison knew about the rebellion.
“Don’t say that,” I hissed.
I reached up to grab his shoulder and spun him back around to face me. He was angry when he turned. Those dark eyes locked on mine and held me there as he prowled forward, jaw clenched.
“Why not?” He snapped. “So you and your family can remain up there believing you’re better than us, more deserving than us, more important than us?
So we can preserve some bullshit ecosystem your nonexistent gods created for you?
Fuck that. You know damn well you want me too, Olympia, but you won’t reach out and take me because you’re too scared it would send you down here. And what a life that would be.”
My fists clenched at my sides but I had nowhere to swing them.
He was right. Ultimately, removal from my ring because of a potential association with him was entirely possible.
I never admitted to fearing anything but I did fear that and he knew it.
Somehow, he’d seen past all my bluster and feigned indifference to find the truth buried down deep in my heart.
That there was something between us, that I felt it too, and that I was too afraid of the consequences of getting caught to act on it the way we both wanted to.
At least, not again. Once had been risky enough. But that one time…
“I wouldn’t lose my place, my home,” I said slowly, taking calm, measured breaths before I did, “if Milo blessed us.”
I couldn’t stay away from this man. Fate and duty and whatever else existed out there in the universe kept pushing us together.
We would slip up again, I would slip up.
If he kept looking at me the way he was now, kept dropping his voice to that low timbre every time he spoke to me, kept calling me beautiful and reaching for me whenever we were alone, I didn’t stand a chance.
Obstinance was something I was known for.
There was no one, in all of Sanctuary, as stubborn as me.
But somehow Harrison Fletcher kept sneaking through the cracks of my willpower, kept worming his way into the secret parts of me that weren’t as cold and barren as the rest, kept lighting a fire inside my soul I’d believed long burned to ash.
So if we were going to do this, there was only one right way to go about it.
“Bless us? Is he taking after Cosmo and speaking for the gods now?” Harrison scoffed.
“Milo is the Heir of my House,” I explained. “His word is law to every member of Avus. If he blessed our…relationship before anyone else found out about it, no one, not even Nascha, could remove me from my ring.”
“So this is a relationship.”
He was smiling now. I just glared at him, reeling after some serious emotional whiplash.
“You said you wanted me,” I grumbled.
“I do,” he affirmed.
“This is how you get me. This is the only way.”
“I have to…ask your cousin’s permission to…what? Take you on a proper date?”
“That’s the way it’s supposed to be done.”
“I didn’t take you for the kind of girl to do things the way they’re supposed to be done.”
“This is how I keep my House and you keep your hands, Harrison.”
He looked down at his hands with a lopsided frown. I just pushed past him on my way back to the stairs, already taking deep breaths to calm myself and trying not to think about our new destination or what conversation awaited us when we arrived.
“Now?” he called out behind me.
I twisted to look back over my shoulder, hair sliding down my back as I raised a brow and nodded in reply. Then I turned back and continued my ascent. The sound of Harrison’s footsteps right behind me alerted me to his presence before he spoke.
“I probably shouldn’t mention we already fucked in my apartment then, huh?”
I elbowed him so hard in the gut, he had to stop walking and bend over to catch his breath. Smiling, I made my way up the stairs to the Second Ring.