Chapter Thirty-Five Ares
Chapter Thirty-Five
Ares
Ares really needed to take more care with Julia’s mortal body.
He shouldn’t have challenged her to run into the river, not when it was so close to freezing.
Once he’d seen her shivering, he’d hurried to heat the water surrounding them.
It was minor magic, a power he’d used countless times before to wash wounds or sterilize water for drinking.
This was by far the most enjoyable use he’d ever found for it.
Still, he shouldn’t have put Julia in that position.
Of all the gods, Ares was the most painfully familiar with the fragility of human life (except, of course, for Hades), because Ares’s followers were constantly dying.
That was the inherent risk that came with testing your own mortality.
The humans who lived by Ares’s values were always jumping out of airplanes, racing cars at top speed, climbing mountains that humans were never meant to scale.
And they often paid for it with their lives.
It was easy to forget that Julia was as mortal as the rest of them.
She was so brave, as brave as Ares sounded in all the myths humans told about him.
In the past months alone, he’d seen her talk back to Hera and stare down an ex-boyfriend who had betrayed her in the most despicable way.
She had faced her own death on a climbing wall and hadn’t even screamed; she’d just closed her eyes and focused on staying alive.
He needed to tell her the truth so that they could hurry and deify her. That was the whole reason he’d planned this trip to the Catskills, to reveal who he really was.
It was Athena’s idea, actually. Earlier this week, Ares had called his sister on a predawn run. Athena had always been the easiest family member to talk to, even when she was halfway around the world. When he mentioned that he had yet to tell Julia the truth, Athena clucked at him reprovingly.
“You can’t keep putting this off, Ares. Julia deserves to know before the wedding,” Athena chided him.
Ares suspected his sister was thinking of all the mortal men she’d revealed herself to over the centuries, from Byron to James Joyce to Churchill. Many of whom had referenced her in their writing, if obliquely.
“I know I need to tell her. It’s just…” Ares hesitated before admitting, “I’m afraid.”
Because this was Julia. She was sharp and observant and wry and thoughtful. And beneath it all, vulnerable. Ares couldn’t bear to see her hurt.
Especially when he was the cause of it.
Athena sighed. “Maybe you should take Julia out of the city, away from all of this, so it’s just the two of you. The truth…It’s a lot for a mortal to handle.”
“Our family is a lot to handle.”
“Oh, so you’ve met Mother?” Athena had quipped, and they both laughed.
“This is delicious,” Julia declared, scraping the last bite of scrambled eggs from her plate. She caught Ares’s eye across the campfire and grinned. “I should have known you would cook us breakfast for dinner. I’ve never seen you make anything but eggs or pancakes.”
Ares chuckled. “My culinary talents are not my best quality.”
“Trust me, I’m not complaining,” she assured him. “This is so much better than a gourmet meal at some Upper East Side restaurant.”
He watched as she pushed back the sleeves of his sweatshirt, an old Yankees one that he’d thrown into the backpack at the last minute, which hung too loose over her athletic frame. “Sorry I forgot to pack a sweatshirt for you. That was a complete oversight.”
“As long as you don’t mind, I’m not complaining. I love this sweatshirt.” Julia snuggled deeper into it, smiling. “It’s so soft. You must have worn it and washed it a thousand times.”
It was more vintage than she realized, but Ares didn’t mention that.
His gaze traveled hungrily over Julia—her bright eyes, her hair still damp around her head, her legs in their black spandex tucked against the log where she sat.
Damn if the sight of her in his clothes didn’t spark some primeval territorial impulse.
He wanted to march straight through the fire, which wouldn’t burn him, and take her in his arms.
“Harry…,” she began hesitantly. “I was hoping we could make some changes after we get married.”
Ares’s stomach plummeted. This was the whole reason he’d brought her here, yet he wasn’t ready to talk about his family. Then he would be forced to tell her the truth, to see the expression on her face when she realized just how colossal a secret he’d been keeping.
“If you mean that we should get a dog, I totally agree,” he replied in an attempt to deflect. “But only a proper dog, like a Great Dane or a Bernese mountain dog. None of these tiny breeds that women carry in their purses.”
“I would love a dog,” Julia agreed, smiling. Then she shook her head. “But I was talking about something else. After the wedding, I want to establish a little more space from your family. To set some boundaries.”
“Boundaries?” Ares repeated.
“I can’t be like Valentine and Hector,” Julia said helplessly, “living a few blocks from your parents, always stopping by the penthouse for dinner or brunch. I mean, don’t your brother and your father share a car to work every morning?”
“We live in the West Village,” he protested, still dodging the issue.
Julia sighed. “We’ve seen your parents a lot this year.
I get it, we’re planning a wedding, which they are very generously paying for.
Of course that involves a lot of meetings.
But I’m hoping that once we’re married, we can carve out our own space.
That we won’t become…” She hesitated, searching for the right word.
“Absorbed into their family unit. I want us to build our own lives.”
Smoke curled up from the campfire between them. Ares let out a breath. “I’ll say it again, we can cancel the whole wedding.”
“No, I don’t want to,” Julia assured him. “I just want to make sure that afterward, we are the most important people in each other’s lives. That our family comes first, before anything else.”
Ares braced a hand on the log where he sat, letting the bark dig into his palms. Here he was, worrying about Julia’s physical safety, when she’d been feeling cornered and threatened enough to ask for boundaries.
Of course, it hadn’t been easy on her, learning about his family’s money, realizing the scope of what she was signing on for.
And she didn’t know a fraction of it.
“Julia, you are the most important person in the world to me,” he said softly. “I promise to spend forever proving it to you.”
“Forever is a very long time,” she pointed out.
Here it was, his opening. Ares was supposed to come sit next to her, take her hand, and say, Speaking of forever, there’s something I need to tell you.
He couldn’t form the words.
“Harry,” Julia said softly, “when did you know that you wanted to marry me?”
“The moment we met,” he said easily. “When you kicked my ass at darts.”
She snorted out a breath. “No, really. When did you know?”
This time, Ares paused before replying. “I can’t think of a specific moment. I just remember waking up one day and thinking that…you’re the only person I’ve ever met who makes me want to die.”
“I what?” Julia exclaimed.
He winced. As usual, words were unwieldy and clumsy to him. “You know what I mean….”
Julia stared at him. “No, I really don’t.”
Ares walked around the campfire and went to unzip the door of the tent, which he’d pitched in the clearing behind Julia. This conversation would be easier if they were both lying down, holding each other. If he could feel her heartbeat.
Sensing his intent, she followed him inside and stretched out atop the sleeping bag, then reached for his hand, pulling him toward her.
Gratefully, Ares lay down next to Julia. Their bodies fit so perfectly together, her back against his chest, his arm thrown over her like a shield. If only he could protect her from everything.
“You make me want to live every moment to the fullest,” Ares said slowly.
“You make me want to see everything there is to see, all the nature and wildness and even the art in the world—to be greedy with life, drinking it in. I used to skate along the surface of things, cutting corners. And now I realize that I wasn’t trying to get away from anything, I was trying to find my way to you.
” He heard her draw in a breath at that, and kissed her.
“You make me want to live, and then you make me want to grow old together, and die together.”
“Oh, Harry,” Julia breathed, and Ares knew that for once, he’d said the right thing. “I love you.”
She rolled over and nestled closer against him, tucking her head onto his chest. Ares felt his breathing quicken. He couldn’t keep putting off this conversation.
“Julia,” he began nervously.
“Hmm?”
“Remember how I said that there were things I hadn’t told you? Well, it’s about my family.”
Julia shifted contentedly in his arms, which he took as a sign to continue.
“Actually…we aren’t ordinary. It’s not just the money, it’s…we’re…”
Suddenly Ares regretted coming into the tent, starting this conversation in the hushed darkness atop the sleeping bag. He wanted to see the expression on Julia’s face as he spoke his next words.
“We are gods,” he told her. “My name isn’t Harry. It’s Ares.”
He waited, his entire body coiled with tension. Julia said nothing.
Shit. She must have been livid, or heartbroken, her mind racing with a thousand questions. He wondered if she was thinking of all the Greek artwork she’d studied in college, art that depicted him. Or maybe she thought he’d lost his mind.
“I’m sorry,” he went on. “I really wanted to tell you. I’ve just been trying to find the right time.”
It was another few seconds before Ares lifted himself onto one elbow to look at her face.
Julia was asleep. She hadn’t heard a word he’d said.
Ares sighed and lay back down, settling his arm over her slumbering form. After all the wedding planning these past months, after that hike, after the pleasure he’d wrung from her body in the river…it was no surprise she couldn’t keep her eyes open.
He could tell her in the morning, of course. He should tell her in the morning. But a part of Ares already knew he wouldn’t.
Deep down, he was relieved that Julia hadn’t heard his confession. That he got to stay with her here, in this temporary bubble of happiness, for a little longer.
When she learned the scale of what Ares had kept from her, she would feel angry, and rightfully so. Or worse, she would feel heartbroken.
The other gods would laugh if they knew. To think that Ares—the great stormer of walls, breaker of weapons, besieger of cities—was a coward about this one thing. A conversation with a mortal woman.