What if he was for keeping?
For Meg, yes, but also…for me.
“It’s not just me she needs and you know it. Stop being a fucking coward and get in here.”
Now is the time to walk. Meg and I have survived plenty in our decade together, and that history suggests we’ll survive this too. Hercules was only meant to be a temporary fix. Or that was the plan until he burst into our lives and the balance shifted. It’s the one thing I couldn’t have anticipated—his effect on both of us. For the first time in thirty years, I don’t know what the future holds. Not in its entirety. I can’t be sure my plan won’t break us.
I strip slowly, aware of Hercules’s attention on me. A small vain part of me enjoys the way he watches me so closely, but he’s right. This isn’t about me. Or even about us. How can this man come into such a longstanding relationship and see things so clearly? I didn’t plan on that. Perhaps it’s just who he is. He shines a light wherever he goes.
I carefully climb onto the bed on the other side of Meg. She barely shifts as I settle in next to her. She looks younger like this, less world weary with her carefully cultivated mask set down for the moment. It makes me ache. She’s so formidable during her waking hours. She may stand at my side, but she doesn’t need me. Not for protection, not to shore up her defenses, not for a single thing. It’s such an attractive thing in a partner, to know that she can weather any storm and keep the things we value safe in the process. But somewhere along the way, we went from standing side by side to being on either end of a gulf I don’t know how to cross. I’m too old, too set in my ways. I can’t bend for anyone.
Even her.
“She’s worth it.”
For a moment, I think Hercules is pulling thoughts straight from my head, teasing them into existence through sheer force of will. That would be a neat trick, but it’s ultimately impossible. No, this man is simply better at reading people than I anticipated. I shift onto my side so I can see him better, and he mirrors the movement. “Surely your anger at your father doesn’t delve deep enough to sacrifice yourself for it.”
Hercules doesn’t blink at the change in topic. “That’s really not for you to say, is it?”
He has a point, but I don’t like unknown quantities, and this man has proven himself to be one. Since bargaining himself away for Meg, he hasn’t quite done what I expect. I study his face, taking in the strong lines of his jaw and cheekbones, the straight Roman nose, those full lips that save his features from being too harsh. Really though, it’s his eyes that hold a person captive. Contrary to popular belief, not all eyes are the windows to the soul. Too many things can counteract that. Control, fear, a skilled lie. Hercules has none of that. His eyes could drown the unwary.
I don’t look away. “Explain it to me.”
For a moment, I think he might argue, but he glances at Meg and sighs. “My father didn’t stop doing terrible things after he… did what he did to you. I tried to make him pay through the appropriate channels, and it blew up in the face of someone who deserved it the least.”
I could play with this, could tease out his willing victimhood to serve my purposes. But this blasted honesty gets the best of me yet again. “It’s not going to bring him down, little Hercules. I may have had that ability once, but I don’t anymore. I can kill him, but I can’t dismantle his power structure.”
He went pale. “You could kill him.”
“Yes.” No use denying it. It’s what I intend, after all. If he hasn’t seen what I am up to by this point, he’s denser than I could have dreamed. No, that’s not the truth. Hercules is too insightful by half. He just has a pair of rose-tinted glasses that color his experience with the world. Despite being slapped down again and again, they remain intact. It’s the strangest thing.
He shifts a little closer and pulls the covers up when Meg shivers. “Hades.” He gives me a long look. “You didn’t change your name back. You know, in Olympus now, Hades is more bogeyman than real person. I always assumed he was a legend.”
We’re dancing too close to things best left in the past, but the past is here and shining directly in my face. “It’s a legacy role, similar to Zeus. With my son…” Even after all this time, I can barely speak the words. “There is no one to assume the role. It dies with me.”