Reece blinked at Zeus then looked at me and back to him. I watched his Adam’s apple work as he swallowed painfully and said, “Yeah, Mr. Garro. Understood.”
Zeus nodded curtly then turned on his heel and stormed out of the house. I noticed vaguely that there were no more teenage partygoers. Instead, leather-clad bikers appeared through the open doorway to the kitchen laughing and drinking leftover booze.
“You kicked everyone out?” I asked weakly, safe but curious in his arms.
“Shut the fuck up,” he ordered without looking down at me as we stepped through the front door and made it to his huge motorcycle.
Maneuvering me in his arms so that I was wrapped around his front like a koala bear, he reached for the helmet strapped to the back seat of the bike and plunked it on my head, clipping it closed with one hand. He stared at me with dark, angry eyes for a second before he swung us both over the bike and let go of me to put his hands on the bars.
“Hold on tight and don’t fuckin’ throw up on my bike,” he demanded.
I swallowed and closed my eyes against the misery of my pounding head, twisting stomach and wounded pride. I closed my eyes, held on tight and hoped with every molecule that I would wake up and this would have all been a terrible nightmare. Miserably, I noticed that he smelled like leather, tobacco and some kind of tree, cedar or pine. It was better than any high drink or drugs could give me. His big, hard body was warm against mine as the cold night wind rippled over us as he pulled into the street and I snuggled close to the scent and the warmth.
“I missed you so much,” I murmured, half-asleep and fully drunk.
“Fuckin’ pissed at you for pullin’ this shit, Lou,” he told me over the loud rumble of his bike and the rushing wind.
“I know,” I agreed sleepily. “I’m pissed too. I don’t know if I’ll remember this in the morning and thinking about forgetting the way you smell makes me want to cry.”
“No tears,” he ordered.
“But I’m not alone this time,” I reminded him. “I’ve finally got my guardian monster back.”
Zeus was silent but the level of fury vibrating through his body stilled and I fell asleep listening to the steady thrum of his heart thinking that nothing and no where had ever felt so close to heaven as this.
When I woke up it was in my deeply shadowed room and Zeus was somehow there, dropping me gently into my bed.
“How did we get in here?”
He hesitated pulling the covers over me then shook his head like he couldn’t believe me. “Tell your dad you need better locks.”
Oh.
“How did you know you’d be able to get inside?”
“Lou, shut up. I’m still fuckin’ pissed at you and the less you talk the better. I got some things to say and then I’m leavin’.”
“Okay,” I agreed easily because now that he’d found me, gotten over whatever made him think we couldn’t be together, I knew I wouldn’t lose him again. “Sit down beside me.”
Zeus looked down at me, a muscle clenching in his jaw. “No. I’m tellin’ you what I got to say then I’m leavin’ and Louise, I am not coming back. I’m pissed because I found you tonight drunk outta your fuckin’ mind with a dumbass kid who woulda fucked you without thinkin’ a fuckin’ thing about anythin’ but gettin’ off. You can barely speak, walk or keep your eyes open. You think I wrote to you through the cancer and all that fucked up shit you had to go through as a kid just to see you piss your life away like this? I stayed away so you would stay good. I’m warnin’ you now, you don’t smarten the fuck up, not only will that buy you never seein’ me again but I’ll get in touch with your cunt father and tell him exactly what you’re doin’ and he’ll send you to a fuckin’ nunnery. You get me?”
Somewhere deep in the shroud of my drunkenness, my heart was breaking.
“I don’t want to be Louise Lafayette anymore,” I admitted.
For the first time that night, Zeus softened. I couldn’t see him in the darkness of my curtained room but I could feel his gentling in the air and it made the pain in my chest loosen.
“You can be whoever you want to, Lou. I’m not tellin’ you to be the girl Benjamin fuckin’ Lafayette wants you to be. I’m tellin’ you to be who you want to be, not anyone else and I’m tellin’ you to do it smart, yeah? Right now, you don’t know who you are, what you want or where you’re goin’, your head is stuck so far up your ass.”