“I can’t wait to come and visit, see the house all finished” she retorted, her voice comforting and safe.
“Yes, when are you coming to visit again?” I demanded. She’d come for two weeks to help me move, getting me settled, hanging out. But that was almost a year ago. Aunt V was still working full time as a bank teller and had used up all her vacation days. She refused to let me retire her. I’d been saving money for years to do so, as a thank you for everything she’d done for me. It meant something to me to be able to do that.
“Soon, my sweet, I promise. Now, how is Des? That’s someone I can’t wait to meet.”
“Oh, he’s great,” I replied. “You’ll never guess what he did last week...”
I settled into a comforting conversation with my favorite person on the planet, giving me a much-needed respite from the devil who stalked me through the desert.
A brief respite.
I felt uneasy and weird for the rest of the afternoon. While I lied to my Aunt V about the parking lot incident and Hades, the residual trauma from what happened, the lingering fear that I was still in danger and the fact that I was obsessing over Hades despite everything—it was all far too much for me to process. I was totally exhausted. Despite Marilyn’s pleading for me to go over to her place for cocktails since we both had the night off, I made an excuse and settled on the sofa, trying to heal myself in the only way I could, with a disaster movie marathon.
Halfway through that marathon, someone knocked on my door. Sirius whimpered once before hiding under the blankets we were both huddled under. I sucked in an unsteady breath, rubbed my eyes, paused the movie then stumbled to the door, not thinking. Which, of course, was a huge fucking mistake.
“What the fuck?”
I blinked rapidly at the form standing in my door frame, blocking out the sun. The voice was low, masculine and extremely pissed off. Dangerous.
“What are you doing here?” I asked Hades, blinking rapidly, my vision tearstained and blurry. I rubbed my face with the backs of my hands, tears still running down my face as I made a very embarrassing hiccupping sound.
Before I could speak, Hades’s thumb and forefinger grasped my chin, tilting it upward. “What the fuck happened?” he demanded.
He was pissed off, that much was clear. His eyes, glittering with fury, searched my face, my body, looking for signs of injury.
I felt very uncomfortable under his probing gaze. I’d just been crying hysterically. I was sure my face was splotchy, swollen, my eyes rimmed red. My hair was a bird’s nest atop my head, and I was wearing oversized sweats with wine and chocolate stains covering them.
No one saw me like this. The only reason I’d answered the door was because I thought it was the FedEx guy with my Sephora order.
“Freya, you need to talk. Right fucking now.” He was still holding my chin in his hands. My silence was obviously not pleasing him at all, and it was becoming very clear that he was not going to let me go until I spoke about why I was answering the door like this. It seemed like he thought something untoward had happened to me. Which was fair enough since I looked like a fucking mess, but still, most people wouldn’t have such an intense reaction. Then again, most people didn’t deal with stabbings and violence on the regular. I did not need Hades thinking I was some damsel in distress. Wasn’t that kind of thing like catnip to these guys?
Maybe not Hades, though. He seemed like the last thing he wanted was to be the hero, and he was not at all interested in me.
“The end of the world happened,” I hiccupped.
His brows furrowed. “That’s not an answer.”
I sucked in a fractured breath, trying to calm myself down. “Armageddon.”
He was still frowning, the cloak of anger he was wearing so thick and palpable, I felt it covering me too.
I blinked, my body calming, my tears slowing. “Ben Affleck. Bruce Willis. Liv Tyler?” I raised my brows in question. “Second to Deep Impact to be sure, because Deep Impact is one hundred percent the number one disaster movie in the world, and no one can change my mind about that.”
I sucked in a much more even breath, all too aware of how intensely Hades was watching me. His gaze was no longer deadly or dangerous. Well, not completely, at least. There was something else in his eyes. His jaw was not as clenched as it had been moments ago.
“Anyway,” I added, my voice quieter now. “I think that it’s impossible to watch Armageddon without crying. The scene where Bruce Willis is talking to Liv Tyler through the NASA intercom thing...” I couldn’t finish the sentence without the waterworks starting again, my voice cracking ever so slightly.