Like she said, it was her decision, and she wouldn’t do anything she didn’t want to.
Leo
It was time for me to go.
Holding up my bag, I asked, “Who’s bringing me to the station?”
“You don’t have to leave,” Hector shocked the shit out of me by saying.
I did, though. Whatever I had going on with Pollux, it needed to stay between us. And if it was something they were all talking about? I didn’t want to hear it.
It made me feel awful.
“I do,” I replied. “The seal is upstairs. The notebook is still there. Burn it. I don’t care. But I have to go back to Oxford. I can’t ignore the messages I’ve been getting, and I can’t stay here.”
“I’ll drive you back,” Pollux said. “I want to get back as well.”
Paris opened his mouth, gaze flashing to mine, and then shut it. He nodded. Good. He’d actually listened when I said I’d make my own decisions. I could tell the others wanted to argue as well, but didn’t.
“Goodbye,” I said, wondering if I’d ever see them again, or if when I was gone, they’d realize things were easier without me.
Pollux didn’t speak as we walked to a nearby barn. He unlocked the doors of a different car, and said, “We’ll make it back to Oxford by midnight.”
He opened the boot of the car and waited for me to hand him my bag.
“You can just drop me at the station.”
The look he gave me kept me from arguing. I glanced in the car, made out a pair of riding boots and helmet. “You really do coach the equestrian team.”
“Did you think I was lying? Or I had a phony identity?”
“It doesn’t fit, I guess.” It was so mundane. A job. And they were all heroes.
After shutting the boot, he opened the passenger door for me and waited for me to climb in. Soon, we were winding our way down the lane. In the side mirror, a pair of headlights flashed and I turned in my seat. “Someone else is leaving.”
Pollux’s eyebrows lifted as he studied the image in the rearview mirror. “It’s Achilles. He’s probably going home. It’s better if we don’t spend too much time together.”
Right. He’d said something about things getting a little weird when they were in the same place. “And we do work, you know. All of us. Hector and Paris have a company that runs itself. Achilles does security, and Orestes is an artist.”
I nodded, and Pollux stopped talking. He didn’t say another word for an hour or more, and neither did I. Not that I wasn’t thinking of what I should say. I ran through all the things I should do to explain what had happened between me and Paris, but all of it sounded like excuses.
I had to say something.
Glancing at the side mirror, I saw that Achilles was still behind us, and I thought I could make out the profile of another man in the passenger seat. Rifling through my bag, I found my glasses and stuck them on my face. It didn’t help, except now I was certain he wasn’t alone.
It wasn’t until it was darker that Pollux spoke. “I’m sorry for leaving like that.”
“I don’t know what is going on,” I replied. “But I shouldn’t have—”
He reached for my hand and squeezed it. “I don’t want you to apologize, and you don’t have to. Paris kissed you—”
“And I kissed him back.” I had. I hadn’t been a casual bystander. I hadn’t stood there. I’d kissed him back.
He was silent, sucking in a deep breath. “I think I already knew that.”
I had heard them in the kitchen, discussing how they felt about me. And I had heard Pollux, and Achilles, talking as if they had no problem with me dating more than one of them. Because I knew my ancient Greek history, I knew that sexuality was a more fluid thing than it was now, but it tended much more toward men with men, or having more than one woman in their life. I couldn’t think of one example of a woman with more than one man.
“I don’t want to hurt you.”