And it didn’t stop.
Wave after wave hit me. My head throbbed. Visions of life and loss poured through me. I was drowning, over and over, my head being forced beneath the surface until I was on the edge of breathlessness and then yanked back up, where I gasped for air and stability.
With every new vision, it was like a part of me fell into place.
Someone shouted for me in the distance. I scrambled to come back to him. To Gavin. To my husband. To Eros. I could see him sleeping as the wind snatched me off the ground, as a smirking Apollo met me with ropes and gags. A cage surrounded me that I tried to break free from. Screaming. Crying. Shouting at my captor.
“Chloe!”
I knew that voice. It filled my heart with warmth. His smile settled my throbbing heart in a vision behind my eyes.
My husband leaned against a table in the middle of a crowded room, smiling at me just as he always had—my husband who I hadn’t recognized at the time.
“There you are….”
Candy hearts and stiff drinks.
“Sweet girl, I’m not your hero.”
A Jeep and the snow. Pizza and a balcony.
“I think I could see myself getting lost again just to have you.”
I struggled against the memories, pushing through them as he shouted my name.
“It’s the way I’ll never stop looking for you.”
He was close. So close that I could feel his arms around me.
“I swear to you now, if someone dares to try and steal you again, I will use it in ways far worse than any mortal or god could ever imagine.”
“Chloe!”
I was lying in the shower, the warm water pouring over my face. Strong arms surrounded me and held me close. I tightened my grasp on him, and he looked up, his beautiful green eyes meeting mine.”
“Eros,” I whispered.
I could see him more clearly than I ever had. All of him. Not just the man I had most recently fallen in love with but everything we had gone through. All of it into one beautiful person that I never wanted to part from.
A glisten rose in his gaze, and he pressed a wide hand to my cheek. “Hey, sweet girl,” he whispered.
I kissed him, and when I did, my body burst with more sensation than I’d ever experienced. I felt him in my fingers, my toes, the pit of my stomach, and the hair on my head. I felt him everywhere, all at once.
When he pulled back, his forehead relaxed against mine, and for a moment, we savored how complete we were.
I noticed a large wound on his arm as we stayed there, another burn across his chest, smaller ones on his face and dotted along his flesh, and the memory of the fight filled me. I swiped my thumb over the one on his cheek.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Just a few scratches,” he promised.
“And Apollo?”
Gavin’s jaw set, the same darkness that had been present in his gaze upon realizing Apollo was my ex settled there again. His hands tightened around my own, and he kissed each of my knuckles. “Unfortunately, I can’t kill him,” he said. “So I had to do things that… Things that I might regret one day. But for now, you’re safe, and you’re here, and that’s all I care about.”
I held his hand to my face, watched his throat bob with his swallow. "What?" I asked.
“Zeus said your memories would trickle in over time. And the ones that weren't real would fade," he said.
