Maybe it wasn’t as much of a scene as I’d initially thought.
When he collected himself enough to look up at me, I still hadn’t moved.
“The fuck, kid—“
“You can’t tell my mother,” I said.
Ares cleared his throat and inhaled deeply. The red tint on his skin dwindled, and he finally straightened up and took a cigarette from the inside of his leather jacket. “I make it a point not to tell your mother things that might upset her,” he managed as he lit his cigarette. He pulled his lips taut around the stick and eyed me as he blew out the smoke. “This news… I think that’d upset her, don’t you?”
“I love that you’d go to any length to keep her happy,” I said, stuffing my hands in my pockets. “It’s quite adorable.”
“Watch your mouth,” he grunted.
My smirk widened.
Ares regarded me again, those questionable eyes moving over my face like he could see my true form sitting behind the glamour, and he wondered if I was fucking with him or not.
“Why are you coming to me?” he finally asked.
“You know as many of my mother’s secrets as I do,” I said. “This is one she wouldn’t share with me if she had something to do with Psyche’s disappearance.”
“Who says she disappeared?”
“If she hadn’t, I’d still be with her,” I said. “She had the ambrosia. She was immortal.”
“Maybe she got tired of your mother hanging over your shoulder,” Ares said.
“Is that what you know?”
“I don’t know anything,” Ares affirmed.
“But you remember her.”
There was something about the way Ares looked at me then that edged my muscles and drew my insides taut. It was a feeling I hadn’t felt in centuries, and I wasn’t sure I liked what it did to me.
Ares drew another smoke on his cigarette. “Yeah, I remember her,” he said solemnly.
“I don’t,” I said. “Or I barely do.”
Ares didn’t seem surprised. “There are some things worth forgetting, kid,” he said, pushing off his bike. “This is one of them.”
“What do you know?” I said, stepping into his path.
A brow raised on Ares’s face, but I refused to move. “You don’t want to do this,” he said.
“I really do,” I hissed. “Tell me what you know.”
For a long moment, Ares stared at me, and for longer than that, he thumbed the hem of his shirt between his fingers and puffed on his smoke.
“You think you found her?” Ares asked.
I exhaled, relaxing a little as I thought of Chloe’s face, and a lump rose in my throat. “Yeah. Yeah, I do.”
“Then hang onto her,” he said. “Hang onto her and don’t let go. You two… you were more than lovers or friends or just another couple. You wereit, and all of those idiots were jealous of the bond you two had.”
Something swelled in my chest. I wanted to remember—I wasdesperateto remember. It was a part of me that felt empty. And hearing Ares say he remembered her, when I didn’t, when Persephone didn’t…
“What do you mean?”
