I smiled at him. “Aren’t you having fun?” He rocked to the side, but I kept my footing.
His hands splayed over my hips and his heart beat rapidly against mine. He dropped his head until we were just a breath apart. “I’m having fun,” he murmured.
I stared up into his gray eyes and got lost in their infinite depth. My heartbeat quickened and I prepared for the taste of his lips against mine.
Only it never came.
A wave taller than Ryder came out of nowhere and crashed against us. This time I couldn’t hold on, I felt the full force of it. My feet slipped from underneath me and while I still clutched onto Ryder, we toppled into the current and tumbled in the strength of the water.
We held onto each other while the saltwater pushed us under the surface and tried to keep us there. Our wet hands started to slide apart. I reached for Ryder, desperate to keep our connection. His hands were there waiting for me, holding onto me, never letting me go.
We broke the surface together, both of us gasping for breath and shaking the water out of our eyes. We kept our hands linked and swam for shore, awkwardly breaking through the waves closest to the beach. We flopped onto the sand with huge grins on our faces.
I lay back on the cool, wet sand and blinked up at the white sky. I tried to catch my breath and soak in this one moment. Ryder’s shoulder pressed into mine and our clasped hands lay across his stomach. Our wet clothes clung to our sticky bodies. My lips were salty from the water and my eyes stung, but I wanted to live in this moment forever. I wanted to remember Ryder next to me. I wanted to never let go of this easiness.
I felt the shift in the air, the charge of electricity signaling the impending storm. I could sense the quiet stillness just before chaos broke and destruction reigned.
Olympus was close. I felt it in my bones. When I got up from this beach, we would leave for the mountain and I would have to face a coliseum of gods that wanted to use me for their gain and abuse my curse. I would have to face my biggest fears and my worst nightmares.
I would face real life monsters and gods so depraved and insidious they made the hairs on my arm stand on end and my stomach churn.
I would have to be someone that I was not. I would have to be courageous. I would have to be confident. I would have to be the opposite of their evil.
I let my head roll to the side so I could look at Ryder’s profile. His eyes were closed and his lips were just slightly parted. The sun burst from over the contours of his face like an explosion of light. I blinked against his beauty and thought that maybe he was the one that had cursed me.
I had never known anything better than Ryder Sutton. No things or people or souls were better than this man. He had captured every piece of me. He owned whatever it was that made me up. He owned it completely.
He might not love me anymore, but I would never stop loving him. I couldn’t stop, even if I wanted to.
I had only ever been sure about two things my entire life. I had always known that I would never let Nix control me. I had known that for as long as I had known anything. And now Ryder.
I knew that I loved him. I knew that he was the only man I would ever love.
I knew that I would love him for the rest of my life, with every breath I breathed, with every beat of my black heart.
And that was enough for me.
Even if I wanted more, I could live with this. I could live knowing how to love this much, this completely. I could live for the rest of eternity just loving this man and giving everything I had to give to him. Because he was worth loving.
Because he was worthy.
He slowly turned his head to look at me and gave me a crooked grin. “What?” he asked.
“Nothing,” I whispered. “Just thinking.”
“About Olympus?” He had to squint to see me clearly, even though our faces were close.
“No,” I told him honestly. “Not about Olympus.”
“Red, if you want to run away right now, I’ll go with you. You don’t have to do this. They don’t own you. Not one of them gets a say in your life, but you. Yeah?”
“Ryder, if I don’t do this now, these people will hunt me until the day I die. If I’m honest, I just want to get it out of the way. I want to finish this and move on with my life.”
He smiled at me, “I like the sound of that. I’d like to never have to worry about these assholes ever again.”
I grinned too. “Then let’s go kill some gods.”
He jumped to his feet before helping me get to mine. The sand stuck to our bodies from head to feet as we made our way back to Della’s pavilion. The sun warmed our cold skin and dried some of the sand, but the salt water had made everything stick and rub uncomfortably.
