“You complain, but you never miss a shift,” I tease, knowing that—just like my mother—if they didn’t give her extra tasks, she’d be offended, thinking they’d judged her incapable.
“Of course. I was born on this island, girl! The laziness is strong, but the gossip instinct is stronger.” She presses a hand to her chest, pretending to be offended, and I laugh at her pride in being a gossip. Definitely a daughter of Khione. “Every year there’s something new. I wanted to see it before everyone else. You haven’t seen the back yet, have you?”
“No—but even the front looks nothing like I remember. It feels…” I inhale deeply and close my eyes, trying to capture the sensation in a word.
“Happy,” she supplies simply.
“Happy,” I repeat, agreeing—remembering the past.
I shake my head, pushing away the uninvited feelings, load the baskets into the trunk, and grab the enormous box filled with the Christmas ornament cookies. With some difficulty, I manage to hold it with one arm long enough to close the trunk, then adjust both arms around the cardboard and start walking again, laughing at myself.
“See you later, Mrs. Georgina. If I don’t show up in two hours, send someone to rescue me from forced labor.”
“See you,” she replies, laughing—and can’t resist her signature line. “Behave.”
It takes only a short walk down a corridor for me to realize I wasn’t prepared for the chaos that explodes around me the moment I step into the association’s lobby. If watching through the doors made it seem crazy, inside I’m certain of it.
Men and women in uniform hurry back and forth. People stand on ladders, hanging decorations on a Christmas tree at least six meters tall. Deafening chatter. Orders shouted over it all in an attempt to be heard.
One more thing I wasn’t prepared for?
Running straight intothe boysof Khione—right here, right now.
CHAPTER 4
NINA MARCHESI
They’re not boys anymore.
Suddenly, the thought I had a few hours ago—about them looking like gods—cuts through my mind, sounding even truer than before. My God, they are most certainly not boys anymore.
And my body’s reaction to their presence is physical proof that whatever they stir in me as an adult is very different from the almost-platonic admiration I always felt for the group. They don’t even look real, they’re so beautiful. How is that possible?
They’re all here. And all of them are busy decorating the massive Christmas tree. Drako is up on the ladder, hanging ornaments at the very top of it. It’s an amusing image, because it feels completely out of place.
A six-foot-tall man, far more muscular than I remember, suspended in the air on an aluminum ladder to decorate a Christmas pine. His hair—and his smile—are still the same,shaved close to the scalp just like the last time I saw him years ago.
Drako always had a mischievous look on his face, while his greenish eyes held something mysterious. He’s adorable, and he was the one I spent the most time around, because as the youngest of the four, he was the last to leave this place when he came of age.
His olive-toned skin glistens with a sheen of sweat that tells me decorating the tree is just one of the many tasks he’s taken on today—not the only one.
Beside him, holding a box of ornaments, is one of the twins. Apollo. I can tell at a glance, because let’s be honest—I spent far too much time drooling over him and his brother not to have absorbed the subtle differences most people miss. I used to be quite proud of that.
Dressed in jeans and an association T-shirt—just like his twin and their friend on the ladder—Apollo is rolling his green eyes at something Drako is saying, though there’s a playful smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
He is, without a doubt, the most fun of the four—always with a joke ready, his constant smile reflecting the lightness with which he chooses to live, despite everything. Where Drako holds mystery, Apollo radiates indiscriminate kindness.
Drako says something else, and Apollo tilts his head, running a hand lightly over the short beard on his face—identical to his brother’s—just as Atlas chooses that moment to join the conversation. Atlas nudges Apollo, making him turn only hisneck to look back. It’s quite the scene, and the teenage version of me would have been losing her mind if she’d witnessed it.
The same green eyes. The same dark-blond hair. The same thick beards they both started growing far too young. The same full lips. The same sun-kissed Greek skin. And now, also the same muscular arms stretching the fabric of their sleeves and the same broad thighs filling out their jeans.
It’s the same tall, devastatingly beautiful body—every detail multiplied by two. Heat rushes to my cheeks and neck, and I force my gaze away only to fall into a far worse trap.
Nero Zanthos.
The boys, in general, were always objects of my attention—that’s true. But it’s also true that as I grew older, I became almost obsessed with Nero.
Maybe because he was the one I interacted with the least. Or maybe because he was already unreachable long before distance ever separated us. I was five when he was fourteen. I don’t know. I lost count of how many photos of him I cut out of magazines while watching—or stalking—him from afar as I stopped being a child and he became a man.
