“I’m trying really hard not to say something I can’t take back, but Zeus, help me understand how this isn’t wrong?” she begged me, her eyes wild with caged accusations.
She’d been raised by parents so stuck in the mud, they were permanently rooted in it and their stifled, judgmental ways. I knew it, I’d witnessed it and defended her from it then watched her grow away from bein’ that herself, so told myself to calm down even as the anger rolled through me like thunder lookin’ for a place to land.
I leaned toward her, closer than was necessary but I needed the threat to be real for her and I didn’t want to use my hands.
“Listen here, teach. I met you, you were a repressed sad little woman livin’ a life you hated and the only thing you wanted, the only thing that could take you outta that, was my boy. Why do you think I gave you the go-ahead to fuck your student, to stand beside my son? ’Cause I’m a rebel and I didn’t give a fuck either way. How ’bout fuck no? How ’bout I knew what it was like to want someone younger, to want someone so fuckin’ forbidden it made you dark and corrupt even to thinka having ’em? I know love when I see it and you think I got that from bein’ with my fuckin’ ex-wife? No fuckin’ way. I know that shit ’cause I helped raise a little girl with the soul of a fuckin’ angel and when she turned into a woman and still somehow had that fuckin’ soul after everythin’ she’d been through and I got the chance to hold that kinda woman in my arms, you think I was nuts enough not to take it?”
Cress blinked at me.
King did too, his face slack and younger lookin’ than I’d seen it in a long time.
Mute looked satisfied, his arms crossed over his chest and a hint of a fuckin’ smile round his mouth.
Yeah, the bastard had done it on fuckin’ purpose.
“Sometimes, Cress, you’re even younger than my son,” I told her with a disappointed frown.
She gasped slightly and leaned back into King who banded an arm around her hips and dragged her the rest of the way into his lap.
“The letters,” King said. “Remember you writin’ ’em, even when you got home you’d still write ’em every week. H.R. thought you were workin’ or some shit but I knew it was somethin’ else. You’d always get angry after writin’ ’em, frustrated.”
“Always been a smart kid,” I told him, leaning forward to punch him lightly on the chin.
“You’re in love with Louise Lafayette,” Cress said soft and fulla wonder. “Zeus Garro is in love and it’s with my heartbreaking and beautiful favourite ex-student, Louise Lafayette.”
“Second favourite,” King amended.
“She prefers Loulou,” I told ’em. “And I’m bringin’ her over for Sunday dinner so you two better be fuckin’ gems ’cause I still got Harleigh Rose to think ’bout.”
The three of us looked over to where my daughter was leanin’ against the wall to the exit door of the gym, smokin’ a cigarette when she shoulda been cheering. A teacher hurried over and told her to put it out. She did, in the guy’s coffee.
“You’re fucked,” King said.
“Don’t I know it,” I agreed.
The game was over and so, unfortunately and fortunately, was my relationship with Reece. He’d taken one look at me after the game, at my swollen mouth and remorseful eyes and known.
“Wish I could say you’ll regret dumping me, but I have the feeling you won’t,” he’d said and then because he was one of the best guys I’d ever known, he’d hugged me. “It was a hope and a dream that I could tame a wild one like you.”
“You were the one who taught me to be wild.” I’d laughed wetly, because for some reason I wanted to cry. It felt like the end of something, like I was shedding the last vestige of Louise. At least, the last part of her life that I actually liked.
Reece’s beautiful face screwed up as he tugged on my ribbon-tied ponytail. “It was always in there, babe. Just needed a little coaxing.”
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered past the lump in my throat.
He nodded. “Not more than me. Listen, you need anything, I’m here and I won’t even ask for a kiss as payment, okay?”
God, he was amazing.
I wondered briefly if he’d ever stood a chance with me, even if Zeus hadn’t sucked me into his life and planted me there for good. I looked over at the crowd of people leaving the gym and immediately caught the back of Zeus’s dark hair, head and shoulders above the people around him. There was a break in the flood and I caught sight of the wicked skull and flaming wings across his leather jacket and knew without a flicker of a doubt, that I’d never been meant for anything or anyone else.
Reece had read the resolve in my face, squeezed my hand and shook his head ruefully before walking off to join his celebrating teammates.
I’d felt like shit but also strangely relieved. It was one thing crossed off the laundry list of obstacles threatening to take down my man and me.
Speaking of obstacles, my parents took the time to find me after the game and walk me to the car. Phillipa had her arm around my waist, her head bent close as she giggled about the gossip she’d learned that day. It wasn’t that she wanted to share it with me particularly, it was that it made her look younger, our blond heads together like sisters instead of mother and daughter. People looked over as we passed and praised my mother for being just that, a mother and a good one at that.
The irony made my teeth ache.
Benjamin had Bea under his arm but they both looked uncomfortable, especially when a local reporter stopped to take a picture of them and ask them some questions. Dad didn’t know how to bring Bea into the conversation because he didn’t know her at all, and Bea didn’t know what to do because she rarely had the opportunity to shine alone.
It was vaguely depressing, but I was still riding my orgasm high as we stopped at the curb of the parking lot and stood talking with random family friends like the school was our home and we were thanking people for coming to visit.
In a way, we were.
EBA was my parents’, grandparents’ and great-grandparents’ high school. It was the seat of youth in Entrance and so now, Bea and I went there and with us as a viable connection, my family could rule there too.
It wasn’t that I didn’t understand the appeal of that power, of having men come up to my father in search of endorsements and political favours, of my mother raising and lowering women in her society with the twitch of an eyelid or the flip of a hand.
It was heady stuff, that kind of power.
But as I understood it, being Queen and King of Entrance was hollow. Mayors were elected out of office, society queens grew elderly, old families moved out of town and new ones moved in.
No, I wanted power but the real kind, the kind that was deeply rooted in fear and reverence, power and genuine cleverness that kept you at the top of the greedy pile of bodies that had tried and failed around you.
Zeus’s kind of power.
The kind built on blood, sweat, threats and tears in credence of a lifestyle based on freedom of expression, brotherhood and defiance of the man just because he was the fucking man.
That was real power worthy of sacrificing your kids, their health and dreams for.