He puts his hands on my shoulders and turns me around. It’s a wrenching pain, to be forced away from the sea, but once he’s done it, I see her.
Ashley stands on the shore, tears streaking down her face, both hands clasped at her chest. The breeze picks up behind me, stirring her dark hair, the hem of her dress. It’s pushing me toward her. Insisting. Or maybe it’s Hades.
“She’s right there,” Hades says. “Go.”
23
Ashley
Poseidon looks at me across the sweep of sand, the wind in his hair, his eyes swollen and red, and I know he’s not back. Not fully. Hades could only keep him from swimming out and down until the water kept him.
Zeus finally releases his grip on Conor’s collar, and the dog streaks across the beach toward Hades. He goes to one knee when Conor arrives and ruffles his ears, petting his head with bloodied hands, saying things to him I can’t hear. The dog was frantic when he and Poseidon were fighting. Zeus had to hold him back with both arms. Now Zeus stands, a shadow in the corner of my vision.
“I don’t know what to do,” I tell Zeus. I can’t look at him. Can’t break this connection with Poseidon, even though I’m scared out of my mind. “He doesn’t love me enough to stay. What can I do?”
“He loves you enough to show you the reason he never stays anywhere, which means he loves you more than I can say.”
Oh, Poseidon.
All those years at sea. All those crew members. His brothers. No one has ever seen the raw need in his eyes. The raw sorrow. He’s never let them. It’s like he’s holding his heart out to me with both hands.
I can’t screw this up. And I won’t. I’m enough for him.
Zeus strides across the sand and stands next to Hades, his posture casual but his eyes locked on Poseidon. It’ll take both of them to keep him here if I can’t do this.
So I will do this.
I wipe my tears away. Lift my chin. And hold my hand out to Poseidon. “Come home,” I tell him.
He’s still for such a long time that fear laps at my toes. A shadow crosses his face. Anger. It’s better than the bleak emptiness and the desperation of before, when calling his name couldn’t stop him.
Poseidon comes to me, both of his brothers tense behind him, and takes my hand in a crushing grip. He doesn’t stop. He keeps moving past me, pulling me with him. I stumble over one foot and concentrate on keeping up.
He pulls me through the streets like this, his stride too fast, his jaw set. He keeps the rosary clenched in his fist all the way back to his ship. Through the hatch. Up the stairs, and into his quarters, where he slams the door behind us and rounds on me.
“You stole this,” he says through gritted teeth. “You took this out of my backpack.”
I’m going to meet him in this. It’s the storm before the calm. I know it. I believe it. “Yes. Hades found the cross.”
“And the two of you put it back together?” His eyes glitter. He’s menacing like this. Too large for the room. “You allowed him?”
“Yes.”
“How dare you steal this from me. It wasn’t yours to take. It wasn’t his to take, that bastard.”
The ship rocks underneath us, the motion harder than it was when we first boarded, and I put a hand on the bedframe to keep myself upright. The first drops of rain pelt the window as the sky goes gray. “It was a gift.”
Poseidon throws it toward the bed, and it hits the wall with a metallic slap and falls to his pillow. “Get out,” he snarls. “Get the fuck out of here. Go to my fucking brother. Ask him for help. Lock me up somewhere, if that’s what you want. Lock me in here. I don’t care. Just get out so I don’t have to look at you.”
It’s the meanest he’s ever been. The rock bottom of cruelty.
The vision pops into my head of what it would be like. I would walk past him, and he would let me go. I would go up to Hades and Zeus on the deck and ask them to take me on the helicopter. They would take me anywhere I wanted to go.
I take the first step toward the door. I should do it for my own sake. Live away from all men. It was enough to have a shitty father who tried to kill me. I could find a place separate from the world. Become a nun. Never see Poseidon again.
It hurts to imagine it. Too much. No matter what he says.
I look back into his eyes and find a depthless pain there. This is his last attempt at ending things for himself. This is his last attempt at destroying his life before someone else destroys it for him. It’s all his grief, at the surface, breaking loose. He can’t stop it. It’s not just the grief of losing his mother. It’s the grief of a lifetime.
He needs me now more than ever.
A subtle shift is all it takes to turn me toward him, not toward the door. I look him in the eye. “Come home.”
His face crumples. Poseidon doesn’t cry, but his shoulders curve forward like he might fall. I go stand between him and the floor and put my arms around him.
He hesitates. “You should go,” he says, and I hear every wound he’s suffered in his voice. “Find someone better.”
I take his hand in mine. “Come home.”
Poseidon lets me lead him to the bed, and I push him backward onto it, his tall frame stretching out over the sheets. Then I go for his belt. As soon as I’ve unhooked it, he’s in motion again, stripping his pants off. He tugs down my panties next, then pulls me onto the bed.
He’s hard for me, even though his face is the picture of pain, and this is what I have to give him. A reminder that we’re still alive. A reminder of pleasure. I spread my thighs and straddle him, the pierced crown of him nudging into me, and sink down and down and down until I’ve met him in his grief.
Poseidon wraps both arms around me and holds me close as we move. There are no words for this, so I touch him. Rock my hips into him. Kiss his temples. Kiss his neck above the collar of his shirt. He breathes me in, his chest hitching. No tears fall, but I can feel him trying to release this heaviness.
I work harder at drawing it out of him. I arch in his arms so he can feel how much I want him. Move my hips in more determined circles. Find the angle that gives me more contact on my clit and come hard on his cock with his arms around me.
My pleasure seems to wake him up, and it’s only then that he turns us over and drives into me in a more familiar rhythm. Poseidon closes his eyes and drops his head. He comes with his face pressed against my neck, kissing me there over and over.
As he’s coming, he reaches between us and brushes a knuckle over my clit. Quick little circles, meant to make me come fast, and it works. I come for him. Reach for him. Kiss him as he shudders out the last of his release.
He lets me take some of his weight, collapsing onto me like he’s waited all his life to do it.
Poseidon opens his eyes.
All around us, the ship is waking up. Footsteps move from one deck to another. Gulls cry outside the window. The dawn has turned to day.
“She’s dead,” he says, his eyes shining.
“I know. I love you.” The rain quiets my words.
He doesn’t answer.
He’s already far away.
I can’t reach Poseidon right now.
What I’ve said is a broken truth at the beginning of a long darkness. At the very beginning of his life knowing that his mother is dead. But I’ll take him broken. I’ll take him any way I can.