HADES Read online

  But about halfway to Angel Pond, his cousin says, “We going to talk about the elephant in the room or just pretend that exotically pretty chicken didn’t come home to roost?”

  “How much of it does she know?” Hades ask after several beats of stubborn silence.

  “Probably all of it.” Waylon gives him a frank shrug. “You know how woman talk.”

  “Merde.” Hades rubs a hand over his face, and a wave of exhaustion passes over him.

  When was the last time he slept? It doesn’t matter. He won’t rest, he can’t—until he lays eyes on his woman.

  “At least you don't have to worry about her going nowhere this time,” Waylon points out. “She's back in your pocket and waiting for you at the house. Vengeance escorted her there themselves, even though it pissed off their wife. But that’s on Persy. Don't know what she was thinking, walking right on up into the clinic.”

  “She wasn't thinking anything,” Hades answers, his voice rough as sandpaper. “She doesn’t remember our MC, or else she would've never come here. That’s on me.”

  “Well, you got her back,” Waylon says. “Now, I guess it's up to you what you’re going to do with her.”

  They don’t say much after that. It’s a short fifteen-minute drive to Angel Pond, the town Waylon started to give his wife the kind of homey life she wanted after growing up in the foster system.

  “Here's the house you ain't never bothered to visit before,” Waylon says, pulling up to one of the standard, two-story, 2.5 bath, mid-income builds RR Homes has become known for all over the Midwest.

  “Ouip,” Hades answers, eyeing the place with weary eyes. He gave up his old life for his chance to be with Persy. Yet, in the end, he finds himself right back where he would've been if he had decided to stay with the Reapers.

  “Thanks for picking me up, brother,” he tells Waylon. “You didn’t have to, and I know all of this drama has been an inconvenience for you and Amira—especially considering I'm not a Reaper anymore.”

  “We started this MC together. You will always be a Reaper.” Waylon kills the engine and claps Hades on the shoulder. “Besides that, you’re still a Fairgood. And like Cousin Colin warned us that Thanksgiving before Persy ran away….”

  “Fairgoods love hard,” Hades finishes.

  Back then, it seemed like a boast. But now, looking at his Angel Pond house, after everything he’s done to escape his past, it echoes like a warning in his ears.

  “Hades?” Waylon says before he can climb out of the car.

  “Yeah?” Hades answers with a frown.

  His cousin’s rubbing the back of his neck in the way he does when something’s not quite sitting right with him.

  Hades finds out why when Waylon screws his face up to confess, “I may have turned a blind eye when Amira helped Persy escape.”

  Hades stares at his cousin. Then stares at him some more.

  Then he expels a long breath and tells Waylon, “She might be pregnant.”

  Waylon whistles. “That’s a tough one, brother. Truth be told, this fatherhood shit only made me more psycho. I do everything in my power to keep my angel in love with my unworthy ass, but I think we both know I’m not the divorce-and-share-custody type. She is the mother of my children, and that means I’m never letting her go.”

  Hades nods. “That’s the same page I’m on, even if she hates my guts. But…”

  Hades trails off, unable to give words to all the emotions hurricaning inside of him.

  And Waylon finishes for him. “Having the woman who’s carrying your child hate you is a fucking heart crusher. Especially when you love her more than the sun. Love her so much, it makes you afraid of her and yourself.”

  That’s exactly right. Something cracks in Hades's chest, making it so he can’t speak, only nod.

  “Yeah, if I was in your position with the amnesia stuff, I can’t say I wouldn’t have done the same thing if I had the chance to wipe the slate clean with Amira. Messing things up with her back in Delaware is one of my biggest regrets,” Waylon says, throwing him a decidedly un-Waylon sympathetic look. “But I tell you this, brother. It’s better when they choose you. Things go better if they want to be there. Cuz if they don’t want to be there, don’t love you back, don’t choose you the same way you choose them, then that’s going to be a problem all the money and power in the world ain’t going to solve. It’s better if they want to be there.”

  Wise words. But not ones Hades wants to hear. So, he gets out of the truck without acknowledging them.

  Finding Persy, laying eyes on her again for the first time in nearly 48 hours—that’s all that matters. Even if he has no idea what comes next for them.

  “Persy! Persy, where are you?” he calls out when he gets in the house.

  No answer. She must be hiding. She might have even tried to pull a runner toward the nearby woods. She has no way of knowing that tree-filled area is surrounded by Reaper land on every side.

  He drops his duffel, prepared to scour the house and the woods for her if that’s what it takes.

  But then a voice behind him says, “I'm right here, Hades.”

  He turns around to see Persy standing in the living room with rage in her eyes.

  And a gun in her hands.

  “Who am I? Who am I really to you?” she demands, leveling the gun straight at him. “And why do I know how to use this?”

  CHAPTER 22

  TESS

  “Ma’am, are you getting out?” the rideshare driver asks Tess through the rearview mirror.

  “Great question,” Tess answers. While continuing to not climb out of the back seat of his car. She eyes the restaurant on the other side of the passenger window: The Woodbury.

  It is a place she’s only seen cited on several of the Columbus Free Press “Best of” lists…with lots of dollar signs behind its entry. Tess has never even considered coming here. Not until tonight.

  Seconds tick by, and eventually, the driver asks, “Everything okay back there?”

  Okay, his tone sounds pretty reluctant, and Tess hates abusing anyone in a service position. But her sister and the other half of her Black Gilmore Girls team-up are both out of town, so, unfortunately, he’s all she’s got.

  “What would you do if the guy you hated most in the world asked you to have dinner with his brother and sister-in-law?” she asks the grey-haired driver.

  “Say no?” the driver answers with a questioning uptick in his voice, as if this is some kind of pop quiz, and he’s afraid of getting the answer wrong.

  “Yes, of course, you should say no. Anyone in their right mind would say no,” Tess grumbles—only to ask, “But what if this request came right after you asked this guy to do you a huge favor, and he completely came through, no questions asked?”

  “Say yes?” the driver replies in that same questioning tone.

  Tess frowns. “I mean, maybe. But remember, you hate this guy—like, despise him.”

  “Can I ask why I hate him so much?” the driver requests after a moment of careful thought.

  “Great question! You hate him because he pretended to be something he wasn’t when you two were sixteen,” Tess answers. “Which means, you can’t trust him now, can you? No matter how nice he acts.”

  The driver knits his brow. “I dunno. I did a lot of stupid stuff when I was sixteen myself. If people were still holding the way I acted back then against me, well…” He throws her a wry grin over his shoulder. “Let’s just say, I wouldn’t have a five-star rating on any of the rideshare apps. And if he did me a huge solid, with no questions asked, that doesn’t necessarily seem like an act.”

  “I mean, maybe, I guess not,” Tess grumbles, folding her arms.

  “So, what’s it going to be?” the driver asks with a genuinely curious tone. “I can take you back home, or you can get out. But you’re going to have to make a decision. I’m getting dinged by other people around here wanting rides.”

  Tess expels a long sigh.

 
“We’d almost given up on you making it, kid,” Benjamin’s brother, Keane, says after Tess sits down at their four-top table with several apologies for being nearly twenty minutes late to their…whatever this is. She absolutely refuses to call it a double date, like Benjamin did when he asked her to come here.

  Keane is…exactly what she expected he’d be after hearing Benjamin’s stories about his future-hockey-star brother that summer. Cocky, good-looking in a smirky way, and arrogant—basically, the kind of guy who calls a grown woman who founded and runs her own shelter “kid.”

  His Boston accent is way thicker than his younger brother’s, Tess notes. But Benjamin is slightly finer, with his dark hair and contrasting light blue eyes. Plus, he’s wearing a sleek suit with an open-collar shirt, so of course, he looks even more handsome than his usual Ohio fifteen on a scale of one-to-ten. Tonight, he’s an Ohio twenty.

  Why, God, why?

  “I’m surprised too,” Tess answers.

  Tearing her eyes away from her still-way-too-handsome baby daddy, she tells the real couple sitting across from them, “I was going to walk. The shelter is just a mile or so away in Franklin Park. But I had to call a ride halfway here. I don’t usually dress up, and I forgot that heels and sidewalk don’t mix. I have no idea why I even tried to come out of my Crocs.”

  “Oh, you hate heels too?” Keane’s wife, Lena, laughs and pokes her feet out from under the table. They’re shorn in a sensible pair of hot pink ballet flats. “I stopped being able to wear them after our third kid.”

  Tess finds herself laughing, and surreptitiously staring at the shoes’ down-to-earth owner. Lena is not at all what she was expecting.

  Granted, she knows next to nothing about Keane, other than he’d lost part of his leg and his promising hockey career in a car accident. But she assumed his wife would be one of those skinny-blonde-girl-next-door types that all hockey players seemed to date, not a curvy woman of color who appears to be just as heel-adverse as Tess.

  “Oh my gosh, you have to tell me the name of that brand. I can never find shoes that are comfortable, but not old-lady boring.”

  Lena laughs again and gives her the name of a Paris-based designer that Tess only vaguely recognizes as a brand she could never afford. But who cares, at least this evening isn’t as awkward as she thought it would b—

  “When you two finally decide to get married, pro tip, wear these instead of heels,” Lena advises before Tess can finish that grateful thought. “That’s what my best friend, Dawn, did at her wedding, and she didn’t have to limp out barefoot, like I did.”

  Okay, relaxed mood totally dashed.

  “Oh, we’re not going to get married….” Tess starts to say.

  At the same time, Benjamin says with a warning tone, “Lena, you promised you wouldn’t do this if I let you meet her.”

  “I know what I said,” Lena answers, shooting Tess an apologetic glance. “And I’m all for nontraditional partnerships. But is that what this is? I mean, you've been back together for three years….”

  “Wait, what?” Tess asks. An image of what it would have actually been like to raise Daphne inside a loving relationship with Benjamin rises in her head along with a surprise tug of yearning in her chest. But she pushes it down to inform Lena, “We’re not dating. We’re only tolerating each other for the sake of our child.”

  Keane scrunches his forehead, then arches a brow at his brother. “Oh, I assumed when you rushed out of that important meeting, just because she called, then announced a couple weeks later that you were moving to Columbus, Ohio, to be close to this girl, that you two were back together.”

  Okay, forget surreptitious glances. Tess stares wide-eyed at Benjamin, who somehow manages to act like The Woodbury’s wine list is way more interesting than this conversation.

  So, it’s on her to inform Keane, “We were never together. It was just a hookup based on nothing real when we were teens that turned out to have huge consequences.”

  Keane crooks his head at Tess. “Now, you sound like my Lena. She broke up with me the same summer, like it was no big deal, and left me a total wreck. The only person who understood what I was going through at the time was my brother, who was also in the Miserable as Fuck Club that fall—because of you.”

  What the…?

  “I think you must be confusing me with some other girl,” Tess tells Keane.

  Keane screws up his mouth. “So, my little bro knocked out the teeth of some trust-fund baby named Donovan on his first day back at Boston Glen, and I had to pay out the wazoo to get him transferred to another boarding school with a hockey team his junior year because of some other girl he met in Ohio, who was refusing to return his texts and blocked his number?”

  “I…I…” Tess doesn’t know what to say. The bitter story she’d been telling herself all these years is starting to fray at the seams.

  She turns to Benjamin and drops her voice to ask, “Is that true? Did you really get kicked out of school for punching Donovan? I thought he was your best friend.”

  Benjamin clenches his jaw. “He wasn’t my best friend. He wasn’t even a friend after what happened that summer. Change the subject, Keane. Now.”

  “Sure, Bono, I can change the subject,” Keane says with a cocky smirk, like he’s won whatever game he’s playing with his brother. “How about those Minnesota Razors? What do you think of Yom Rustanov marrying that rando in Vegas?”

  Lena joins in on her husband’s subject change with bright-voiced enthusiasm. “All the women without psychology degrees at work think it’s so romantic.”

  “Or a publicity stunt to draw attention away from a Russian taking ownership of an American hockey team,” Keane says with a cynical shrug.

  Tess’s mind is still reeling, but weirdly, this is the one hockey-adjacent thing Tess can talk about. “I met Skye Nelson at a conference for women of color who run nonprofits last year in Vegas, right before she got married to that hockey player guy. She has a lot of integrity, and I doubt she’d do anything like that as a publicity stunt. Also, who’s Bono?”

  Keane smirks again before asking his brother, “You never told her about your Boston nickname? Is that why she keeps calling you Benjamin? Going to make me train another one of your girlfriends, huh?”

  Benjamin says nothing, leaving Tess to reiterate, “I’m not his girlfriend. And I’m not one to be trained by anyone to do anything.”

  A few of the other diners jolt in their seats when Keane suddenly releases a bark of approving laughter. “Alright, Bono, I like this one. She’s actually got a backbone. I can see why you’re putting in all this effort.”

  Wow. How insulting can one guy get?

  But before she can protest yet again, Keane explains, “We started calling him Bono after he came back from Ohio. Get it? Because he’s Irish, and he’s too nice? And, of course, it caught on, so now that’s what everybody calls him. At least back in Boston.”

  “So, let me get this straight,” Tess says, setting down her own menu. “Your brother spent an entire summer helping people who lost everything rebuild their homes, and your response to that was to begin calling him Bono? Because, I guess, helping people in their time of need is ‘too nice'? Something you should ridicule somebody for, even sixteen years later, after he’s been named Man of the Year by Boston charities?”

  “Yeah, that’s what I’m doing,” Keane explains with no remorse in his voice whatsoever. “Because I’m the asshole big brother, and Bono’s the too nice little brother. Everybody knows that.”

  “Well, I agree with the part about you being an asshole,” Tess says. “And I’d add that you need to start showing your fully grown brother some respect.”

  Keane falters and his expression becomes a few less degrees “I am what I am.” “

  Bono… Ben…You know I’m just fucking with you, right?” he tells his brother. “This isn’t about disrespect.”

  This time it’s Tess who answers before Benjamin can. “Like I tell the teenage gir
ls at my shelter, if you have to explain to someone that you’re not trying to be disrespectful, you’re probably being disrespectful.”

  Keane slits his eyes at Tess. “So, let me get this straight. You two aren’t together, even though, instead of suing your ass to kingdom come, my brother moved all the way here so that you wouldn’t have to leave behind your precious shelter? You somehow missed that you broke my little brother’s heart before not telling him for sixteen years that you had a baby together? And now you’re acting like I’m the one who’s disrespecting him?”

  Tess opens her mouth, then falters. The thing is, that’s not even half of how mean she’s been to Benjamin. Apparently, he didn’t tell Keane and Lena about their no-contact custody agreement. Or the three years of silent treatment. Why didn’t he tell them? Why did he let them believe that he’d moved here, not just for Daphne, but for her too?

  “Okay, this was a mistake,” she says. Not knowing what to do with the jumble of emotions opening old wounds and raising questions she’d never asked herself before, she throws down her napkin and stands up. “I’m going now.”

  She gives Keane’s wife a tight smile. “Lena, we will probably never see each other again, but it was really nice to meet you. Bye.”

  With that, she turns on her heel and leaves, enraged for reasons she can’t quite explain.

  How dare he invite her into an ambush like that? What was that even about? And why did he want her to meet his family in the first place? So his brother could make her feel weirdly guilty about a stance she’d taken and had zero problems with up until now?

  No need to order a rideshare to get home from the restaurant. Tess’s indignant anger pads her feet against the concrete as she stomps back to her side of downtown Columbus on an empty stomach.

  And what she finds waiting for her in her mailbox when she arrives at her building is even more shocking than her dinner with Keane and Lena.

  CHAPTER 23