AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Want to see yer studio?”
My heartbeat kicks up. “There’s a studio?”
Hades flashes me a tiny smirk and then heads over to the wall. He looks around for only a second before he finds a set of buttons and mashes them.
Pocket doors materialize from the white blankness of the wall, opening automatically. I walk through, my eyes adjusting to the dim lighting. Hades is right behind me, hitting the lights.
The room’s windows look down on a large white marble drafting table. On it are piled the forging supplies I remember quite well.
I turn around, gesturing to the supplies. “Is this my stuff?”
His mouth twitches. “Most of it. Some of it had to be replaced. But all yer work was saved.”
I walk over to one of the stacks of cardboard boxes standing taller than me. On my tiptoes, I peer in the top box. Sure enough, there is the crate of inks, just as I left them. Swishing a finger over it, I exhale a tremulous breath.
“I can’t believe that you were able to get it out,” I murmur.
“Y would be amazed at what ye can do with enough money in northern Africa.” He leans against the doorframe, crossing his arms. “Then again, maybe ye wouldn’t be so surprised anymore.”
My brows knit. I close the box’s lid and then turn toward him. “No. I guess once I’ve been abducted on a continent, it’s hard to see past that.”
I meant to make a joke of it. But it comes out breathy and weak. Hades is quick to straighten himself, walking over and tugging my hand, leading me back toward the kitchen.
“Come. We could both use a drink.”
“I can’t drink.” A bark of laughter escapes me. “And it’s barely sunrise, Hades.”
He releases my hand with a shrug. I close my fingers in a fist, feeling strangely lonely without his simple touch.
“Coffee, then,” he says. He points to a polished platinum stool pulled up to the kitchen island. “Sit.”
“I can’t have coffee either. Maybe some herbal tea?”
Hades sighs. “As you wish, lass.”
Smiling at him, I take my seat. He rummages through the neatly organized white marble cabinets, pulling out everything he can conceivably make tea with. Once he has a pour over set up and the tea bags in the mugs, he fills a gleaming silver kettle and sets it on the stove to boil.
I look at all the mugs and various coffee making implements he’s pulled out and left sitting on the counter. My lips twitch.
“Now the spoiled child in you emerges,” I tease him. “You just assume that someone else will put all those things away.”
Hades eyes me, his expression both defiant and challenging. He picks up a mug, walks over to the discreet white trash can, and drops it into the container with a thunk.
“Is that better?”
My lips lift. “I think you know very well that it’s not.”
He lifts a shoulder in a cool, jovial shrug. Silence reigns as he makes tea. My mind wanders, going back to how nice this loft is and how much time and money someone must have spent on it.
I wonder if I will ever have a studio like this. My mother had a nice studio. For years she asked my father to rent her a space of her own, free from the obligations of her two needy children.
And my father had the money to do it.
I cock my head to the side, looking at Hades out of the corner of my eye. Hades is rich. So rich, in fact, that he puts my father to shame. In fact I think in many ways, my dad would approve of Hades.
Am I living my mother’s life? Repeating her same mistakes? I can clearly, vividly imagine what staying with Hades could be like.
I would come in from the studio, a dried paint smudge across my cheek, my hair in a messy bun. Hades would be on the couch, reading something with characteristic intensity. I would sneak up on him, surprising him with a kiss on the forehead.
