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CHAPTERSIXTEEN
PERSEPHONE
Hades holds my hand as we wander lazily along the shore close to our cabin. It’s been a couple days since the fight and as I predicted, he is splashed with black and blue bruises over nearly every inch of his body. He moves with extreme caution, keeping most of his grumbling to himself. From his stiff movements though, I know that he’s hurting badly.
“Ow!” Pulling him to a stop, I put my hand over my stomach where my daughter just kicked me.
“What’s wrong? What happened?”
In an instant, Hades is standing in front of me, touching my belly and glancing at me with worried.
I wave him off, wincing. “Nothing. The baby just decided to make her presence known, that’s all.”
“Ah.” He frowns. “Nothing I can do about that, I guess.”
I squint out over the sea. The wind has picked up today and the ocean churns, seeming turbulent than usual. I need to ask Hades about the future, about his plans for our little family.
After all, I need to plan some things myself. But I don’t want to alarm him or throw our fragile peace into chaos.
“Can I ask you question that you probably won’t want to answer?”
His lips twitch and he jerks his head toward the same piece of driftwood that we sat on before. “If yer going to interrogate me, let’s at least sit down first.”
Grabbing his hand again, I let him lead me to the piece of sturdy dead tree. We sit down, Hades closing his eyes as he does, masking his pain.
Why he is hiding it, I have no idea. I scrunch up my face, steeling myself for his reaction to my questions.
“I know that you haven’t really had time to think it through yet. But I wanted to try to talk about what will happen when the baby comes.”
Hades arches a brow. “Oh?”
“I am wondering where I’m going to live. Where your daughter and I will live. Have you thought about that yet?”
His expression is unreadable. “Just in passing. Why, where were you thinking?”
My heart starts beating fast.
“You’re asking for my opinion? Usually you already have your mind made up on every single topic.”
He shrugs a shoulder. “Maybe I’m trying to be different.”
I think for a second. “I would be happy a lot of places. Here. Scotland. Paris… I just want somewhere that I call home. Ideally, I would like our daughter to have a really good place that she can grow up in. Stable, clean, peaceful. Not the kind of chaos that I grew up in.”
I drum my fingers against my baby bump, tilting my head to peer at him. He starts nodding the second I emphasize the word peaceful.
“I have no idea where, but that sounds amazing to me. My early life was—" He interrupts himself, frowning. “I definitely learned what not to do from my own parents.”
My heart tightens in my chest. “Most of all… I want to be with you. I know I’m not a brilliant inventor or a supermodel, but I could be…” I hiccup. “Faithful. I… care about you, Hades.”
His gaze flits to me, his eyebrows raising in surprise. “I assumed that we would be together.”
“You did?”
“Fuck.” He shakes his head. “Magda was right.”
I slide him a puzzled look. “About what?”
He slips his hand into mine, running his tongue over his top lip. His gaze catches mine, spearing me.
