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It’s the night when we’ll succeed or fail, and everything that follows will be because of one of those outcomes.
Two weeks. It’s all we’ve got. Two fights for Athena, before then. Fourteen days and fourteen nights to say the things we have left to say and do all the things we want to do before we risk everything.
The stakes have never been higher.
Athena reaches for my hand, pulling me out of my thoughts as she tugs me down to the ground with her, sitting in the grass. She stays close, leaning against me, and we’re quiet for several long moments, just looking out over the cliffside and letting the wind blow past us, enjoying the peace.
“There’s a reason I wanted to come out here,” she says finally, softly, as if it would be a sin to speak too loudly here in the silence.
“Why?” I truly don’t know. I’d assumed it was because of what this space meant to her for us, and that she’d just wanted to spend some time with me.
“You sat and listened to my memories out on the beach,” she says quietly. “And I asked you for yours, and you said not yet. You said it wasn’t the place for it. But I know that this is. And I think it’s time.”
Fuck. I go very still next to her, my chest tightening. I don’t know if I want to talk to Athena about Natalie more than I already have, if I want to share all of it with her. Not because she doesn’t deserve to know, but because I haven’t talked to anyone about it. If I say it all aloud, talk about everything that happened in the past tense, it’ll stay firmly there forever. And I don’t know if I want Athena to know how deeply I loved someone else.
I’m afraid that if she knows, she won’t be able to love me as much. How could she, when her half-sister was for a long time the greatest love of my life?
“I need to know,” Athena says quietly, her fingers threading through mine. “I know it’s hard, Jaxon. But we don’t have much time left. You know everything about me that there is to tell. And I need to know about her.” She turns to look at me, her blue gray eyes soft and full of more understanding than I could have hoped for. “Please, Jaxon. Don’t hide from me anymore.”
“Are you going to ask for their secrets, too?” I can hear the bitterness in my voice, feel it on my tongue, but I can’t help it. She wants me to lay myself bare for her, and I’ve only ever done that once before. I could lose Athena very soon, and if I do and I somehow come out of that labyrinth alive, I don’t think I can bear it again. I don’t think I can crack apart like that, lose something that means so much to me, and ever be whole again.
Athena tenses next to me, but she nods. “Yes,” she says quietly. “I will. But this—Jaxon, I know you loved her. I know it breaks your heart to remember. But she was my sister. And you’re the only person left that I know who knew her, too.”
“I know.” I take a deep breath, tilting my head back and looking up at the moon. “Okay.”
So I start to tell her. I tell her about the first time I ever saw Natalie, when we were fourteen. “She hated motorcycles,” I tell Athena with a laugh. “I thought she was the prettiest girl I’d ever seen, back then, but I swore to myself there wasn’t a chance in hell. All I cared about was a bike of my own. I couldn’t be with a girl that would never get on the back of it. But I couldn’t seem to stay away from her, and she kept crossing my path. There was really no reason for her to. Other than being a part of the St. Vincents so far as I knew, she didn’t have any connection to me, and she treated Cayde like an annoying younger cousin, even though there was less than a year between us all. But we were—drawn together.” I pause, looking over at Athena, feeling as if every word out of my mouth burns. “Fuck, Athena, how am I supposed to tell you all of this? It’s going to hurt you.”
“No, it won’t,” Athena says calmly. “I know you loved her. God, Jaxon, I love two other men besides you. If anyone in this world knows that you can love different people in different ways, it’s me. I know you loved her and I know you love me now, and you were a different person then than you are now, too. None of it matters, except that I need to know to understand you. And beyond that, I want to hear about my sister.” She swallows hard, looking away. “I’ll never meet her, Jaxon. Never tell her who I am. I’ll never talk to her or share anything with her. She died before either of us ever knew the other existed. Jaxon, Ineedto hear this.”
“Okay.” I let out a sharp, hard breath. “Okay.”
Athena’s hand tightens around mine, and I know she means it. It doesn’t make it much easier, though.
“Nothing happened between us for what felt like a long time. I was obsessed with her, in that way that only a boy in his mid-teens can be. But I had other things that I was obsessed with too.” I laugh shortly. “Working out, and the Devil’s Sons. That was pretty much my life—hanging around the club and trying to soak up everything I could so that I could get my own bike, working out and learning to fight, and fantasizing about Natalie. But I didn’t make a move. Not even close. I was too damn scared.”
Athena laughs softly. “So she was the one who started it? I guess maybe not much has changed.”
I glare at her, but there’s no malice in it. “That was for different reasons and you know it. Want me to stop telling the story?”
“You know I don’t.” Athena glances at me.
“Nothing happened until we were sixteen. I got my motorcycle, despite everything my father tried to do to keep it from happening, and I rode it to school on my birthday, and the very first person I saw was Natalie. And despite how much she’d always sworn she hated motorcycles, she asked me to take her out on it.
Take me for a ride, birthday boy?
I can still hear her voice, clear as day, floating through the air. It makes my chest go tight, my throat constrict, and I can’t speak for a minute, remembering that bright day when I brought her out here for the first time.
I thought you hated motorcycles.
I’m pretty sure I still do. But I loveyou,Jaxon King.
“I brought her out here, my favorite spot. It was the first time I’d really spent time with her alone—really alone, where no one would walk in or interrupt us. And I—” I swallow hard, forcing myself to keep going, to remember no matter how much it hurts. “I kissed her for the first time.”
Athena doesn’t say anything, but her fingers squeeze mine, and I know she’s doing exactly what I did on the beach for her—simply being here, and listening. She’s giving me back what I gave her, and I know that this is as necessary for me as it was for her, to say it all aloud, to talk about it for the first time to anyone.
It hurts, but she’s right. We can’t go into what’s to come with secrets. And if we come out on the other side, all of us, we’ll need to start fresh.
All of this needs to be behind us, no matter how much it hurts.
