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‘Only when there are unexpected guests,’ Lykos replied without even looking up. Without even caring that Theron was there in his apartment. He couldn’t even raise the energy to be shocked or surprised. ‘I’ll turn around if it will spare your blushes,’ he threw over his shoulder as he reached the wardrobe and grabbed a pair of loose linen trousers and a long-sleeved white tee.
‘Well, that’s hardly better,’ Theron said, standing in the bedroom doorway with his hands on his hips, his jacket flaring slightly behind the bracket of his arms. ‘Now you look like some male catalogue model,’ he accused, flicking his hand up and down.
Lykos simply glared at the man who was as close to him as a brother and left the room, forcing Theron to turn to make space for him to do so.
‘How did you get in?’ Lykos asked, mildly curious, as he walked barefoot to his alcohol cabinet, picked a glass and poured an unhealthy amount of whisky into it.
‘I’m the head of an internationally renowned and respected security firm, Lykos. It would be worrying if Icouldn’tget in.’
Lykos paused for a beat, nodded in agreement and thew back the measure of whisky in the glass and poured himself another.
‘Do I get one, or are you planning to drink the whole bottle yourself?’
‘I was absolutely planning to drink the whole bottle myself and consider it an act of rudeness that you didn’t bring your own,’ Lykos declared as he ignored the wedding dress in the living area that Theron was staring suspiciously at and pulled back the French window to access the balcony.
He padded out onto the wooden decking, placed his glass on a chair and set about building the logs and firelighters in the firepit, wondering if he could put the dress on it in one go, or whether he’d have to cut it up. Suddenly the image of him sitting there with a pair of scissors, cutting a wedding dress into strips and feeding it into a fire seemed a little overly dramatic and he decided that he’d wait until Theron was gone.
The door slid open a little wider and Theron stepped out onto the decking and went to stand at the balcony, looking over the Paris skyline.
‘Nice digs,’ he commented.
Lykos barely spared him a grunt. Finally, he struck the match and threw it into the bottom of the triangle he’d built and stood back, watching the flames catch and twist and wished he hadn’t because he instantly thought of Marit.
‘Are you okay, Lykos?’
‘Don’t be such a girl. Of course I’m okay,’ he growled.
‘Liar.’
Lykos wasn’t sure whether it was Theron’s voice he heard, or Marit’s.
‘Honestly, after the crap you pulled with me and Summer, you think you’re going to get out of this so easy? No chance.’ Theron placed a bottle of whisky that had most definitelynotbeen in his alcohol cabinet on the side table and took a seat as if he was moving into the apartment.
‘What do you want from me?’ Lykos demanded.
‘First I’d like to know why you’re even here and not in Svardia getting your woman back.’
‘Promise me never to say that again. You sound like some eighties neanderthal. She’snotmy woman, she’s a goddamn princess and you will treat her with the respect she deserves.’
‘Okay!’ Theron said, raising his hands in surrender, the glass of whisky wedged between his little finger and thumb. But the tease in his tone didn’t last for long and eventually Theron levelled him with a gaze that Lykos knew was very close to the line. He wouldn’t accept anything but the truth now.
‘Everything I’ve done, everything I’ve achieved, earned, worked for. Everything I have. It was all for nothing.’
‘What on earth are you talking about?’ Theron demanded as if Lykos was mad.
‘I wasn’t enough for her.’ Shame cut through Lykos as he said the words. He stared at the ground between his feet, hating that he felt so much hurt, so much agony. Hating that Marit in any way reminded him of his mother. Hating the way he wasn’t sure which woman he was talking about. Hating that it made him tear up. ‘She walked away without a backward glance.’
They both had.
He clenched his jaw, hoping that somehow it would stop the press of wet heat against his eyes, that it would force down the swell of agony rising in his chest as he fought a sense of rejection and abandonment so acute that, if he’d been standing he would have fallen. Even now he was half afraid he might not get back up. His breath shuddered silently, the crackle and pop of the fire, the distant sounds of the Aegean on the Piraeus shoreline filled the silence for what felt like an eternity and somehow Lykos had known what Theron would ask.
‘Did you ever look for her? Your mother?’
‘She told me not to. She told me it was for her own protection. That Aeolus would use me to hurt her and keep hurting her. Tell me, Theron,’ Lykos demanded, glaring up at his old friend, ‘how could I have looked for her? How could I have, knowing, believing truly, that it would cause her physical harm?’
Lykos’s gut twisted, not feeling as sure as he had once done as a teenager.
‘And after we found out he’d died? I don’t get it. You kept track of Summer’s mother for years...but not your own.’
