AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You’re not. You’re on the ground, but you’re not at home.”
“No shit.”
“This is Hades’s house. Home is next door.”
The next thing that comes out of my mouth is a laugh. It’s horrible and wrong, and I can’t even get the air to sustain it. “Is that where it is? Could I go back to before all this bullshit? Would that be okay?”
“Before what? Before Ollie? Before your mom?”
“You don’t understand.” Fuck—Idon’t understand. None of this makes any sense. I keep seeing night air and clouds, hear helicopter rotors beating and beating and beating, and I shouldn’t be able to. This whole room is full of sun.
“What’s going on?”
Fucking great. It’s Zeus, and I can’t even punch him. I can’t even look at him until his face is near Ares’s.
“He freaked out and pulled the bar out of the wall.” Ares says it under his breath, as if I’m not going to be able to hear him from six inches away.
“Okay.” Zeus smiles when he says it, like a pile of shattered glass and ripped-apart studs are the very least of what he’s encountered in his life. “Herc, is this about going to the mountain? We can make different plans if you can’t go.”
It stops my entire brain.
Zero thoughts pass through. There’s only the clouds and the rotors and the rush of wind.
“What?”
“He thinks he’s in a helicopter,” Ares mentions.
“No, I fuckingdon’t.I’m asking what the—what the hell you’re talking about.”
“We don’t have to go to the mountain,” Zeus repeats, slow enough for me to understand through what’s obviously a complete mental collapse. “If you can’t go, we’ll figure it out.”
“Shehas to go. Daisy has to go. That’s what all of you decided.”
“Daisy can’t go without you. And she needs you.”
“No, she doesn’t. She needs her—her—her—” I have fucking lost it. “Her dad. Not me.”
“She needs both of you.” Zeus has taken Ares’s place, and it was so seamless that I didn’t see either of them move. One of his hands is on my shoulder. My left shoulder. The one that doesn’t hurt. “Are you thinking of Ollie?”
I’m always thinking of Ollie. Not a day goes by that I don’t think of him, or my mom.
“She’s the third one.”
A hint of a frown. “Daisy?”
“Yeah. She’s the third.”
“The third…what?”
“The third person I couldn’t make the trade for. But you don’t fucking get it, do you?”
He pauses, and I know he’s forcing himself not to saynobody wants your trade.“No, I suppose not. Can you explain it to me?”
A hot surge of anger is all that makes the words possible. “My mom only had me. Ollie only had me. There was nobody to hate me afterward. You can still save yourselves. You figured it out in time.”
“Figured what out?”
“That I’m fucking useless. And you know what? I can’t do it.” That awful, soulless laugh lurches out of me. “I can’t do it again. I can’t be the one who’s left. I’d rather die, and I fuckingcan’t.”
