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Dravin freezes, his hands on the hood of the car. I mirror his position, and we stare at each other with insects flickering and darting through the headlights. It’s a good thing we’re in the middle of nowhere, or we’d be earning some curious looks.

We breathe like that, both of us saying nothing.

“You do believe that you’re worthy of love, don’t you?” He’s made it pretty clear what he feels about personal questions by trying to get out of the car and get the hell away from me for a few minutes, and here I am, obviously taking a hint real well.

“I never considered it. It wasn’t on the table.”

“Brotherhood, then.”

His nostrils flare and he grimaces. He turns his head slightly, staring past me. I realize that it’s because he’s become very good at compensating for the glass eye. He never gets caught looking in two different directions.

“Why can’t we do this?”

“Aside from the fact that it’s one of the worst ideas ever? Even in your old life, did fucking ever fix anything?”

I bite down on my bottom lip at his crude words. “I don’t know. Sometimes it was fun, I guess. Pleasant enough.”

I wasn’t into one night stands, but in the past, I was free spirited enough to enjoy myself outside the boundaries of a committed relationship. I liked being single. I wasn’t ready for that kind of commitment and most people I met weren’t either.

“You’re Marcus’ little sister,” he groans.

I lean harder on my hands. “What bearing does that have on anything?”

“You’re a job.”

“You do realize how dirty that makes this all sound, and how wrong?” I know exactly what he means, but I can’t help but be stung. If he only knew how few people I’ve ever been spontaneously attracted to or kissed on a whim—exactly zero. “Also, sidenote, I’m a fucking person, Dravin.”

He grasps his hair so hard that it’s a miracle he doesn’t pull out strands. He does muss it up, which should make it look awful but on him, I just want to walk over and sink my fingers into those lush dark strands and arrange them artfully back into place.

Right before I do a whole lot of other less innocent things to him. He’s right. This is inadvisable. He’s just trying to be an adult and not fuck up an already fucked up situation. He doesn’t want me to hate him more than he thinks I already do.

“Did that kiss feel like hate to you?”

“No good decision was ever made sad, drunk, and lonely.”

I cross my arms around myself to stem the hurt. It’s been there for so long and I’m staring down an eternity of it. It makes me half crazy to think that way, so I try not to. But the trying only brings tears to my eyes.

Dravin’s right.

I’m a fucking mess tonight.

He doesn’t offer any solutions, but standing out here with my arms wrapped around myself, facing each other over an old, sun-bleached, faded black hood, I know that Dravin feels what I feel. He’s right here with me.

It helps.

It helps to suffer with him and not apart from him. Like we’re one semblance of a wounded, tattered whole.

I give him his moment of privacy by ducking back into the car.

I pull my seatbelt on and sit. And sit. And sit.

He doesn’t move. He doesn’t walk. He just stands there like a statue and breathes.

When he finally gets back in the car, his voice isn’t as rough, and he doesn’t grip the wheel like we’re about to try and outrace the devil himself in this old thing.

“I found this guy online. He has a bunch of antique bikes for sale. I haven’t shown anyone at the club yet, but I figure they’d be on board to lend me a truck so I could go pick a few of them up. Maybe piece together one good one out of all the carcasses.

I give him eye contact this time. “I didn’t know you were looking.”

“I think I’ve received enough instruction that to do anything else would be foolish.” He huffs, a wry sound to let me know he didn’t take any of my comments to heart. I’m right about blending in and he knows it. “Would you like to come with me? The guy lives a few hours from here.”

“Oh. I- when?”

“Sunday. It’ll give you tomorrow to spend the day sleeping and hydrating.”

“The key to not being hungover is to drink water until you’re sober and don’t go to sleep until you know damn sure you are.”

“Does that really work?”

“I don’t know.” I cough out a tiny laugh, even though it just felt like I’d never be able to laugh again. “A friend of mine told me that.”

“Will you come?”

“There might be better candidates. I don’t know anything about bikes.

I can’t give good advice as to what could be put together to make something functional.

I think it’s admirable to find something old.

I told you to do that. But there are simpler things, aren’t there?

Something that already runs?” Something safe , or at least as safe as a bike could be.

“Yes, but I want this. I like the look of this. I’ll be able to ride it, and restoring it is a good project.”

He didn’t have to ask me to come. He’s carefully hidden his real feelings about it, if he has any. This might just be a polite offer. Maybe he doesn’t trust me here alone while he’s gone for a grand total of six or seven hours.

The hot rush of anger I felt at finding out that he was watching me constantly doesn’t come. Really, that’s not what I hated at all. When I think about the massive effort it takes to keep tabs on someone the way he does, it blows my mind. I could never have that kind of dedication.

He could easily have told my brother to pound sand, but he decided to massively inconvenience himself instead.

“Yeah. I’ll go. Who knows, it might give me some inspiration for that painting I want to do.”

“The Hades one?”

I can already see the outline sketching itself out in my mind. My breath quickens and my heart kicks up. I haven’t been able to get even that far since I left my old life. I’ve been forcing, forcing, forcing it, and it wouldn’t come, but this appears so effortlessly.

A modern Hades surrounded by the rot and ruin of civilization.

A Hades before he found his Persephone. A Hades who dreamed of the kind of love he’d never have.

It’s an imperfect myth and the interpretation of it depends on who’s telling it.

A lot of Greek myths involved intense tragedy and things that are obviously wrong by today’s standards.

I would never, ever say that abducting someone and forcing them, hurting them, harming them, wrecking their life, and breaking them is romantic. That’s appalling.

But it’s a myth.

And myths can be retold.

“I’ll go with you,” I whisper into the dark. I don’t reach out to him, but the words wrap around both of us, drawing us together as if we aren’t already intrinsically bound.