That’s why it’s so hard to see.
My eyes brim with tears and the salt burns my skin, acid rain in miniature. The front of my dress is soaked, hot with the tears, and I feel crazy. Unhinged. Detached from the world. If I could float up through the ceiling and into the center of the sun, I would. Better that than having to stand here in front of this man who hates me. Or worse—who doesn’t care about me at all.
I wish for the bouquet. At least it was something to hold on to during whatever comes next. But we’re here alone. No Reya, no other girls, nobody but us. “If you’re going to fuck me then just do it.”
“I’m not going to. Don’t worry your pretty head.”
It stings. It shouldn’t.
Zeus steps closer, going down on one knee, and my body recoils, trying to hide at the foot of the bed. He puts a hand in the front of my dress and yanks me to standing, and then that hand is on my chin, tilting my face down. He swipes at my tears, again, again, and then pulls an honest-to-god handkerchief from his pocket. At the sight of it I burst out laughing. He ignores it and dabs at my eyes until the tears have slowed enough for me to see his face.
And it is devastating.
I have seen him angry. I’ve seen him furious. But I’ve never seen him sorry. It cuts through his eyes, razor sharp. Sorry? I don’t believe it. I don’t believe the dark circles or the anxious set to his jaw. The things he said—the things he did—
“Why are you looking at me like that? How do you look like that?” I suck in an enormous breath but it does nothing to relieve the hunger for air and peace and safety.
“It wasn’t supposed to happen that way.” Hands on my face, so I can’t look away. His voice distorts and I miss what he’s saying, the words fluttering away like birds set loose from a cage. Zeus shakes me. “Brigit. Listen.”
“I can’t hear you.” My own voice sounds strange, alien.
His eyes burn. “Fuck.” Then his hands leave my face and a pressure at my middle intensifies along with the lightning-bright anger in his eyes until I’m afraid.
“Stop,” I say. “Please, stop.”
“No.”
Then he tears the front of the dress in two.
It was no cheap bodice, no flimsy material, but it’s no match for him and it hurts coming off, almost more than it hurt going on. It doesn’t want to relinquish my skin. Zeus curses again and stands for more leverage. The dress shreds. I don’t care about the nightmare wedding gown but the puppet-string pull of the fabric makes me feel like I’m falling to pieces, too. And if I know him, he’ll fuck me when he’s done with the dress. It will be vicious. It will be senseless. And I will never get over it.
The tulle comes next, then the slip and the petticoat until I’m naked in the remnants of a wedding dress.
I’ve lost it.
I can’t stop the tears, so I don’t even try. Closing my eyes doesn’t stop them either. Hot droplets make their way down to my breasts and I can feel my mind losing its connection to my body. Please. Happen faster. Happen faster so I don’t have to be here with this man that hates me and this man that I still want, god, it’s so fucking embarrassing how much I want him.
How much I hoped for him to save me from that cathedral. How many times I prayed for him to come rescue me and take revenge on my father and my uncle for daring to touch me.
Will Zeus touch me now?
He doesn’t. There’s only the scratch of tulle against my bare shin.
I open my eyes.
He’s moving across the room, jacket off already, shirt unbuttoned. It comes off with the same precision he uses for everything. Zeus tosses it and it lands on a chair, but still manages to look freshly pressed. His belt. His pants. They all fall to the floor. He disappears from view. He’s so beautiful to look at. All muscle and height and grace and why, why do the most dangerous men have to be the most intoxicating? It’s not fair.
His hand on my cheek is the thing that alerts me to the fact that I’ve closed my eyes again. His touch is gentle, shockingly so, as it glides down to my shoulder, then my arm, then my wrist.
Zeus takes my hand.
And because I am useless, worthless, crushed, I follow him.
In the bathroom the shower is already running, the air heated, the kiss of the humidity on my skin relaxes me against my will. The shower is huge in the same way the tub is huge—big enough for him, and by extension big enough for me. My feet warm on wet tile when he positions me under the hot stream of water. I didn’t know they were cold in the first place.
My eyes are so swollen that the plain water stings, so I close my eyes again and vow to let it happen. Let anything happen. It doesn’t matter. I’ll survive it, because there’s nothing else to do but survive.
What happens is a pair of big hands in my hair, working through the hairspray and curls at a pace so leisurely I can’t believe it’s him.
Shampoo. Conditioner. Warm scents, gentle hands. He’s thorough. It’s difficult to keep crying when this is happening. It soothes the raw nerves. I shouldn’t trust him this way. I know that.
I know.
At some point I become aware that he’s humming.
A song—a familiar one. We were dancing to it the other night, before he destroyed me in front of the entire world.
“Who are you right now?” I don’t open my eyes when I ask the question and his hands don’t stop moving over my hair.
“The same person as always, dearest.” He resumes humming the song, and without looking at him I can picture how he might be if he wasn’t himself—if he’d had a different life, if he wasn’t so cruel, so awful. On a beach somewhere. In the sun.
“You don’t do this.” My throat is raw.
“Don’t I?” He clicks his tongue. “Either your memory is extraordinarily poor, or you take things too literally.”
Yes—the bath. He has done this once before. It’s just that the bath doesn’t fit with the rest of him. My teeth chatter. Impossible. It should be impossible, because the water is so hot and nothing about this room is cold.
“It’s the shock.” His hands drop down to rub circles around the hinges of my jaw. “That, and adrenaline.”
“How would you know about that?”
“Do you think I was born in a suit with piles of money?”
“Y—yes.”
“I wasn’t.”
The mind likes a good story, and mine is no exception. I can feel myself leaning in, wanting more, even though I shouldn’t. Jesus, I shouldn’t. “F-fine. I know they don’t make suits that small.”
He laughs. “They make suits in any size. Not many homeless women can afford them, however. From what I gather my mother had a fondness for hard drugs and harder men, so she left me at the public hospital at the edge of the city.”
His hands leave me, and it’s all I can do not to reach out for them. Come back, come back.
Then—a soft cloth on one of my shoulders. He lets it rest there until the tension crawling up my neck is gone again, then works it over my arm, down to my wrist, and over each of my fingers. “Why,” I whisper.
“Because you couldn’t hear me in that state,” he says, as if he regularly sees women in such a hysterical state that they’ve lost the ability to hear.