She stiffened, Maybe wondering about the same things he was. When had their Marvel date nights become a regular thing? How did these moments of intimacy keep on popping up if they were supposed to hate each other? Why did they sometimes act like a couple when she was supposed to be his prisoner and him her captor?
And perhaps the most disturbing question of all: why did laying here like this in each other’s arms feel so good? So natural?
In the end, she didn’t comment on their increasingly blurry dynamic. Of course, she didn’t. Instead, she asked, “How are they going to do another Ant-Man after what happened in Infinity War?”
Aaannd they were off to the safe topic races. Since neither of them had seen the trailer, they spent the rest of their awake time knocking around guesses about what my transpire in the second Ant Man movie and eventually drifted off to sleep.
However, he woke up with an agitated feeling in his gut despite sleeping nightmare free through the night.
They were sticky with sweat from sleeping in that position all night, but he could barely stand it when she disentangled herself from him and rose out of the bed. He hated having to leave her alone in the room for the couple of minutes he needed to take his morning leak. And when he rushed back, he couldn’t stop tracking her every movement as they put on their clothes and got ready to leave.
It was enough to make him wonder who had imprisoned whom as they walked downstairs.
They found Waylon at the bar, buying a cup of joe from Doc, who always ran a coffee service in the morning for all the bikers who spent the night.
Doc greeted them cheerily. But Waylon simply told Persy, “Go get my woman, and tell her it’s time to come downstairs.”
Persy immediately turned to do his bidding, which annoyed Hades. Nobody said no to Waylon, but that didn’t mean he got to treat her like a dog.
Not that Waylon stuck around for an etiquette lesson. Just started walking out the door without so much as a thank you for the truck.
But then he turned back with a, “Goddammit, I forgot to give her the key to unlock the door.”
“I’ll take it up to her,” Hades said, holding out his hand. “Why don’t you go pull around the truck? I’ll make sure your woman doesn’t try to run.”
“Alright,” Waylon agreed. Judging from the consternated look on his face, he didn’t think his old lady running wasn’t outside the realm of possibility.
Both the Lord and the Devil knew, Hades was in no position to tell Waylon how to handle his woman. But considering everything his cousin had planned for that nurse of his, they seemed to be off to an inauspicious start.
He was worried about his cousin. Maybe that was why the agitated feeling grew worse as he walked up the stairs, the alarm bells getting louder and louder.
Yeah, that had to be why, he told himself.
But then he found Persy sitting on the hallway floor with her head leaned against the remaining closed door upstairs. She was telling Waylon’s woman something with an urgent look on her face. And tears were shining in her eyes.
CHAPTER 20
PERSEPHONE
There’s this parable people like to tell—especially the rich male kind. A circus elephant is attached by a rope to a stake when it is a baby. No matter how much it tugs, it cannot break free. So, eventually it stops trying. As it grows older, the circus goes from town to town and continues to attach the elephant to poles with nothing but a piece of rope. And it never tries to escape, even after it grows. It becomes so much bigger and stronger than one piece of puny rope. But the thing is, the elephant has been conditioned into an imprisoned mindset, so it never bothers to tug on the rope.
Silly elephant, the story seems to say. If only it wasn’t so conditioned, it would realize it was stronger than the rope. It would realize it was free.
But here was the thing about that parable that I’d come to realize over my years with Hades. The elephant had an imprisoned mindset because a circus, no matter how much fun it looks like from the outside, is a prison.
And while it is true that the elephant becomes stronger than the rope, that doesn’t mean it could ever be free. Say the elephant manages to break free of the rope. What happens then?
It certainly wouldn’t be allowed to escape. The men who had owned the elephant since birth would chase it down. Tranquilize it. And when the elephant woke up, it would no longer be tied by a simple rope, it would be shackled. Perhaps even encaged. Or worse.
The truth is, the men who considered the elephant their property would kill it before they ever let it escape.
When you think about it—I mean, really think it through—there is not one escape scenario that doesn’t leave the elephant worse off than when it was simply tied to a stake with a rope.
Maybe the elephant wasn’t conditioned. Maybe it had figured out the truth—that it couldn’t be free, so it might as well stay put and not fight it.
And maybe that makes the elephant wiser than any of the people who love to tell others this story.
Smart Elephant.
