To his credit, Hades remained stoic. His voice didn’t even tremble when he answered, “I know.”
I lowered the gun and released the slide. “If I agree not to shoot you, can you agree not to…”
I trailed off, my voice going weak. I couldn’t shoot him. And I couldn’t repeat his terrible threat. “Please, don’t do what you said you would. If you ever cared about me at all, please don’t do that.”
“Okay,” he said carefully. “Okay. I won’t kill you in front of your father, if you put down the gun.”
“Okay.” With one last big exhale, I handed him the gun butt-first, the way I’d seen him hand firearms off to Jam when Hades had done something terrible with it that required fingerprint removal or disappearing it altogether.
Hades took the gun—my last chance, my only chance, to gain my freedom—away from me.
I’d failed. I’d failed myself. I’d failed my sister.
Just failed at life all around. Five years. I’d only had to go for five years without tugging on that rope. Without giving some rando my name just because she asked for it.
Weak, weak elephant.
But I was resigned to my fate.
Hades put the gun aside, then stepped forward and curled his hands around my neck.
I closed my eyes and waited for the snap. I hoped this kind of death didn’t come with a lot of shock and pain, like gun violence. I hoped it was instant, like in the mov—
My eyes popped right back open when, instead of snapping my neck, Hades’s mouth crashed down on mine.
CHAPTER 23
PERSEPHONE
Hades wasn’t killing me, he was kissing me. He was kissing me like he hadn’t kissed me in three years.
“You didn’t shoot me dead,” he said between kisses, his voice filled with awe. “You could have, but you didn’t.”
Weak…I had been so weak. But he spoke of what I did in the same tone religious people used to talk about miracles.
“Please say I can have you,” he begged, trailing kisses down my neck. “I will give you any amount of money you want. All the yarn in the world. Just let me have you again. Please, ma belle.”
My head swam. Hades was begging—begging me. Even though…
“You don’t have to ask,” I reminded him. “It was part of the deal, remember? Once a week. I keep my promises too.”
It was the green light he asked for, but his kisses came to an abrupt stop.
“This isn’t about that fuckin’ pact,” he growled, his voice hoarse with anger.
He pinned me with that gator-jaw silver gaze, his hands heavy on my neck. “I want you. I’ve been wanting you since Day One, even when I knew it wasn’t right. First, because you weren’t on the right side of eighteen. Then, because of what your father let happen to my mother. I tried not to want you.”
He let out a ragged breath. “I tried to hate you. Tried to break free of this obsession over you. I was supposed to kill you that first night. But I could never bring myself to shoot. Because I want you. Stephanie…”
His use of my real name stopped my heart. And the tender look—the tender look I’d come to believe I’d just imagined over the last three years—it came back as he said, “I want you more than I want revenge.”
My heart soared at his words, and my chest filled up with something I hadn’t felt in a long time. Hope.
I’d thought about the captive elephant so much through the years. Turned the parable over and over in my mind. But there was one untold aspect of the story that I’d glossed over, along with all the other people who told it. Being a circus performer, living an unconventional life that most other elephants couldn’t even imagine…it was fun.
I suddenly remembered the unit on catchphrases and idioms we did in the seventh grade, where we all had to present on the origin of common sayings. I got “saved by the bell,” which turned out not to be a school thing, but a morbid grave thing because they used to have to put bells in coffins just in case the person they thought had passed wasn’t really dead. People had laughed at my presentation.
But everyone got weirdly quiet for the one on how “running away with the circus” went from being the subject of a popular post-Civil War book to a catchphrase for wanting to escape your boring life.
