Page 55 of The Hard Way

I twisted around. “Odin!”

“Eyes on the screen,” he said.

“We haven’t exhausted our nonbrutality possibilities.”

He continued to rub my shoulders. I couldn’t believe how tense I was, how good it felt. “If we do exhaust our other possibilities, there is that. I make him confess.”

“It’s not just about the morality of it, or the violence,” I said. “We can’t be public about helping my sisters like that. I mean, you use whatever medieval interrogation tactics on Hank you have, Denko will eventually find out and put it together. I want to keep Vanessa out of jail and save the farm, but not if it puts all my sisters in danger. Or you guys!” My eyes began to cloud with tears. “I’m not watching. I can’t see.”

Odin set his chin on my shoulder. “I can see, goddess. I’m watching for you.”

“Thanks,” I whimpered.

“It wouldn’t have to be obvious,” he said. “Men make confessions for a lot of reasons.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying I’ll go dark for you, goddess. The others won’t, but I would. I’ll always go dark for you.”

His words chilled me, and I knew suddenly it was about more than that. I didn’t know what he had in mind, but I knew we’d lose a little piece of him. Maybe all of him. “You can’t.”

He stroked my hair. “Sometimes that’s all we have left.”

“Not yet,” I said. “We haven’t lost yet.”

“I would.”

I slammed my finger onto the pause button and looked up at him. “I don’t want you to. It’s not who we are, to execute somebody or really fucking destroy them or whatever you have in mind. It’s not who we are.”

His eyes looked so tired. My Odin was so weary. So troubled. “It’s who I am.”

“No! Not anymore. We’re all together, and we’re making a new life.” I didn’t want to lose a piece of him. I was scared, though. I felt my eyes heat with tears again.

“There’s no such thing as a new life,” Odin said. “You have only the one life, and your past is part of it.”

“Fuck that. Today is a new day,” I said.

He watched my eyes. He didn’t have to say anything, because,Today is a new day? I heard it for what it was: a cheap, meaningless platitude. It was as if Odin was one of those huge, beautiful paintings we’d seen in Italy, all drama and tragedy and human suffering and emotion. Muscles and togas and flesh and gods and sky. And all I had to compare was a dime store trinket.

Today is a new day.Whatever. Even so, I went on, “Together we can be anything. We can do anything.” More platitudes.

“We can’t repair souls,” he said.

I was crying for real now. For Odin, for my sisters. I shoved a hand into his hair. “I love you. I don’t want you to go dark.”

“I already am dark, goddess.”

Zeus came in. “You see something?”

“It’s nothing,” I sniffled, sitting back down and hitting play. The last thing I needed was for the two of them to get into it.

Zeus unwrapped a packet of biscuits and opened the jar of chocolate sauce and started dipping them in and eating them. “Most. Boring. Show. Ever.”

“Right?” I paused it again on a Nancy-like lady, but no. Not Nancy. I hit play. “So boring.”

“You’re bored, goddess?” Odin started untying his shoes. I thought maybe he was getting comfortable, but then he pulled the laces clear out of the shoes.

“What are you doing?”

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