Page 21 of Hate To Love You

He took me away to this silly mushroom castle of a house that he built for me like I was a princess. Yes, I’m married to him, but he promised it could always be fake. He promised to help, and he’ll keep those promises. Both our dads are here, drying out downstairs while he tries to mediate because he wants to keep his word.

He could have just let his dad take the company. He could have let him crush my father. He owns a majority stake in the company, so it really would have been him doing the crushing and owning. But he didn’t. Instead, he asked for me. And now he has a plan that he thinks will work. He doesn’t care about money, and I don’t think it’s because he has so much of it that he doesn’t know what to do with it. I think it’s because even if he didn’t have the money, people would always come first. Family. Friends. Our dads. Me.

I saw this man, this man who had everything, and I was blinded with rage. I’d been that way for a long time. It sucked, holding on to it. All the shitty things that happened to me after Apollo left, I was mad at him for that too. I was mad that I didn’t have my best friend to grow up with. That I didn’t have him to talk to. That he was the one who went to college. That I worked my ass off at my dad’s company, learning everything I could in place of me going to college because we couldn’t afford it. That I stuck around and supported my dad because he needed me, and the company needed me after a few years, too. I blamed my sometimes anger about that on Apollo too. I felt so stifled and smothered. I wanted more than to live in a small city in the middle of nowhere. I wanted to see the world. I wanted to do everything I couldn’t. I wanted more, and I hated myself for wanting that because I felt like a traitor. I felt like my mom.

But maybe I misjudged him. Maybe Apollo isn’t the man I made him out to be.

He pulled my dad out of the pool first, like he knew my dad was the shittier swimmer. He was grinning the whole time, which only encouraged our dads to stop spitting and hissing for a second. He’s downstairs with them now, doing god knows what.

Shower. I need to shower. I need to shower and get into clean clothes and stop moping around.

The bathroom in this room is insane.

It’s also insane getting out of wet boots, jeans, and a clinging T-shirt.

Somehow, I manage.

I throw myself under the hot rain shower head spray. It glows a ton of different colors. The floor is a mosaic made of tiny little tiles and colored stones, and it looks like a big tree with leaves jutting all over the place. They go halfway up the walls. The toilet is bright blue, and the sink is made out of stone. The shower is also tiled totally out of little pebbles that don’t look like anything. They’re just pretty.

I refuse to think about Apollo naked in the hallway last night. Or his…um…stuff. Package. I don’t think about how he looked, climbing out of the pool, soaked and muscled for miles. Powerful. And how he looked twice the size of our dads, twice as powerfully built. Long and lean, soaking wet, and completely at home. The god of water, screw Poseidon.

My body only gets hot because the water is steamy, and my fun zones only feel fun because they were cold earlier, and now they’re hot, and it makes them tingle. My skin is now free from clammy clothes, and it takes time to adjust. That’s why it feels sensitive all over.

I’ve just lathered up a bunch of really good-smelling shampoo into my hair when I hear the knock at the door. And then my name in that slightly rough voice. “Patience?”

I yelp and immediately get shampoo in my eyes, which makes me yelp again. I dive under the spray. “What?” I sound testy. It’s only because this shampoo burns like I just sprayed myself in the face with an entire angry science lab and kitchen combined.

“Can we talk for a second?”

Blinking eyes that are now tearing up, I rinse the rest of the suds out of my hair and shut off the water. The bathroom came fully stocked, so there are bottles of leave-in conditioner on the counter. I quickly wrap the world’s fluffiest red towel around myself and take a second smaller one for my hair.

Damn fluffy cloud-like towels. They just have to be so fluffy and perfect, don’t they?

“Just a minute.”

I towel my hair and rub the conditioner through it. I freeze when I stare at the pile of sopping clothes on the floor. And at my ruined pink boots. I didn’t bring anything clean in here. Nothing dry. The options are to squeeze back into wet jeans or go out in a towel.

“I don’t have anything to wear,” I finally whisper back, going to the door. “We’ll just have to talk like this.”

“Do you want me to get you something?”

My mind immediately goes there, which makes all my lady bits tingle again. Total change in temperature. The towel that’s too soft. Those are easy reasons that totally make sense. Apollo. Touching. My underwear. My bras. My clothing.

“No, I’m good. Just…tell me whatever it is.”

“I convinced our dads to stay the night.”

I just about drop the towel right off of myself as my jaw drops too. “How the hell did you do that?”

I swear his voice has a hint of laughter in it. “I just asked them. I think the speech you gave outside was more than enough to guilt them into it.”

“That wasn’t guilt. It was the truth.”

“There’s just one problem.”

I think there’s more than one, but I go icy inside. “What’s that?”

“I only have three bedrooms.”

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