Page 57 of Hero Worship

She wakes up again after an hour. “Did they catch the guy?”

“I haven’t heard anything since we took off.”

Daisy’s quiet for a minute. She doesn’t put any space between us. Not an inch. “The windows in the house are bulletproof. Why are we on the plane?”

“What do you remember from your dream? Also—here.”

She uses her yawn to swallow one of her painkillers. “It was the same nightmare as always, but it…” She scrunches her nose. “Broke, because…”

“Because you had a seizure in the middle of it.”

“Fuck,” she says softly.

“I know.”

It’s after sunrise when the plane touches down at LaGuardia. I rub Daisy’s arm until she wakes up. Three identical SUVs wait on the tarmac for us, and Daisy sighs.

“Did they at least catch the guy?”

At that very moment, I receive a text.

Shane: Nothing yet.

I show it to her.

“I hope he doesn’t feel too bad.” Her tone is absent, like she knows it’s the kind thing to care about Shane’s feelings, but either she doesn’t or she’s too tired to worry about it right now.

“I’m sure he’ll be fine.”

The plane trundles to a stop next to the line of SUVs, and Daisy presses herself tight to my side. “Hercules.”

“Yeah?”

“Who knows I’m coming home?”

“Everybody.”

A few beats of silence. My stomach doesn’t have anywhere to fall. If she’s pissed at me over this, kicks me out before we get there, then I’ll accept it. She’ll be safe with her family, at least, and that’s where they want her, anyway. Now that I’ve got her here, that’s where she’ll want to stay.

She lifts a hand to touch my cheek. “It’s okay.”

“If I thought there was another option—”

“We’d be in my bedroom right now. I know.”

We get into the second SUV without incident. One of Zeus’s people drives us through the city to the fancy, quiet neighborhood where Daisy’s dad and his brothers have built their houses all in a row. The entire super-property is fenced, but not the individual yards. She should be safe anywhere inside that fence.

Daisy doesn’t say much. The closer we get to the houses, the more reserved she seems. She’s not a very loud person in general, but…

This is weird.

“Do you…not want to be here? Because I’ll have them take us somewhere else. I don’t care what Zeus wants.”

“You don’t?”

“No. I only care what you want.”

Her black eyes search my face. The SUV can’t get as dark as her house, so she can see me, and she should be okay for a little while. Long enough to get inside.

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