Page 17 of Zeus

I lean the boxes against the wall beside the door and fish the keys back out of my pocket to unlock the door. I realize everything I'll do around Zeus is going to annoy him because he's simmering behind me with his own set of boxes.

"I'm going," I snap.

"I didn't say a fucking thing," he says in a flat tone.

I nearly drop the fucking boxes when the door swings open and slams against the inside wall of the tiny living room.

"Great," Zeus says as he steps inside and looks at the doorknob planted in the drywall.

"That was already there," I say. "There's no dust on the floor below it. Not that it matters. The worse the place is, the better."

I carry my boxes labeled "kitchen" across the room, not having to go very far. I know from the dossier given to me that this house is only about eight hundred square feet. It has three tiny bedrooms and a shared bathroom.

I glance up at the bowed ceiling as I walk into the kitchen, guessing someone took out a wall to make the house feel bigger. It would be my luck that this place isn't structurally sound and the entire thing caves in on me at some point.

I drop the boxes on the counter and walk back through to grab more.

We work in silence for the next hour, unloading the truck and unpacking everything, and it's honestly sad that it doesn't take longer.

"I can unload supplies in the spare bedroom if you want to tackle the dishes in the kitchen," I offer, knowing there's more work on my end than what I'm offering him.

He gives me a simple nod of agreement before walking toward the living room windows.

I don't offer a hand when he struggles to open the paint-sealed windows.

I grin as I walk down the narrow hallway, as he starts cussing and grumbling. I know he wants the house to air out, but it's going to take a little more than chilly mountain air to get the stench out of the furniture.

I pause just outside the door of the spare bedroom, but there's no point in telling him that by tomorrow he won't even notice the stench. He'll figure it out himself.

I do my best to get lost in my task, but there's no way to ignore the sounds coming from the kitchen.

I don't know if the man is getting into character as "Lyle" or if he's honestly just this angry all the time.

He wasn't a very happy young man when I knew him before. He struggled under the weight of impossible expectations set by his adoptive parents, standards no one ever could've met. That didn't stop him from trying, thinking that his success would finally make them love him.

I don't know if that ever happened, but with all the cussing coming from the other room, it sounds like the man hasn't changed much, other than now he seems more vocal about his distaste rather than just being a broody bastard.

Chapter 8

Zeus

From the moment I walked into this house, I noticed that every single thing carried a stench. The furniture, the clothes that were provided for me to fit into a world I'd never willingly be a part of, if it weren't for the greater good, stinks like a musty house with a roof leak.

Only right now, the stench is covered with the most heavenly aroma coming from the kitchen. The whole house can't be more than a thousand square feet, so it's not unheard of that what Zayne is making in the tiny kitchen, a mere fifteen to twenty feet away from my bedroom door, is drifting in here.

I don't have to get out of my musty bed and look out there to know exactly what he's making. The scent of fried chicken, tangled with the thick scent of pasta sauce, is so very familiar that it makes me wonder if the very last time I smelled it was in his family's kitchen on a random day of the week.

I hate the remembrance, the way that something so simple can easily take me back to a time when I hated every second of my life except those evenings when I would give in to the urge to seek him out, placing me on his front doorstep. I both loved the way he always swung the door wide open for me and hated how much my nervous system would calm at the sight of him.

He was always my greatest weakness, and I have sat and thought about the exact second we first interacted a million times. It wasn't at school. He's two years younger than I am, and we ran in a different circle of friends.

It wasn't some sort of business gathering for our parents. The Harmonds and Jenkins were always business rivals, and each family avoided the other at all costs.

I've never been able to pinpoint when we got involved. It's as if that memory is gone for some reason. It’s as if my mind won't let me remember it, so I can't dissect the millions of ways I could've acted differently to prevent me from spending so many hours of my life with him stuck in my head.

My pulse kicks up as the smells swirl around me. Half of me wants to confront him, and the other half wants to avoid him at all costs, despite the obvious way he's trying to draw me out of the room.

I'm aware enough to know that the man could easily be making himself dinner, and his actions have little or nothing to do with me, but why this meal? Why this first night we're alone together?