Page 35 of Zeus

"Clear my head or some shit," he adds.

"Okay," I mumble, not liking the idea of being here alone with my thoughts.

I glance over at him to find him looking over his shoulder, staring at me expectantly.

"You coming?" he asks.

It takes every ounce of training I've accumulated over the years not to make a yipping noise and jump for joy at the offer.

Instead, I channel all the calmness I can muster, shrugging my shoulders. "What the hell else do I have to do today?"

As I walk out of the house, letting him lock it up behind us, I'm reminded that we can't have any real conversations in the vehicle without Cerberus overhearing them at minimum. Where we were parked at the diner didn't give us the best viewpoint of what was going on with the vehicle while we were having our meeting, so we have to assume someone could've either put a tracker on it or wired it for audio. The invite feels less inclusive now and more like a pity offering.

Instead of declining, I drop into the passenger seat, waiting for him to get behind the wheel.

He doesn't hesitate to slap on his seatbelt and back out of the driveway. When he uses the hand crank to roll his window all the way down, I do the same, letting the cool mountain air swirl around me in one of the most cleansing ways I've ever experienced.

"Wish I had my motorcycle," he mutters, breaking the silence after several minutes of driving.

"Same," I say wistfully.

The backstory is that I'm freshly out of prison, broke, and looking for work, and Zeus has lost everything after getting arrested and awaiting trial. We can’t look like we have a lot of money, so the bikes aren’t an option. It also helps the storyline of why two grown men are living together. But just to be safe, the familial link was added to prevent people from thinking there was any form of homosexuality, considering just how homophobic so many in these groups are.

"Want something?"

I snap my eyes open, unsure of exactly when I closed them, and turn to look at him.

He's rolling into the parking lot of a rundown gas station so old that I doubt the gas pumps still work.

"A Diet Coke would be great."

He slowly blinks in my direction.

"What?" I say, my voice playful. "After the meal I ate at lunch, I have to cut calories when I can. Why? What are you getting?"

"An energy drink," he says before climbing out of the truck.

I could preach the dangers of energy drinks to the man, but he's grown and can calculate his own risks and rewards.

It takes longer than it should to buy two drinks before he's walking outside with a black plastic bag dangling from his hand.

"Upset stomach?" I ask, thinking lunch might've hit him the same way it did me. Thankfully, my stomach is no longer threatening to revolt, and I attribute most of that to the fresh air.

"What?" he asks as he climbs inside. "Even if it was, I wouldn't risk the numerous diseases I'm sure are on a toilet seat in a place like that. I think Methuselah's grandmother was running the register. I was half tempted to just throw down twenty bucks and walk out."

"Why didn't you?" I counter with a grin and a gentle thanks on my lips when he pulls out a bottle of Diet Coke. Since he seems more agitated than when he walked in, I bite back the argument that a canned drink would've tasted crispier.

"I don't like being mean to people who don't deserve it. It's like bad karma or something."

"Makes sense," I say, wishing we were truly alone and not being monitored, so I could remind him just how mean he was to me at times when we were younger.

He drops his drink in the cup holder, and in less than a minute, we're back on the winding roads. I don't know how much time he has spent running around these mountains, but he handles the twists and hairpin curves with ease. So well that I have to shift my gaze out the window to avoid getting caught staring at his hand on the steering wheel.

Twenty minutes of silence later, he turns into some sort of national park. I wish I had seen the name, but I was too distracted trying to be distracted to notice.

Before long, we're pulling up to an overlook that makes much of the mountain easy to see, and it's a gorgeous sight. I wait as he backs into a spot, surprised there isn't a horde of people up here ruining the silence with chatter and the click of camera shutters.

I open my door first, stretching with my arms over my head. The beds we have aren't exactly made for comfort, and the lack of sleep is, in my opinion, one of the worst things about this type of work.