by Erin Hayes
For a moment, I have a vision of this being my mornings, albeit with a more successful attempt at breakfast. I can imagine waking up with Max in my arms, sharing the start of the day with this little family and living a different life than what I had imagined life as a mortal should be.
The mental image is so strong, I nearly ignore my phone going off.
Nearly.
I take it out and enter my PIN. There are a few voicemails, but what sticks out to me is three emails. Thumbing through them, I see that they’re contact requests from people who want to hire my services. I will myself to look into their backgrounds, tapping into my god powers to look at their love lines.
These three—a movie star, a fashion designer, and a photographer— are people that I can set up with their soulmates to inspire more people to find love. I’ve always found that it’s so interesting how mortals work and how their lives are intertwined with each other. In my mind’s eye, I can see the connections that could be made. The people who meet at their weddings. The teenaged girl who looks at Instagram pics of her movie star crush in love and vows not to settle.
“Well, I’ll be,” I murmur, speaking up for the first time in a while. It seems that my being in a good mental place has removed a block from people wanting to find love.
“What?” Max glances back at me. She flips something that looks like a pancake.
I shift and put my phone away. “Work stuff. Don’t worry about it.”
A smile appears at the corners of her lips, and she gives me a hooded look. “Good stuff, it sounds like.”
The doorbell rings, cutting through the conversation and the general mood of the kitchen. Max whips her head toward the sound, and I can see her pale in response.
Something’s wrong.
I get to my feet.
“No, just stay here,” she says, waving me to sit down. “Please, Damien. Dad? Can you make sure breakfast doesn’t get burned?”
“Mommy?” Gotham asks sharply as Hector switches places with Max.
“Stay here, Gotham.” She glances at me, and there’s restlessness swirling in those brilliant green eyes. “You too, Damien. I’ll handle this.”
I’ll handle this. What needs to be handled at eight in the morning?
I frown and follow a beat after her. Hector casts me a wary glance but doesn’t say anything. “Okay, Gotham,” he says a little too loudly, “here’s your breakfast.”
Something’s wrong.
I pause, just far enough away from the door to see Max’s back as she talks to someone. From her rigid stance with her arms across her chest, she’s clearly unhappy, talking to whoever’s addressing her.
And it’s like she’s trying to bar their way in.
“No,” she says, shaking her head. “You know you’re not supposed to be here.”
“I just want to see my son,” a voice slurs on the other end.
A chill runs through my veins. So this is Logan, Max’s ex and Gotham’s father. Due to Max asking me to keep her privacy, I haven’t investigated her love life beyond what she told me yesterday. But I realize that I should have done it a long time ago.
Privacy be damned.
The hair on the back of my neck pricks up from danger.
“I will call the cops,” Max threatens, taking a step back, so I can see her silhouetted by the morning sun.
“You bitch,” the man says. I get a glimpse of him, a beanie over a grayish pallor, dark eyes and a nose that has been broken at least once. “Trying to keep him from me?”
“What’s going on?” I ask, finally stepping in.
Max whirls at me, and her eyes flash in terror. No, in warning. The man leans his head in the doorway, not—I notice—taking a step across the threshold, but enough to get a good glimpse of me.
“Who are you?” he sneers.
“I could ask the same of you,” I say, crossing my arms. Even though I know exactly who he is. And I can dive even further into his past to see that he hasn’t had a past full of love. His father was abusive to his mother. They split when he was little, and she loved the bottle more than her son.
This man—Logan—hasn’t had a lot of good examples in his life. I’d almost pity him, except I can see where his love line diverges sharply from Max’s. He got abusive, falling into the same cycle that his family did.
Thank fuck Max had the presence of mind not to stay with him.
“I’m Maxine’s husband,” Logan says lazily.
“Ex-husband,” Max hisses.
Logan curls his lip at her. “Ex-husband. And for good reason. Maxine is a slut, and it appears Maxine has whored herself out to even you.”
Max flinches at the accusation, and I can see the pain in her eyes. This isn’t the first time he’s accused her of this. I can see that now. She’s dealt with his jealousy their entire relationship. I think of Gotham and how sweet he is.
How can he be related to this angry man in front of me? The difference is night and day.
“I think you should leave,” I hiss. “Max asked you once already.”
“Damien,” Max breathes, putting a hand up to stop me.
Logan raises his gaze and lets out a low whistle. “Damien? So you’re Damien Eros, Max’s boss and now the man she’s slutting around with?”
I turn my lips up into a fake smile. “Pleased to meet you. Now go.”
Logan narrows his eyes, feigning to leave, but then lunges at me. It happens in slow motion, his fist sailing toward my face. It catches me off guard enough to where I can’t stop it, not without tapping into my powers and exposing who I truly am.
Max steps in. She deftly catches his hand and spins it around behind his back. He lets out a strangled cry, and she applies pressure to his arm.
I can see why she takes self-defense classes now.
“Leave,” she growls in his ear. “Before you upset my son.”
And she pushes him out the door. He stumbles once, trips, then catches himself. He straightens up, brushing his sleeves as if to be free of her. “You’d better watch yourself,” he says, pointing a finger. It takes me a moment to realize that he’s threatening me.
“I’ll remember to do that,” I tell him.
Max slams the door shut. She leans against it, panting. For a moment, I see the scared single mother who has seen and witnessed way too much in her lifetime. Her shoulders heave in silent sobs, and she combs her fingers through her hair.
Logan’s visit has shaken her to her core.
Gods, I’m such an ass for not seeing it before. And I’m an even a bigger ass for not protecting her from it. I could have saved her from this horrible relationship. Protected her heart from a lifetime of fear.
That’s the thing with mortal lives, though. As gods and goddesses, we have agendas that are wider and more vast than even we give ourselves credit for. I may not have consciously set up Max with Logan all those years ago—but their fates were entwined together before that. If Max hadn’t met Logan, she wouldn’t have had Gotham.
The threads of fate are so hard to follow sometimes. But at this moment, I want to take back these interactions so I can give her peace of mind.
But I can’t.
“Max…”
She cries as I wrap my arms around her. And we stay like that for a long time.
17
“So now you see why Logan and I are no longer together,” Max tells me later, casting her eyes down. “I thought it was love, but it got abusive. Physical and emotional. And the emotional part was worse.”
I reach across the kitchen table and squeeze her hand. Hector is taking Gotham to school, so it’s just the two of us in the house. The old man didn’t ask any questions when we came back to the kitchen. He knows what happened at the front door. He knows that Max needs time alone.
Which is why I’m not pressuring her to go to work, even though there are three new clients that need to be onboarded.
“It’s not your fault, Max.”
I can’t help but feel guilty.
As the god of love, I could have prevented that heartbreak for her. I could have saved her, even though that would have cost her Gotham.
But now’s not the time to bring that up.
Maxine bites her lip, refusing to look up. “It’s hard…He’s still Gotham’s father, and…”
“A real father wouldn’t treat him—or you—that way.”
She sighs. “He says I’m the one keeping him from having a relationship with his son. But his drinking and the drugs…” Her voice trails off. “I don’t want Gotham to see that.
“There’s a restraining order against him. He’s not supposed to be within three hundred yards of my house.”
I frown. “And he’s still terrorizing you?”
“Well, you saw what happened out there.” She nods toward the front door. “I didn’t want you to see that.”
“I’m glad I was there. Although I’m not sure how much good I did.”
She snickers. “I can’t tell if you made it worse or if you gave me the strength to kick him out.”
“Knowing how big of a pain in the ass I am, probably both.”
“The pain-in-the-ass part is right.” She raises an eyebrow. “So that didn’t scare you off?”
I kiss her forehead and place a strand of hair behind her ear. “You scare me every moment of every day, Max. But that’s why I love you.”
Shit. The L-word popped out unexpectedly, and I sit back, feeling embarrassed. Max’s mouth is open in a little ‘o’ as she searches my face.
Shit, shit, shit.
“Please don’t joke like that,” she whispers. “Please.”
The fact that she’d be thinking that hurts me down to my core, and I hide my grimace. After all, I haven’t really had the best reputation for love in anyone’s eyes.
I hold her gaze, feeling my heart pound in my chest. Do I own up to it? Tell her about this feeling that’s been growing inside me? Or do I tell her that it was a joke and she shouldn’t take it seriously? Perhaps I tell her that I love her as a friend.
I’ve really fucked this up, haven’t I?
I lick my lips and plunge forward with the truth. “I’m in love with you, Max.”
She shakes her head and gets to her feet like she’s expecting me to bite her. “No.” She laughs, combing a trembling hand through her hair. “You can’t be in love with me. I’m…not like the girls you sleep with. I’m just your fake girlfriend. I—”
“I’m not going anywhere,” I promise her, standing up. “I know it started out as being fake, but somewhere along the way, you became so important to me. You. And Gotham. And even Hector, although I’m not sure what he thinks about me.”
She peers up at me, then backs away slowly, like an animal cornered. “Damien…”
I step forward, catching her by the shoulders, and kiss her on the mouth now, fully committing to my feelings for her, and she gasps into me, responding back with veracity. Regardless of how scared she is of the word “love,” she’s kissing me back and unbuttoning my shirt before leading me back to her room, where I make love to her up against the wall. Making her call out my name and dig her nails into my back. Trying to convince her with my body what words can’t seem to convey.
As we lay in a breathless heap on her bedroom floor, I reach over and pull her blankets around us. She lays her head on my chest and lets out an airy sigh.
“Damien?” she murmurs, sounding as if she’s about to fall asleep.
“Yeah?”
There’s a long pause from her, as if she’s considering my words. Then, “I love you, too.”
I stare up at the ceiling for a few moments, before wrapping my arms around her shoulders and kissing the crown of her head. Never wanting to let her go.
I am Eros, the god of love. And I’m in love with a wonderful, aggravating, intelligent, and absolutely perfect woman.
In the days and weeks that follow, I spend more and more time with Max and her family. It feels like this has become a real, true relationship between us, one where I’m finally happy.
I’m rarely ever at my apartment in the city. We spend our days together at the office, where I fuck her over our work desks in the quiet moments between appointments, and I stay over at her house every chance I get. I help Gotham out with his homework. Hector has started to acknowledge my presence as more than a mere nuisance.
And it feels like Max has fully accepted me into her life. The word “love” is shared between us easily, like we can’t get enough of it. Like we’re two parts of the same soul that have finally found each other. She smiles more now and even gets me coffee without me asking.
My work reflects the change, too.
For the first time since Elena started her lawsuit and Nadya corroborated her story, I’ve had a positive influx of new clients wanting to find love. In fact, it seems like they have suddenly started pounding on the door to let us match them up.
The case is still ongoing, sure, but there’s a hopefulness now that wasn’t there previously. It doesn’t seem to be harming my image anymore, especially since I have a happy girlfriend on my arm that makes me grin. In between exploring our bodies and our hearts, Max and I have become synonymous with love among the social elite in New York and the world.
There’s just one thing that gives me pause.
I have to tell her who I am. And that’s the most terrifying thought of all. What if she thinks I’m crazy? What if she gets frightened and runs off? Or any number of things that could happen when she finds out that I’m the Greek God she’s read about in mythology class?
Max lives in the real world, dealing with very real angry and upset clients. Taking care of her very normal boss, even with his lavish lifestyle. I’m sure in her worldview, there’s no room for things as seemingly-fantastical as the god of love.
I could lose her.
I close my eyes and shake my head. No. I have to make her see. Make her believe in me as a god and as the mortal who loves her. She’s a reasonable person, having been exposed to some crazy shit in her tenure with me.
We’ll make it work.
But what happens beyond this happily ever after? I can’t help the niggling thought as it seeps through my brain, poisoning my high hopes for a good outcome.
I’ve been shitty at happily ever afters my whole life. I help set mortals up with them, but it’s their actions that ultimately lead to their happy lives or their misery. From my own history, I’ve either been the one who had his heart broken, or I’ve screwed it up.
Gods live an eternity, and that’s a long time for us not to fuck up.
So, what does it mean for me to have a relationship with a mortal? She has a family here on Earth. I can’t just take her up to Olympus and expect her to be all right with it. What about Gotham? Or her father?
I can’t take her away from them. Or from her life in New York and Jersey City. She has a history here, unlike me.
The old legends have plenty of tales about gods and goddesses falling for mortals. It never ended well for the mortals in those stories.
I would never do anything to hurt Max.
At the same time, I can’t keep it from her. I can’t go on pretending that I’m not eons old. Or that I don’t have magical powers that can strike someone with an arrow or make them fall for someone.
I’ve been keeping a low profile with my powers, but that needs to change, doesn’t it?
I have to tell her.
But when?
And where would that leave me?
18
I’m going to propose to Max.
Make this whole thing official.
Real.
Because it became real some time ago. I don’t know when. Or maybe I’ve always had these feelings for Max, and it took a fake relationship for me to realize it. I’ve always been a headstrong asshole when it comes to love. Doling it out for mortals day in and day out. It makes one a cynic.
But after a million lifetimes, there has never been one woman who has come close to Max. I should
know—I’ve been there for all of it.
There’s no one like her.
It’s been a month since she and I first slept together. A month where I’ve proven to her time and time again that my feelings for her are true.
I should have done this a long time ago. Fear is an ugly beast like that, though. I can pretend that everything is fine until the truth comes out.
No.
Surely, she’ll understand why I couldn’t tell her. And she must understand what I’m planning to do beyond this.
Because I’ve decided that I’m going to stay here with her and live and die as a mortal. Beyond that, I can either do my duties from the Underworld, or someone else can do it, such as Aphrodite. I’m tired of being the god of love—because I can’t do my job well without her.
It may be time to pass the mantle.
Suddenly, I don’t care anymore, other than wanting to share a mortal’s life with Max.
She has a meeting with Gotham’s teacher this morning, so I’m flying solo. I stop at Tiffany’s to trade out the ring for something more Max—a simple band with an emerald stone that matches her eyes.
Unconventional for an engagement ring. But nothing about Max is conventional, so it’s perfect.
Then I head to the office so I can plan out the perfect dinner to pop the question to her. We haven’t done anything high-profile since the Met Gala, and I think it’s time that we do something different. Something perfect.
And then, maybe, I can tell her that I’m Eros.
“Oh, Mr. Eros!” Carrie cries, getting to her feet as I enter the agency.
I glance down at my watch. It’s a few minutes before eight in the morning, which means that Carrie, being a terrible barista, is at least punctual.
“What?” I ask, trying to keep the irritation out of my voice. I don’t want to be interrupted when I’m feeling light on my feet at the thought of what I’ll plan for Max and me. I don’t want her getting in the way.
Carrie averts her eyes, looking down, which makes me stop and frown at her. Something is making her nervous.
