Right. Not mad about the apocalypse. “You’re worth a billion of any god.”
Her glare softened a bit, but her fingers tightened on the pillow.
I put every ounce of sincerity I had into my face. “Everything I said to you. It was horrible. I’m so so sorry. I’ll do anything to make it up to you.”
She gnawed on the corner of her top lip. At least she was thinking it over. Then she smacked me again. “You cut me out of your life. I was stuck here not knowing if my best friend was alive or dead.”
“You remembered me?”
She froze, the pillow held in mid air. “What? Of course I remembered you, idiot. We had a fight. I wasn’t lobotomized.”
I sank onto her bed, relieved beyond anything. “You don’t understand.”
I heard her clothes rustle as she sat back, waiting. “Then explain it to me.”
So I did. For the first time, I told her everything that had happened since the night Bethany stabbed me. Everything I had felt. All the way through my time in Hades. Into the rift and the burning garden.
I must have talked for hours. By the time I finished, we had moved to the cafeteria. Had eaten lunch and seen the room empty out. French fry remnants sat on the plates between us. I’d been fortified with caffeine and sugar.
Occasionally, a teacher wandered through. But they left Hannah and me alone. I guess she had some kind of free pass from classes today, since I was back.
It made me appreciate how supportive this school really was. I’m really home.
I looked at Hannah. I’m not sure what I was expecting from her. Sympathy or horror or forgiveness. Whatever it was, I certainly didn’t think she’d be staring at me like I was stupidest person ever. “Nice look.”
“That’s how I look at morons,” she said. “And you’re the poster child.”
I kicked at her leg. “For what?”
She kicked me back. “Not believing in yourself. Not loving yourself. Gawd, Sophie, it took you almost getting killed to realize that?” She tossed her hair out of her face. “Pathetic.” But she said it with love.
A laugh bubbled out of me. Surprised. “Ingrate.”
“Annoying.” She tossed a fry at me. “And I get the last word because you were really really mean to me.”
I could live with that.
“Are you gonna move your stuff back in or what?” Hannah was back to glowering.
“Yeah. Give me five seconds. Jeez.”
Hannah pushed her chair back. “I want to hit biology class. But you’re here now, right? For good?”
“Yeah.”
She stood.
I did too. Then the two of us rushed each other in a mutual crushing hug. When she spoke, there was a waver in her voice. “Don’t ever do that again. Any of it.”
“Promise.”
I practically skipped up the stairs to our bedroom. I was giddy at the thought of unpacking. I flung open my door and skidded to a stop at the sight of Kai sitting on my mattress.
Man, he was in über poker-face mode. “I’ve been thinking about you and I,” he said.
“Okay.” Thinking about us was good.
“And how the two of us caused the apocalypse.”
My heart sank. That wasn’t the kind of thinking I wanted him to do. That was the kind of thinking that led to talks ending in, “I think we should just be friends.” Suddenly my skin felt like it was the wrong size.
I sat down across from him on Hannah’s bed, matching him perfectly in give-away-nothing blank expression, and waited.
He fidgeted, almost as if he were nervous.
That was sweet, but no way was he going to cute his way out of this. He’d come to me. And if he didn’t have anything genuine to say, then maybe there really was nothing left for us to say at all.
Under the sleeve of my sweater, I stroked a finger over my tattoo. My reminder that I’d be okay eventually, no matter what went down in the next few minutes. But also my hope for our love and happily-ever-after.
Kai watched me, but couldn’t see the tattoo. After a long, massively awkward silence, he spoke. “On a scale of one to ten, one being, ‘of course I could never hurt you, my beloved’, and ten being my imminent phospherocious destruction, where, exactly, do I stand?”
“Thirty seven.”
He nodded. “That’s pretty good. I thought you’d be angrier at me.”
I waited for something more. This time, I wasn’t giving him an inch.
Kai braced his hands on his lap. “Watching you, engulfed in the flames like that? It wasn’t just your death I saw. It was the death of this twisted thing that I’d been holding on to for so long.”
Whoa. I’d wanted genuine and this was as real as it had ever gotten with him. I kept still for fear of jolting him back into his usual mode of suck-ass communication and general disappearance.
He kept going. “I’ve spent so much of my life defining myself against my father that watching you, understanding what you were doing …” He looked directly into my eyes. “Yes, Sophie, I did understand the significance. I was furious. At you. I felt like you had wrested control away from me and were resolving the situation without any discussion about my place in it all.”
I twisted my hands together. “I kinda was. But I didn’t have a choice.”
“Let me finish,” he chided. “Overriding my anger, was fear. I was terrified you weren’t going to survive. Because it didn’t look like Theo had. Terrified that, even if you did, what would my purpose be then? How was I supposed to go take the Underworld from my father after that?”
“But you don’t have—”
He slid over beside me and clapped a hand over my mouth. “Like, five minutes without butting in?”
I nodded that I would be good.
He took his hand away. “When I saw you emerge from that fire unharmed and lit up with such joy when I felt so,” he growled in frustration, then sighed. “It was too much.”
I didn’t know how to interpret this. “But you came to find me here,” I said.
He straightened his shoulders. He was steadying himself. “Yeah. Because I realized that the main thing I felt was relief that you were alive. I want to be here. With you.”
Cautious delight. “You’re sure?”
He nodded. “Positive.” Kai kissed the tip of my nose. “Your turn. What happened after you jumped?”
I filled him in on my conversation with Kiki and all that had transpired in the garden. “You know, Persephone had been trying so hard to live up to a certain image of herself that it snapped her. But I was just as bad. I thought I’d been living my life, kinda giving Felicia the finger, but I hadn’t. Once all these other gods came into my life, my desire to be seen a certain way, to get validation in a certain way … It just got worse.”
I pursed my lips, thinking it over. “Ultimately, my big ‘whoa’ moment was realizing that everything I’d gone through just made me the best person I could be. I became whole. If that makes sense.”
“It does.” Kai pulled me onto his lap.
I leaned back into his strength, and his warmth, then twisted to face him. “Everything that was happening with Persephone? That was happening with me and sending spring into limbo …” I laughed at the look on his face. “Yeah, forgot to mention that. It was because we forced ourselves to fit all these ideas everyone had about us. In the end, though, it warped us. In Persephone’s case, to a point when she was willing to take everyone down because there was nothing left but her rage.”
I stroked Kai’s arm. “I hate that you got caught in that fallout.”
His eyes sparked. “I lived. Maybe it helped me figure stuff out in the end.”
“Hmm. Thing is, I’m probably going to spend the rest of my life figuring myself out, but it’s for me to figure out. Just me. I’m okay with that. I started out feeling like a nobody and ended up feeling like a—”
“Goddess?”
I shook my head. “No. Better.”
He nuzzled against my chee
k. “I love you.”
“So much.”
He exhaled hard and grinned. “Good. Because who else would I match with?”
I scrunched up my nose. “Huh?”
Kai tugged up my sleeve, then his own. He brought our wrists together. Mine was palm down, his palm up. That made it easier to read: “All you need,” across mine, and “is love” across his.
Incredulous, I stared at our identical tattoos. Like down-to-the-ink-color identical. “When? How?” I turned his wrist over to examine the full inscription. No wonder Jennifer had been surprised when I’d asked for those words. She’d already tattooed them on Kai.
Kai linked our hands together. “A while after I left you in the garden. After all we did, good and bad, I finally accepted that I didn’t have to prove anything to my father anymore.” He smiled at me with the full wattage of his love. “He’s not the one I want to be important to. You’re my tree. My roots and my heart.”
Not going to cry. Not going to cry. I swiped at my eyes.
He cupped my jaw in his hands. “I want a life. Not an afterlife.”
With that, he leaned in and kissed me.
As I lost myself in his kiss, in his touch, my last coherent thought was that while I didn’t know what tomorrow held, it didn’t matter. I didn’t need a plan.
I had my friends and the guy who loved me. Life was pretty damn fabulous.
I was pretty damn fabulous.
And the kiss … well, let’s just say that fabulous didn’t even come close.
THE END
(a.k.a. Sophie’s and Kai’s Happily-Ever-After)
Acknowledgments
For the launch of My Date From Hell, I invited a bunch of readers to join the Sassy Girl Swoony God Tourney. In exchange for an ARC of the book, they took part in all kinds of crazy challenges ranging from making playlists for Sophie, to casting the film, and deciding where Kai had originally kidnapped our girl. They tweeted and blogged and were just so insanely supportive of both this trilogy and myself. Thank you so much, darling participants! Without you and your excitement for this story, I would have had a much harder road to tread.
In the end, one lucky reader won the grand prize of excellent swag and getting to be a character in the final book. Thank you Jennifer @ Boricuan Bookworms. You graciously allowed me to use your name and aspects of your personality to create my lovely tattooing goddess. Everyone please check out her blog and show her the love.
Enormous thanks to Professor CW Marshall for his help with the Ancient Greek in the love ritual. Any mistakes are my own.
Elissa, Siobhan, and Adam, what can I say? You all encouraged my madness and then went above and beyond to make the book better. Sophie and I both were lucky to have you!
Every once in a while, I remember to look up from my screen and when I do, I find a family that surpasses anything my wildest fantasies could ever have dreamed up.
My darling husband Loreto, you remain my best friend. You make me laugh, throw me impromptu kitchen dance parties, bake me muffins, and still give me butterflies in my stomach at the thought of your kisses. Plus you check to make sure I’m still breathing when I’m lost in fictional mancandy. Really, how could a girl ask for more?
Finally, though, it comes down to this - my beautiful daughter Kiki. At ten years old, you imperiously demanded a story that you were allowed to read. And then, for the next three books and two years, told me with unflinching honesty exactly what you thought of them. You are my joy and my delight, and my favorite reader girl in all the universes, real and otherwise. So this one, like all the rest to come, is for you.
You’ve been reading My Life From Hell (The Blooming Goddess Trilogy Book Three).
Enjoy an excerpt from My Ex From Hell, book one of The Blooming Goddess Trilogy.
Chapter One
To: ????
From: [email protected]
Subject: Seriously?
Dear Your Royal Imperialness Demeter, Goddess of Grain and Fertility, Preserver of Marriage, and Bringer of Seasons,
Or can I just call you Mom?
Bet you never thought you’d be hearing from me. Sorry for not having written sooner, but until about 12 hours ago, I didn’t know you existed. Nothing personal.
See, yesterday, I was plain old Sophie Bloom. My life sucked in your typical 16-year-old ways. I was stuck here at Hope Park Progressive School on probation again (“mouthy behavior”), dealing with cliquish poseurs, rampant hormones, blah blah blah.
Then I met a guy. I know that’s the worst cliché ever. But sadly, it’s true. And of course, being me, it couldn’t just be any bad boy. No. It had to be Kai, son of Hades, Lord of the Underworld. Anyway, he was really hot and there was this bone-melting kiss and...whatever. The point is, before he showed up, I thought I was human. Afterward, well, let’s just say everything changed. Who knew when I was cramming Greek mythology for my English final, I was studying the family tree?
They say when you die, your whole life supposedly flashes before your eyes. When Kai and I kissed, here’s what flashed before mine – Mount Olympus, Zeus, the Underworld, Hades, and you. But that wasn’t my life. Or was it?
I was pretty sure someone spiked the punch at the Halloween dance (par for the course at this school). How was I supposed to believe that somehow I was a goddess and everything I knew about my entire life was wrong?
It’s not like I had a whole lot of time to think about it, because my best friend Theo killed the joy with a sucker-punch to Kai’s pretty face and dragged me away. And if you knew Theo, you’d know this was so not his M.O.
At first Theo tried to blow it off. He went all protective, told me Kai was a player and he didn’t want me to get hurt. Now I know what you’re thinking – but it wasn’t jealousy. Theo and I are so NOT. Theo’s angle seemed plausible, if somewhat big brotherish for him, until a couple of guys tried to kill me.
No, not guys. More like otherworldly beings. First, Hades’ immortal hit man - a Pyrosim, fire wraith. And then dear old Dad (??!), exalted Zeus, had to get in on the act. He sent his own death machine daemon, Photokia - complete with gold thunderbolt tattoo – to kill me. So, I guess, despite the fact that they hate each other, the one thing Zeus and Hades can agree on is that they both want me dead. Yay me.
I’m fine. Which is seriously weird since I should be lacking on the living front. But what’s really freaking me out is that I managed to blow the bogeymen into a zillion fragments. One second I’m scared. Pissed off. The next, I’m the supernova of doom. I’ve never even been good at sports.
When I accidentally almost took off Theo’s head with more of my destructo fun, he decided to come clean. That’s when he told me everything. Starting with his full name: Prometheus.
Here’s the Wiki version (do you have Wi-Fi on Mt. Olympus?) Turns out I’m Persephone. Me, Goddess of Spring and Embodiment of Earth’s Fertility? Ew! Which makes me your kid, Hades’ target, and totally screwed. In the myth version, I’m the innocent maiden, you’re the grieving mother, and we’re reunited with great joy. Guess that’s why they call it a myth.
Theo said the last time I saw you was just before Kai kidnapped me and dragged me to the Underworld. Your parenting leaves a lot to be desired. Where were you? Why weren’t you protecting me when I was killed? Oh yeah, that’s the other part. While I was down there, someone murdered me. Luckily, Theo managed to spirit my soul away. Until a few hours ago, I had no idea I was anything but human.
You know that whole “mine’s bigger than yours” war going down between the Underworld and Olympus? Theo thinks I’m the key to stopping it and the savior of all humanity. Talk about pressure. Yesterday all I had to worry about was passing gym.
Now I’ve got all these sketchy memories that don’t add up and I don’t know who to trust. I mean, my supposed best friend Theo knew all this and he didn’t tell me.
I know I sound like a nut bar. And maybe I’ll wake up in a padded room restrained for my own safety. But in that moment with Kai,
it felt real. Like I knew who I was. Or used to be. Those were my memories flashing before my eyes – not some fantasy or hallucination. Part of me remembered those moments. But where do I go from here? And is there an online tutorial I can take?
I don’t exactly have your email. But if you’re a goddess, maybe you’ll know I’m writing. That I really need my mom right now. And if not – well, I guess I’ll save this for my obituary. Which I’ll probably need pretty soon because of the gods wanting me dead thing.
Take care.
Sophie
a.k.a. Persephone
a.k.a. Goddess of Spring
a.k.a. Your Daughter
~
Let me state, on the record, that despite the super melodramatic email above, I am totally sane. Well, as sane as I can be for a sixteen-year-old. I’ve just had the day from Hell. Literally.
I should back up. Hi. I’m Sophie Bloom. Longtime human, first time goddess. How would I describe myself? Hmmm. If my life was going to be a movie – do you ever do that? Rescript your personal history with a great soundtrack and better extras? My dream version would be courtesy of Tim Burton but I think the sad truth is that the movie of my life would be more like a lame after-school special.
You know, something like “poor little rich girl, her life littered with hopes and dreams.” I love “littered with;” such over-the-top drunk divorcée lingo, uttered right before the aging cougar smashes her highball with a fury into the fireplace. Just how my adoptive, socialite mother Felicia ended every New Year’s Eve. But we have plenty of time to get into moms and their respective failings.
My life in a nutshell on Saturday, October 31, when my universe turned upside down, involved me being a totally human junior at Hope Park; a “progressive” school whose forward thinking curriculum was offset by the students’ petty jealousies, social climbing, and the ongoing dramas of hook-ups and break-ups.
The only bright spot was that it was Halloween. Sure, it meant a dance with far too many dumb boys in drag (acting out some of their not-so-latent sexual issues), but it also meant chocolate.
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