Accidentally Aphrodite - Dakota Cassidy Page 0,72
until she was out of his line of sight.
When tears stung the corners of her eyes, she fought them hard.
Because doing the right thing and making healthy life choices wasn’t always easy or pain-free.
Right.
Right?
Chapter 14
As Quinn walked away, it hit him all at once. He wanted this woman—and she was letting him go so she wouldn’t make another poor choice. She was playing things smart for her future. They didn’t know each other on a deep, personal level yet. They’d spent a week wandering around New York City, matching people up, and then they’d made insanely incredible love.
Lovemaking he couldn’t forget—her soft curves, her willingness, her sweet lips against his when she came. He’d only just begun to taste her, and she was out.
All in the span of the week, a week Quinn could have chosen to turn into one big fairytale. Which quite obviously, she was opting out of doing.
Yet, he felt as if he’d always known her. And the parts he didn’t know, he wanted to know.
Did love happen that fast?
Of course it does, you dipshit. You’ve seen it hundreds and thousands of times in the course of your mother’s reign as Aphrodite.
Just as it hit him and he made sense of his feelings after last night, just as he’d been about to confess he was falling in love with her—she’d dumped his ass like a she was making a deposit at a Jersey landfill.
He took his time walking back to her place, each step he took, feeling worse than he had the step before. His chest ached—tight with the words he’d wanted to say to Quinn.
When he approached Quinn’s, peering around the railing to her steps and into the basement window like some lovesick fool, his chest hurt harder.
Fuck.
Marty was setting the table. Wanda was laughing about something with Carl. Archibald was waving his finger around with Darnell following his instructions. Ingrid sat in a corner, curled up with one of her medical books.
And Quinn was lying on the couch, a gel pack over her eyes.
Clearly, dumping him had been exhausting.
And that longing he’d once described to Quinn assaulted him once more.
He was going to throttle his mother’s pretty neck when he got ahold of her for ever giving him the damn apple to guard in the first place.
His mother was…
His. Mother.
A memory slammed into his brain all at once. How could he have forgotten that screaming match with her over a decade ago?
Jesus. He could fix this insane longing for a woman who didn’t want him in no time flat. All he had to do was find his mother, and if the forums weren’t deceiving him, she was happily posting under the alias she thought no one knew about.
Except he knew about it, and it was time he and his mother had a long talk about apples and her lack of grandchildren and making him fall in love with a woman who very clearly had no interest in him.
Sending a quick text to Marty, Wanda and Nina, with a warming to keep a sharp eye on Quinn, he snapped his fingers. Because ending this shitty brand of suffering needed to happen now.
“Mother!” he bellowed, storming through her bleached-white, rose-filled cottage on Mt. Olympus. “You can’t hide forever!”
His mother appeared from behind the column on the small patio overlooking the ocean, her hair piled on top of her head, her reading glasses perched at the end of her nose. Wind chimes tinkled and the ocean breeze wafted in on a perfumed breeze.
“Khristos! Oh, honey, it’s so good to see you!”
He stopped short in front of her, pulling off his jacket and knit hat and letting them drop in a wet puddle to the floor. “First of all, don’t you ‘it’s so good to see you, pookie’ me like I haven’t been trying to get in touch with you for almost a week,” he growled.
She patted his cheek with a warm smile. “Don’t get in such an uproar, it does ugly things to your skin, Khristos. And pick up those clothes. I just washed the floors and you’re dripping all over them.”
Patience. He pleaded with the gods for patience so he wouldn’t throttle her pretty neck. “Where have you been?”
She shrugged her slim shoulders and said evasively, “Around. Resting, discovering a life that’s all mine now to do as I please.”
“How could you just abandon your duties like that?”
“They were no longer my duties, precious. You fixed that. Besides, you know how to take care of business. I