Heart of Fire (Blood of Zeus #2) - Meredith Wild Page 0,14

be very charming.”

“I’ve heard.” I swallow down another gulp of my beer, preparing to scrub the image of my young mother being seduced from the story once I hear it.

“One bottle of Cru des Ptolmees turned into two,” he goes on. “We drank the second one in the park after night fell. The gardens were quiet. The sky was clear. The air smelled like jasmine. And we talked all night.” He exhales softly. “Well…we talked most of the night.”

I finish my beer, hoping he’ll skip over the finer details of my conception.

“So…that was it?” I query into his pause filled with simplicity and complexity in the same three seconds. “One night of passion, and then you disappeared?”

He frowns. “You’re determined to think the worst of me, aren’t you?”

I let out a dry laugh. “I’m just trying to piece this together, Z. You were there one minute, and then you weren’t.”

His scowl deepens. “And I can understand what that must look like, from the outside.”

“Damn right, from the outside.” I’m able to keep the words even. I have no idea how. I’ve been “on the outside” of this whole story for as long as I can remember.

At last, he pushes on.

“After a couple of days, some serious safety concerns came up for their group—so the authorities had her team transferred to a new location.”

“Did she tell you about it?”

“Of course.” He keeps meeting my gaze, barely blinking. “We could barely stand to be apart,” he adds in a husky murmur. “I followed her to Alexandria without thinking twice. But once I knew she was safe and settled again, I had to return home to attend to some other matters.”

“Home,” I echo. “To Olympus?”

“Yes.”

“For some ‘other matters.’” I’m terse.

“Yes.” He’s terser.

“Like what?”

His lips thin. “It’s not relevant now. But I did try to get back to your mother. You need to know that. By the time I could get back, Nancy had left the program. Like I said, everything happened quickly. She wasn’t in the country more than a month.”

Another pause that’s thick with so much meaning, I’m surprised we’re in a mystically shrouded bar and not a crumbling manmade church. The juxtaposition aside, I’m compelled to accept his account. So far, Z’s confession isn’t remarkably different than my mother’s.

The realization brings on some new confusion. “You said her version was almost true,” I remind him.

“Indeed I did.”

“So…what’s so drastically divergent here?”

“She told you she never saw me again.”

Which brings us back to the revelation that floored me moments ago. The one that accounted for the nothingness of my childhood memories.

“Let me guess,” I venture. “She left out that eight-year stint in Olympus. Because I sure as hell never heard about that.”

He steeples his hands in a moment of contemplation. “In a number of ways, I understand her secrecy. It’s not exactly easy to explain all that to a young boy, especially because it seems your memories of those years have been blocked or wiped, but there’d also be nothing to explain had she stayed.”

“Why didn’t she?”

He lifts his brows. “I’d love to ask her the same question.”

I tense. Everywhere. My shoulders. My gut. I look down to where my hand clenches my mug, threatening to shatter the thing. But I need the liquid too badly. My throat is dry from rampaging nerves. The thought of getting Z and my mother in the same room is concerning. But also oddly intriguing.

“You’d want that? To see her again?”

His face changes in a different way. His irises sharpen, ice on steel. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“It doesn’t sound like you were exactly on good terms if she snuck out of Olympus to get away from you.”

“Who said she was trying to get away from me?” His eyes narrow with concern, maybe even real fear that my mother left for that very reason.

“Valid question.” I look down again, wondering why my mind went to that explanation first. But that answer feels too complicated to delve into. Not right now.

I finish my beer and exhale a tired sigh. We’ve not even been here an hour, and I’m drained as a damn dishrag. Who knew filling in the gaps of my past would be so complicated…and exhausting? On the other hand, my past isn’t exactly the stuff of a standard fill-in-the-blank.

“If nothing else, I suppose she’ll have to come clean once and for all,” I say. “To both of us.”

“Maybe your mother isn’t the refreshingly honest woman with whom I was first smitten,” he says. “But there might be