Chapter 1

Shay

A few weeks later

“Honey, I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but Jayce asked me to tell you he doesn’t want you to come around anymore.”

My eyes turn sharp and piercing as I scan the woman without hiding my defiance. Determined to not let her see me rattled, I keep my confidence in check. I straighten my posture and cross my arms tightly over my chest. Despite the anger coiling beneath my skin, I refuse to allow this beotch to intimidate me. Yet, beneath the surface, a tempest of emotions churns, each flicker of her gaze stirs the storm rising.

I look the skank up and down while pondering my next words, not bothering to hide the disgust her existence brings me. “If Jayce has something to say to me. He can say it himself.” I refuse to let this sweet butt intimidate me .

She looks at her nails over the bandage taped across her broken nose. The one I gave her and harbor no regrets over. Her tone drips with hate and malice. She’s attempting to goad me, only she’s too arrogant to realize the likes of her or any of his other sweet butts are powerless to rattle my nerves.

I’m no innocent wallflower and while I’m not holding my breath that a magical clock is going to tick inside of Jayce and I, branding us fated to one another, I hold no hard feelings against him for enjoying his life before I walked into it. Jealousy has no place in the list of many feelings this whore elicits.

“Jayce said he owes me this. For the broken nose and everything.” She pats her nose and winces as if that might move me to feel sympathy. As if.

I scoff. “Are you trying to say Jayce would choose cowardice just to appease one of his sweet butts?”

She balls her fists at her sides, and the tension in the air crackles like lightning. Her nails dig into the flesh of her palms with a fierce determination. She holds every muscle in her body rigid. With her jaw clenched tightly, her cheek muscles flex. A storm brews behind her eyes while dark clouds gather in the depths of her gaze, threatening to unleash a torrential downpour of fury upon me.

The blood of the gods flows in both of our veins, so if she’s ready to rumble, it might be a fair match.

“I’m not a sweet butt. We don’t use such degrading terminology here.” Her pathetic whines make me cringe.

I tap my finger on my chin while looking up as if in deep contemplation. “Sweet butt sounds a lot nicer than the other terms that come to mind.”

Two other sweet butts (I know that’s not what they are really called, but if the shoe fits) gather at her side in a show of support. It reminds me of a high school scene where the cool kids attempt to intimidate the new kid. How old are these whores? Fifteen.

“Jayce doesn’t want you. You’re just some wannabe who knows nothing about us. Do him a favor and don’t embarrass him anymore than you already have. Leave and don’t come back,” one of the new arrivals tells me.

“If Jayce thinks I’m some barnacle stuck to the underside of his hull, he’ll have to scrape me off himself. I don’t take orders from side pieces. Which is all you’ll ever be unless you grow some self-respect.”

“Circe.” Nikolaos’ use of the bimbo’s name as she raises her fist to strike stops her in her tracks. She turns and gives him an I-dare-you-stare.

Her threats faze him none. “There’s no fighting in here. I’m not changing the rules for you or anyone else.”

Circe. Like the beotch from Game of Thrones. How fitting. She punches her fists toward the floor and huffs in a fit of rage before storming out of the bar. With one last glare and a threat in her gaze, her eyes rake over me as if measuring me up for my coffin.

Nikolaos continues drying the inside of his glasses like nothing happened.

Finally, Cill and Anjal walk through the door. They are the only reason I walked into this place—alone. With Cill’s lack of cooking abilities, and her insistence that Anjal not spend hours in the kitchen on my behalf, they asked me to meet them for a burger at Twins.

It’s a lame excuse to spend time with me. My sister knows it, and I know it, but I miss her.

Her weeknights at the apartment have shortened. The lack of privacy at our place combined with Anjal’s willingness to drive Cill an hour to school and back each morning has meant we’re not spending as much time together.

And yep. The reason I’m really here walks in right behind them. Jayce Makris. Every time I think of him, my heart stops. Every time I look at him, my heart stops. Can’t imagine what my heart will do if and when I experience his touches or those lips. An EKG in my near future is a real possibility.

He still shows up at my door with tulips a couple of nights a week, and I haven’t caved to let him in.

Despite his persistence, I sometimes feel like a barnacle clinging to a magnificent creation. My head knows that I’m every bit as spectacular as he is, but that voice—the devil on my shoulder whom I argue with daily is shouting louder at me than the angel on my other shoulder whom I’ve trained my heart to listen to. Somehow when my eyes beheld this demigod, the decibel level roles reversed between my she-devil and my she-angel.

He’s too beautiful for someone like me. I’m practically shaped like a teenage boy. Flat chest, flat arse, skin and bones. Priscilla’s practice of changing the actual curse words grew on me over the years and became my habit too. Since meeting Jayce it’s getting harder not to say the real ones.

We’ve both influenced each other in many ways.

I’m the one whose voice got through to my sister every time she cried after her brother Jamie, or some other mean girl, called her fat. Together, we defy society’s definition of beauty.

A false definition created to sell clothes, hair, makeup, and plastic surgery. What one person finds attractive doesn’t make it true that those qualities are the only attributes that determine sex appeal.

The programing us women undergo our entire lives to fit a made-up image is all too effective. It takes determination not to let those lies rule my self-image.

I put on a strong fa?ade for Cill our whole lives because I never doubted her plus size curves made her any less than the girls on the cover of magazines.

Yet, I’m just as much at war with my self-image as her. A war I win at the end of most days. Until a man who must have been molded in a factory looked me up and down like he’d won a prize.

He hasn’t officially asked me out on a date. Mainly because I haven’t given him the chance. Jayce doesn’t have to say a thing for me to understand his intentions. He looks at me the same way Anjal looks at Cill.

Even though my biological clock hasn’t ticked in his heart, and if I have any control over it—it never will. Children are messy, whiny, and time consuming. My life’s plans do not include an infant on my hip.

Once he learns that I’ll never willingly give him kids, he’ll go back to Circe or someone else. Maybe even the Minotaur destined to send him the mating tick-tock that he’ll never hear from my heart. Because it’s not me. The Fates would never pair a male with a female who won’t produce another boy for the many girls that outnumber them ten to one.

That’s only the beginning of the reasons why Jayce will come to his senses when he gets to know me.

Not even my sister knows my secret.