Chapter 35. We Still Have One More Stop

Athena

“We’ll be visiting our parents first,” he said, his voice carrying that same gentle authority I remembered from when he’d coax me down from trees I was too scared to climb down from alone. “I told them I was bringing you to see them tonight.”

He grinned, and suddenly he looked like a mischievous teenager again. “I may have mentioned to your mom that I knew she’d missed you terribly, so I was being the good son and bringing you home to her.”

I hit his chest playfully, the solid warmth of him beneath my palm sending an unwelcome flutter through my stomach. “You’re terrible. She probably thinks you’re showing off.”

“Maybe I am,” he said, but his smile was soft now, touched with something that looked like fondness.

We walked deeper into the cemetery, our footsteps muffled by dew-damp grass. The headstones rose around us like sleeping sentinels, some worn smooth by decades of weather, others still sharp-edged and new. Everything smelled of eart