Finn
Athena wasn’t in the bed when I woke up. I was confused when I came down to the kitchen and found her behaving as if nothing had happened between us.
When I tried to touch her, she moved away and it was impossible for me to lock eyes with her.
“I’m afraid it’s going to be a quick breakfast,” Hans said. “We have a busy schedule, with all the catching up we have to do, so we need to get going as soon as possible.”
Athena shoved a bowl of oatmeal with fruit on top into my hands. I put it down on the table next to me. “Hans, would you mind giving me a moment alone with Athena?”
“Sure, I’ll just put our bags in the drone, and leave you two to your goodbyes.” Hans gave Athena a big hug before he picked up our bags and left the house.
“Athena,” I said and moved in front of her. “What happened between us last night, it was…” I lifted her chin and drowned in her amazing green eyes that were tearing up.
“It was beautiful,” she whispered and the first tear ran down her freckled cheek. “I’ll never forget you, Finn.”
“Forget me?” I frowned.
“When I first heard you wanted to come here and apologize to me, I had this idea that I wanted you to experience the same loss of control that you submitted me to. I wanted you to reach a new level of empathy and maturity.”
“Athena, I…”
“I know it hasn’t been easy for you, Finn, but you have learned to trust and last night you opened up to me, showing me a new and more vulnerable side of yourself. I consider that a breakthrough in your personal development.”
Frustrated with her clinical way of characterizing what had happened between us, I covered her mouth with my hand. “Will you shut up for a moment?”
Athena’s eyes grew wide, but at least she was quiet enough for me to say my piece. “Ask me your stupid question again,” I said and pulled my hand away.
“What question?” she asked.
“Would I rather sleep with one woman for the rest of my life or a new one every night?”
Athena blinked away a few tears. “I think I know the answer. You should know that it makes me happy that you feel that way.”
“I do. Last night was the best night of my life.”
“Oh, Finn.” Lifting up on her toes, Athena wrapped her arms around me and pulled me into a tight hug. “I want you to be happy. I want you to find that special someone and be happy with her.”
My body stiffened, and my throat grew thick. “I thought you…” Heat was spreading in my body and not in a good way. Shifting my balance, I took a step back, holding on to her hands. “When you said that you loved me – I mean, was that a lie?”
“No, of course not.”
“Then why can’t it be you and me? Why are you talking about someone else?”
“I’m a priestess, Finn. I took a vow and I can’t leave the Motherlands.”
I squeezed her hands tighter. “Then I’ll stay here with you.”
“You would be miserable. And what about your friends, alcohol, and meat?”
“I don’t care,” I said with a knot in my chest. “The way I feel when I’m with you…” My voice was thick with emotion. “Last night was amazing.” Cupping her face with both my hands, I stared into her eyes with intensity. “I’m not walking away from that.”
Athena wrapped her hands around my wrists and pulled at them, but I didn’t let go of her face.
“I didn’t tell you that I loved you last night, but I think I do.”
“That’s good,” Athena whispered. “If you can love me, then you can love someone else too.”
A sense of panic was rising within me. “I don’t want to love someone else,” I insisted. The way she just stood there, looking at me with her eyes overflowing with tears, made it sink in that she had made up her mind.
Releasing her face, I took a step back. “So this is it then?”
Her sad smile twisted my insides. “Yes. I hope you will see that we have given each other a great gift.”
My jaw hardened. “No, I don’t see that at all.”
Athena’s shoulders fell and with a sigh, she breathed, “Hopefully, in time, you will.”
A knock on the door was followed by Hans popping his head in. “Are you ready to go?” he asked me, and I wanted to shout that I wasn’t, but if Athena didn’t want me, I couldn’t force her.
“We’re already late,” he said in an apologetic tone. “We have to get going.”
“Goodbye, Athena.” My voice was dripping with bitterness. “Thank you for last night, you were a great fuck.” My pride took that last cheap shot. It was that same pride that forced my feet to walk to the drone without looking back. My heart on the other hand was shouting for me to run back and beg for Athena to love me.
I could do that. I was an Nman and we never begged.
“Our first stop is a hospital about two hours from here,” Hans said as the drone took off. “There will be a lot of press to witness your meeting with the local doctors and patients.”
I looked straight ahead, with empty eyes. Five days earlier, I would have cracked a joke, and made fun of the tension, but the loss that consumed me at that moment was too intense for me to care about what Hans thought of me.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Hans asked me half an hour later, when I still hadn’t said a word.
“No.”
“Sometimes it helps to talk about your emotions,” he said, “and as part of my mediator training, I took a lot of psychology classes.”
“What does that have to do with me?”
“I just meant that I might be able to help you if you tell me what you’re sad about.”
I snorted, and turned my head away. “Unless they handed out magic wands at those psychology classes, I doubt there’s much you can do.”
“You could let me try,” Hans coaxed.
I wanted to shout at him to leave me alone, but Hans was just trying to be nice, and I needed his help.
“Look, I’ll play nice in the hospital and wherever I need to be, but you gotta do me a favor, man.”
“Sure, what can I do to make you feel better?” Hans asked.
“I’m not leaving the Motherlands without talking to Laura.”
“Laura? You mean Magni’s wife?”
“Yes. Your people know where she is. I don’t need to know where she lives, just set up a meeting where I can talk to her.”
“I don’t have that kind of power, I already told you that I’m just a rookie.”
“But a creative rookie. Put those mediator skills to use and make it happen.”
He looked thoughtful. “Hmm, you said she studied martial arts, right?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I suppose I could call around and see if anyone knows anything. The problem is that I’m new to this area and don’t know many people here.”
“Just find Laura, and do it quick. I only have five days left before I go back and I don’t want to disappoint Magni.”
Hans used the remaining time in the drone to call friends. I had to give it to him that he was pretty creative. For every person he talked to, he made them promise to call other people and ask about a ginger-haired woman around twenty, who would have arrived around May and who would be training in martial arts.
Once we reached the hospital, I was more subdued than normal when I walked around with the two female professors. Not once did I flirt with them.
I kept my answers short and asked a minimum of questions, because underneath my professional surface, I was grieving the loss of Athena.
Over the next two days, we visited an all-blurred-together succession of medically related places. I smiled and waved to the cameras and even joked a time or two, but anyone who knew me would be able to see that I wasn’t myself.
This toned-down version of me was working wonders with the Motlanders. The crowds became bigger and bigger with every place we visited. Hans told me that the press had given us five Nmen nicknames.
“They call you five the Dancer, the Infatuated, the Ranger, the Artist, and the Doctor.”
“Who’s the Infatuated?”
“The one called Bruce Lee. He admitted in an interview that he was infatuated with his mediator, Antoinette.”
Remembering the beautiful woman Bruce had been paired with, I wondered if he would be leaving the Motherlands with a wife or with a broken heart like me.
I had come here with the intention of sleeping with as many women as I could. But that was before Athena got under my skin and connected to a part of me that held a desire much deeper than that. I wanted everything with her.
Two days before I was scheduled to go home, I dragged myself through one more interview, answering the same basic questions about being a carnivore, our lack of females, my time here in the Motherlands, and my hopes for the future.
The rebel in me wanted to throw in a few curse words and shock them. The only thing holding me back was the fact that I’d spoken to Pearl earlier that day. She had been bursting with pride. “They love you, and my mom says the Council received several messages from women who are offering to marry you.”
“That’s great,” I had told her with a smile that didn’t reach my eyes.
“Can we go back to the hotel now?” I asked Hans when I got into the drone.
“Are you sure that’s what you want?” he said and the excitement in his eyes made my heart race faster.
“What happened? Did Athena contact you?”
“No, but my friend Donna did. I’ve had to fabricate more than a few lies, but it paid off. We found Laura.”