My Life From Hell (The Blooming Goddess #3)

All You Need Is Love (Part 2)

Kai braced his hands on his lap. "Watching you, engulfed in the flames like that? It wasn't just your death I saw. It was the death of this twisted thing that I'd been holding on to for so long."

Whoa. I'd wanted genuine and this was as real as it had ever gotten with him. I kept still for fear of jolting him back into his usual mode of suck-ass communication and general disappearance.

He kept going. "I've spent so much of my life defining myself against my father that watching you, understanding what you were doing ..." He looked directly into my eyes. "Yes, Sophie, I did understand the significance. I was furious. At you. I felt like you had wrested control away from me and were resolving the situation without any discussion about my place in it all."

I twisted my hands together. "I kinda was. But I didn't have a choice."

"Let me finish," he chided. "Overriding my anger, was fear. I was terrified you weren't going to survive. Because it didn't look like Theo had. Terrified that, even if you did, what would my purpose be then? How was I supposed to go take the Underworld from my father after that?"

"But you don't have—"

He slid over beside me and clapped a hand over my mouth. "Like, five minutes without butting in?"

I nodded that I would be good.

He took his hand away. "When I saw you emerge from that fire unharmed and lit up with such joy when I felt so," he growled in frustration, then sighed. "It was too much."

I didn't know how to interpret this. "But you came to find me here," I said.

He straightened his shoulders. He was steadying himself. "Yeah. Because I realized that the main thing I felt was relief that you were alive. I want to be here. With you."

Cautious delight. "You're sure?"

He nodded. "Positive." Kai kissed the tip of my nose. "Your turn. What happened after you jumped?"

I filled him in on my conversation with Kiki and all that had transpired in the garden. "You know, Persephone had been trying so hard to live up to a certain image of herself that it snapped her. But I was just as bad. I thought I'd been living my life, kinda giving Felicia the finger, but I hadn't. Once all these other gods came into my life, my desire to be seen a certain way, to get validation in a certain way ... It just got worse."

I pursed my lips, thinking it over. "Ultimately, my big 'whoa' moment was realizing that everything I'd gone through just made me the best person I could be. I became whole. If that makes sense."

"It does." Kai pulled me onto his lap.

I leaned back into his strength, and his warmth, then twisted to face him. "Everything that was happening with Persephone? That was happening with me and sending spring into limbo ..." I laughed at the look on his face. "Yeah, forgot to mention that. It was because we forced ourselves to fit all these ideas everyone had about us. In the end, though, it warped us. In Persephone's case, to a point when she was willing to take everyone down because there was nothing left but her rage."

I stroked Kai's arm. "I hate that you got caught in that fallout."

His eyes sparked. "I lived. Maybe it helped me figure stuff out in the end."

"Hmm. Thing is, I'm probably going to spend the rest of my life figuring myself out, but it's for me to figure out. Just me. I'm okay with that. I started out feeling like a nobody and ended up feeling like a—"

"Goddess?"

I shook my head. "No. Better."

He nuzzled against my cheek. "I love you."

"So much."

He exhaled hard and grinned. "Good. Because who else would I match with?"

I scrunched up my nose. "Huh?"

Kai tugged up my sleeve, then his own. He brought our wrists together. Mine was palm down, his palm up. That made it easier to read: "All you need," across mine, and "is love" across his.

Incredulous, I stared at our identical tattoos. Like down-to-the-ink-color identical. "When? How?" I turned his wrist over to examine the full inscription. No wonder Jennifer had been surprised when I'd asked for those words. She'd already tattooed them on Kai.

Kai linked our hands together. "A while after I left you in the garden. After all we did, good and bad, I finally accepted that I didn't have to prove anything to my father anymore." He smiled at me with the full wattage of his love. "He's not the one I want to be important to. You're my tree. My roots and my heart."

Not going to cry. Not going to cry. I swiped at my eyes.

He cupped my jaw in his hands. "I want a life. Not an afterlife."

With that, he leaned in and kissed me.

As I lost myself in his kiss, in his touch, my last coherent thought was that while I didn't know what tomorrow held, it didn't matter. I didn't need a plan.

I had my friends and the guy who loved me. Life was pretty damn fabulous.

I was pretty damn fabulous.

And the kiss ... well, let's just say that fabulous didn't even come close.

THE END