Not Playing by the rules

Chapter 5

Athena woke up with a start and found that there was something heavy on her breasts and found that Leon’s arm was draped on her possessively from last night since they had slept after insane love-making. Athena slowly lifted his arm and slid out of the covers. She glanced at her wristwatch, it was four-thirty in the morning and the temperature was quite chilling. She slowly dressed up not missing one article of clothing and looked at the man she hated with all her being. Leon, or rather Rhys according to him was soundly asleep with a hint of smile playing on his lips.

The admission that he had made last night had shocked her to the core. How could he say something like that to her? It was more than enough to be scorned at engagement but now after sleeping with her admitting that he was not able to have s*x normally with anyone, any woman before her. It was like that he was as damaged internally as she was. But their reasons of being damaged were very different from each other.

He could not have s*x with dominating over someone else and she could not have s*x with anyone without thinking that she was betraying someone else. Both the person she was sleeping with and the man whom she hated with all her being.

Athena finished wearing all her clothes and sat down on the bed once more. She could not leave the room or the place without touching him one last time. She never knew when she would get the chance, if ever she could see him again. She saw that he was sleeping very peacefully, his muscles relaxed and arm still outstretched thinking that he was holding her. She gradually removed the blanket over his body and looked at him so that she could memorize all the hard contours and planes of his muscles, the ridges and there she saw something else. There was a scarred tissue of a huge gashes all over his back, healed at the moment but it seemed that he had been tortured for a long period of time by someone.

Her breath hitched in her throat. This was not at all what she had expected. He had been tortured, her Leon whom she had loved and then hated for the longest period of time she could remember had been hurt consistently over a long period by someone. And it seemed that they had taken perverse pleasure in it. No doubt he did not want anyone to touch and know his body.

How could she leave him in this state when she had been gifted the best night of her life by this man she did not know, neither she could conceive such a thought but instinctively she knew that she could not keep up the pretense of being Alice any longer.

She cast a glance at his asleep form and walked out of the room and went downstairs to find the overnight bag that she had carried when she had come to town and stopped here. And now she had to find another place and another job in another state where she would never come in touch with the man.

“Your bags are packed still on the table,” came a beautiful highly cultured voice from behind the curtains.

“Flora?” prompted Athena from the reception desk.

But the woman coming out was not the middle-aged woman wearing a tattered floral gown who had served her yesterday and behaved just like the neighbor next door. She was a Greek Goddess whose beauty had blinded women and men since eons of centuries since her wake.

“I am known as Aphrodite. And at the moment you are standing at my temple dear Athena,” replied the Goddess.

Athena did not even know when her jaws had dropped and she was gaping at the personification of lust and beauty in front of her.

“The feelings you are harbouring at the moment are not your own Athena. And just like always Nemesis would try to drop the apple of discord since you felt betrayed by Leon but that is not true at all,” said the Goddess in a mesmerizing voice with a slight lilt to it which made Athena fall totally in love with her.

“Can I say that I love you?” asked Athena her eyes glazed.

“Oh boy!!! Eros, how could you be so foolish? I told you to tone down the glamour at the lowest,” saying this Aphrodite closed her eyes and shimmered once more and Athena blinked and rubbed her eyes once more and looked at her.

“Are you for real or am I hallucinating?” asked Athena looking at Aphrodite.

“You are not hallucinating dear. I am Aphrodite, but you don’t have much time, so listen carefully to what I am saying. You have waited for you love for a long time, so when you get a chance do not spurn him away like he did. You both have my blessings to find your one and true love, your soul-mate,” said Aphrodite.

“I was named after the Goddess of Wisdom, as you know. And in my opinion there is no such thing as love. I have only one motive in life now. To destroy the man who destroyed me and my family like gnats. I am glad to have your blessings and I hope to find my peace some day,” bowed Athena and closed her eyes. But what she was saying was not what she actually wanted to say, she was astonished at her own self speaking such harsh things.

“You are an intelligent girl, my child. You have done well for yourself and your family but now it is time to look back at yourself. Never think that love or rather true love does not exist, it does and it is much closer at hand than you would believe it to be. I don’t ask for much from you, just this that when you get the opportunity, just open your heart and give love a chance to make everything alright. You are destined to be happy, my child. Don’t be foolish to throw it away,” said Aphrodite and disappeared from before her eyes.

Athena thought that she was probably drugged or she would not be seeing such a vision and rubbed her eyes closing them.

When she opened them she was no longer inside that old motel. She was standing on the fork of the road with her bag in hand. She fished out her phone from her purse and put on the navigation and took the road towards the town.

When Athena came to town she knew that Leon lived in this place itself but she never expected him to cross her path. In the morning her first thought was to flee but then after hearing Aphrodite she realized.

“Vengeance is due and I have waited a damn long time for it. So it better be served cold, which serves him right,” Athena muttered to herself. But what she had seen in the room today morning did not leave her senses. The scarred back of the man haunted her thoughts. As much as she knew about masochism the healed wounds on his back did not look like they had been self-inflicted which scared her even further.

It had been quite a long time that she had any real interest in any man because she knew at the back of her mind even if she did hate Leon, she could not love anyone else. When she came to know that Leon would not be coming to the stage that night and everyone looked at her with sympathy in their eyes she had felt like a loser which she never had been in her life and she had hated Leon for making her feel that way about herself. She had accepted her parent’s choice because she herself had loved since long but she had never given him the authority to hurt her and shame her family in the way that he had done. That night she had run to church and promised before Christ the Lord himself that never again would she give this much power to any man that he could hurt her or break her heart again but today she was once again standing at crossroads.

She was hired by the biggest restaurant in California which was a Michelin starred restaurant. And she was the pastry chef. Her parents always wanted her to be a lawyer and she did not disappoint them. She passed law from Vermont school but then again it was not her calling. She practiced law until her brother was old and qualified enough to take over the business and finally she was free to pursue her passion.

Her father once asked why she was going to do something where her family had no steps, law was a sector where with or without merger they knew how to pull it off. Their family had the right connections and with the proper amount of patience and hard work she could hit it off great.

Her own reply to her father at that time was,”Dad, I don’t need the footsteps of my family to carry forward our legacy. I can leave my foot print anywhere I want to and I am going to make you proud wherever I am. In this family, daughters have been married off when they came of age, then their only job was to produce babies, host parties and teas in the afternoons and keep on being involved in the sewing circle. But that too changed, is it not? I had asked to you keep faith in me that night despite what Mom said and you did and did I let you down?”

“My dear girl, you can never let me down whatever you do. Even if you were married and pregnant you have been always too bright to be locked indoors. Live your life,” her father had replied.

And today she needed to do that. Today was the day when she was to make her father proud.

The road was only a short distance from the main road where Athena hailed a cab and asked the cabbie to take her to her destination. She reached the restaurant awfully early for anyone’s standards but to her good luck someone recognized her.

“Ms. Simpleton, you are here at six in the morning. That is so awfully early,” exclaimed the woman who recognized her.

“To be honest I was telling myself the same thing and I just arrived in town and I have no place to stay at the moment so I guess I came to the only place that I know,” replied Athena with an apologetic smile.

“Oh dear!! That is really bad… I am the one who is responsible for the freshly baked goods. I am Marjorie. You can call me Maggie, that’s what everyone calls me,” said the woman with a smile on her face.

“Then Maggie I must tell you that you can call me Athena. Since we are going to be closely working together, no need of formalities, right?” said Athena with a smile again.

“I shall show you in and then we can chat up some more over a cup of chamomile tea. You like that, right? I just guessed,” said Maggie leading her in the alley to the back door of the restaurant.

“In that case, you guessed correct Maggie. I love chamomile tea and I need to start working as early as possible. I want to start my day in Nomaden with a bang,” said Athena as she entered the kitchen of the restaurant.

It was spotless and sparkling clean which she loved because business with cream and chocolate tended to be messy.

And just like that she started her new life in California.