Filthy Gods (American Gods 0.5)(22)

I swung my hair over my shoulder and smiled. “The Nathaniel Radcliffe I know wouldn’t let anyone decide his future in his place.”

He stroked the pad of his thumb over his lower lip, studying me with a gaze that gleamed with intelligence. “And what about your past, Juliette?”

I tensed, looking down at my shoes covered in grains of sand. I wiped them off, but I could still feel the rub of the grain on the soles of my feet.

“What about it?” I asked, voice low.

He hummed back, straightening up beside me. “What if I said I knew your past?”

My head snapped fast in his direction, mouth falling open. “What?”

Instead of a smug smile, his expression was steel and sober. “You’re living on government scholarships. You have no family, bound to foster care until you were eighteen.”

Embarrassment wrapped around my throat and pinched my lungs. I stood, wiping the sand from my calves. “Goodnight, Nathaniel.”

He stood, matching my pace with no effort. Of course.

He stepped into my path. “Your past doesn’t define you. You’ve earned your education at Yale, that’s admirable. Most of us didn’t. Most of us get our parents to pay our way in.”

“Not you,” I bit back. Because of course, he’d always have that above me. That he was wealthy and intelligent and damn good looking.

“Look,” he snapped—for the first time, his voice didn’t sound so composed and I froze. “Like I said, your secret’s safe with me. No one will know. Everyone will think you went off to south of France.”

“But your friends—”

His eyes narrowed. “Won’t say a word. They’re loyal to me as I’m loyal to them.”

His words pounded in my head. Loyalty between four men capable of destroying anyone in their path. Without a lift of their hand or a muscle moving in their jaw, they ruled the campus. And soon Boston, too.

“I grew up moving from foster home to foster home. My mom died. My dad was never in the picture. No one wanted me. No one. And I learned that. I learned that when foster parents would spend money on drugs or nice clothes instead of feeding me. I was just another paycheck to them. And when they grew tired of me? They shipped me to the next one to ignore me, to use me, to beat me. I went through ten different foster homes. I don’t ever want to feel like that. I won’t ever be that girl again,” I snapped, tears burning the back of my eyes.

Nathaniel shook his head, his eyes full of power and hope and strength. Bloodshot. As if my words had moved him.

“Your past doesn’t need to define you, Juliette,” he said, his voice soft and hard all at once. Leaving no room for me to argue. Because I knew the bastard was right. Because he saw something I had trouble seeing. “Ad astra.” I shivered at his voice, at his words.

To see the stars.

“You could do anything,” he said, stepping closer, the dark sky blending with his dark hair.

I glared. “You of all people know that’s not true. You know the people with power have wealth and old names and connections.”

He shrugged, lifting his arms as if to challenge anyone—the universe. “Then I’d make Congress bow.”

I gritted my teeth. “I don’t need your help.”

“No, you don’t,” he agreed. “You could get whatever you want without anyone’s help. You’re capable and strong, and intelligent. And you deserve all of the success I know you’ll have. More than I ever will, more than any bastards whose parents paid their way into Yale.” A new anger raged in his eyes. The calmness was erased and he stepped closer and closer until his breath fanned my nose.

I swallowed thickly, my throat tight and hot. Unable to speak. “No one…”

His eyes burned into me and I felt on fire.

“No one has ever cared what happened to me,” I whispered.

He didn’t say a word, his jaw flexing under his tight clench of his teeth, but I felt his stare like hands, like a powerful word uttered from his sacred mouth.

A boom filled the air, causing us both to jerk and reds and blues and whites filled the dark sky over the water.

Fireworks erupted over and over again, flashing across his sculpted features.

With one look from me, he stepped closer and took my face in his powerful hands. His ocean eyes, dark and hard—held the universe in them. A universe he was offering to me.

Then he stole my mouth, my body, and my mind all at once under the Fourth of July fireworks.





One morning I woke to a note beside my head left on Nathaniel’s pillow.

Meet me at the east side docks at 2pm. Be sharp.

I frowned at the note with my sleepy eyes and got ready. I snorted at be sharp. We were both always excruciatingly punctual.

Through my entire shift, I thought of what he was planning. The east side docks weren’t much in use. The wooden planks had rotted and needed repairs, but they didn’t have plans to repair the dock until next summer.

Why Nathaniel wanted me to meet him there was beyond me.

I stripped out of my work clothes and dressed in blue shorts and a white t-shirt. As I made my way down the path, the high grass up to my hips, I spotted a sailboat docked at the east side.

Nathaniel stood in it and he smiled when he saw me, his shades blocking his eyes from me.