Lonely, very lonely

Ares found himself drinking more often in those afternoons when the world felt particularly small. The drinks weren’t a straight collapse into misery; they had instead become a ritual of extracting thought, of softening the hard places so decisions might slide from one place to another.

He drank to forget the edges of the past and to steady himself for the present. Sometimes he drank to test his resolve, to see if the man who had once been unshakable still stood.

Lila ...