Starcrossed (18 page)

pleaded.

“Does it hurt?” Helen asked, her curiosity piqued.

“I’ve tried to explain to Jase how it feels, but I’ve never been able

to get it right. It’s almost like that feeling you get when you’ve lost

something really important and you can’t find it, but it’s much

worse. The longer the lie hangs there, the more frantic I get to find

the truth. I’ll dig and dig for it . . .”

“I just need a little bit of time to adjust,” Helen admitted in a

rush. “I’m not ready to tell my dad about me, or about my mom,

because I don’t know what it would do to him. To be honest, I don’t

know if I’ll ever tell him. But I know I need a minute to get used to

all of this. A few days at least.”

Lucas’s face relaxed immediately and he let out a held breath.

“Why didn’t you just say that to begin with?”

“Because it’s, it’s too . . .” she trailed off, not knowing why it was

so hard.

“Too raw. Like being naked,” Lucas said for her. Helen nodded

her head. “Well, sorry. But with me you have to be either honest or

silent.” He released the break, put the car in gear, and merged back

into traffic.

As soon as he could stop shifting, he grabbed her hand and held

it on his leg, and when the fading sunlight forced him to turn on

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the headlights, he let go of the steering wheel rather than let go of

her hand.

Lucas pulled into Helen’s driveway behind the Pig, then killed

the lights and engine. “Stay here for a sec,” he said before hopping

out of the car and disappearing around the back of the house.

Helen craned her head to look for him as she waited, but she

didn’t hear anything—not even the sound of his footsteps. Annoyed

that he would just run off like that, she got out of the car and

walked up to the Pig to get a better view. She noticed her purse lying

on the ground behind the front tire. Oops. She picked it up and

fished out her phone. There were over a dozen missed calls.

She remembered that her purse was lying on the ground because

she had been attacked, and she suddenly realized that her attacker

was not Hector or Lucas, as she had assumed the other night.

Now that she could look back on it without the Furies there to

warp her judgment, she figured out that there had been someone

else here waiting for her when she came home. Someone with wiry

arms—a woman, she thought, recalling the smell of cosmetics—had

grabbed her from behind, then been scared off by the arrival of the

Delos family. Lucas had sent Ariadne and Jason to chase after her,

but the woman must have gotten away because there was no mention

of her this weekend. In the shock of the past few days, Helen

had completely forgotten about the attack.

“Lucas?” she called, heading toward the shadows off to the side of

her house. He had been gone too long. She heard a muffled thud

behind her.

“I asked you to stay in the car. It’s for your safety, Helen,” Lucas

said with frustration. She spun around to face him, gesturing

wildly with her cell phone still in her hand.

“That woman! You’re looking for that woman who jumped Kate

and me,” Helen said, finally understanding it all. “She’s a Scion,

too. She has to be!”

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“Yes, of course she is. . . .” he interrupted her. “But listen to me.

There are two of them—two different women are after you, and we

haven’t caught either of them yet.”

A pair of lights flashed across the house and driveway. A car was

pulling up. Lucas stood in front of Helen and looked easily through

the lights that were blinding her from seeing the people in the car.

“It’s your father,” he told her.

“Helen? There you are! Where the hell have you been?” Jerry

shouted as he climbed out of the cab before the driver had even

come to a full stop. He was angrier than she’d seen him in years. “I

called over and over. You’re never late! I thought something had

happened to you!”

“Why are you here?” Helen screeched.

“We got an earlier flight. Didn’t you get any of my messages?”

“I . . .” Helen trailed off, holding up her cell phone stupidly. She

knew she had to make something up, but she also knew she was a

terrible liar. She started to panic. Lucas grabbed her phone from

her and, as he did, Helen heard an almost imperceptible crunch.

“Her phone’s broken,” Lucas said, passing Helen’s phone to her

father so he could see it. It came apart in Jerry’s hand. “I came over

to see why she wasn’t picking up and she was out here in the driveway

on her way to go get you.” Helen stared at Lucas with her

mouth open, wondering how someone who demanded honesty

from everyone else could be so quick to lie.

“How did you do this, Len?” Jerry asked in a dismayed voice as

he studied the pulverized sandwich of plastic and microchips.

“This was brand-new.”

“I know!” Helen said a little too emphatically. “Piece of junk,

right? I’m so sorry, Dad. I had no idea you were coming early.

Really.”

“Oh, it’s all right,” Jerry said a bit sheepishly now that he wasn’t

so worried. He and Helen smiled at each other, all forgiven. Then

Jerry turned to Lucas. “You look familiar,” he said suspiciously,

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acknowledging Lucas’s presence for the first time and distrusting it

immediately.

For a moment Helen could see Lucas as her father did—a heartbreakingly

beautiful young man who was too well built, too well

dressed, and driving too nice of a car to ever be liked by anyone’s

father.

“Lucas Delos,” he said, holding out his hand.

“Don’t you hate this kid?” Jerry asked Helen candidly as he

shook the offered hand. Lucas laughed, and it was such an open,

unself-conscious sound that Jerry joined in.

“We worked it out,” Helen said.

“Good,” Jerry said. Then he passed Lucas’s flashy convertible as

he went back to the cab to pay and get his bags. “Or maybe not,” he

amended. Helen took that moment to roll her eyes at Lucas and

point to her phone.

“What about that woman? How are you going to tell me the rest

of the story now?” she whispered frantically. “If I use the phone in

the kitchen, my dad will hear.”

“Sorry,” Lucas whispered back, his eyes laughing. “I couldn’t

think of anything else to do.”

“Tomorrow,” Helen warned. “I want the whole story.”

“I’ll pick you up half an hour early for school. We’ll get coffee,”

Lucas promised.

“What’s going on?” Jerry asked suspiciously, joining them again.

“Lucas has to get home for dinner,” Helen said. She saw Lucas

wince at the lie, but he took the hint.

“It was nice to meet you, Mr. Hamilton,” Lucas said as he waved

good-bye and backpedaled toward his car.

“Damn, I really wish you had acne. Or a gland problem,” Jerry

replied.

“Dad!” Helen huffed, embarrassed. “Good night, Lucas,” she said

apologetically.

“Good night, Helen,” he replied softly, his eyes bright.

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“Okay, that’s enough. Get in the house, Helen,” Jerry said with a

nervous smile. He physically turned Helen around and gave her a

little push toward the door. “I think I would prefer it if you went

back to hating him.”

Helen heard Lucas laughing to himself as he started his car. The

warm sound made her smile.

Lucas took his time driving home from Helen’s side of the island.

He needed time to think and get control over himself before he

faced his family. Not that it would do much good. Cassandra and

Jason could always figure out how he was feeling, and they were

being hypervigilant about him right now. They’d been worried

about him since that day in the hallway when he’d first seen her,

and now it would get worse. It was already worse. Jason would

probably try to get him to sit down for a nice, long talk, and Lucas

didn’t have the patience for that. He didn’t want anyone’s pity; he

just wanted to be left alone for once.

Lucas pulled into the garage and sat with the engine off for a few

minutes, trying to put his feelings back where they belonged. The

past few days he’d felt as if his emotions were spring-loaded, as

though if he let the lid off them they’d all come flying out like confetti

from a Christmas cracker. He knew for damn sure he couldn’t

handle seeing Cassandra, not right then, and he also knew she was

probably waiting for him. He got out of the car, walked outside,

and flew up to his bedroom window to avoid her.

But of course she knew he would do that, and she was already sitting

on the couch in his room. Lucas smiled ruefully to himself before

he even got his window open. He should have known better

than to try and outmaneuver his little sister.

“I don’t want to talk about it, Cassie,” he said in what he hoped

was a patient but firm voice.

“You don’t get to make that choice,” Cassandra responded sadly.

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“No. We’re Scions. We don’t get to make many of our own

choices, do we?” he said bitterly as he floated through the window

and came in for a landing.

His body took on the burden of gravity and his feet touched down

as he went from flying to walking in an instant.

“You’ve been gone a while,” Cassandra said in an insinuating

tone.

“I stayed in her area for a bit, looking around her neighborhood

for any sign of those women,” he said evenly, and he wasn’t lying.

“I told you, you don’t have to worry. She’s safe for a few more

days at least,” Cassandra said, shaking her head. “I’m not so sure

about you.”

“I didn’t touch her.”

“But you can’t stay away from her, either.”

He couldn’t. Even when he was still possessed by the Furies in

her presence, he couldn’t stay away from Helen. He didn’t know

how to describe it; it was as though it felt wrong to be separated

from her. “You don’t have to worry. I won’t touch her.”

“That’s not the only thing I care about,” she began in a warning

tone.

He interrupted her, tired of the doublespeak. “Yeah, sure, but it’s

the thing you and everybody else cares about most, Cassie,” he

said. He unlatched his watch and laid it carefully on his bedside

table. He wouldn’t look at her, and he knew that was cruel, but he

couldn’t stop himself.

“That’s not true. You know that, right?” she asked, suddenly no

more than his sweet little sister. He looked over at her and felt his

heart soften. She carried a heavier burden then he did, he knew

that. Sometimes his bitterness got the better of him, but he trusted

that Cassandra knew he loved her, and that she also knew he

wouldn’t stop loving her even if she told him he had to give up the

one thing he wanted most in the world. That didn’t make it any

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easier for either of them, though it wasn’t like anyone had ever

asked them what they wanted.

“What does it matter how any of us feel?” he muttered. “If I take

Helen, the war starts all over again. No amount of wishing will

make it different.”

“I don’t know that,” Cassandra replied with more than a little

self-doubt. “I’m not strong enough yet.”

“But you’re pretty sure it is,” he said, sitting down on the end of

his bed, suddenly feeling as if he had taken on two planets’ worth

of gravity. “And don’t pretend you’re not, because not even you can

lie to me.”

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Chapter Eight

Helen spent the next few hours alternately listening to

the details of her father’s trip and insisting that Lucas

was not her boyfriend. She figured out pretty fast that

the only way to get Jerry to stop asking questions about

Lucas was to ask him questions about Kate instead.

And besides, she genuinely wanted to know what was going on

between the two of them. Jerry kept insisting that they had never

been anything more than friends. Disappointed that her dad was

obviously still lugging around a big bag of hurt for her mother, all

Helen wanted was to escape upstairs to her room to think, but she

had to wait until they finished dinner first. By the time she and her

father were done eating, arguing over how much salt he was allowed

to put on his dinner, and talking about the store, Helen was

so exhausted she nearly fell asleep sitting on the edge of the tub as

she brushed her teeth.

The next morning, Helen skipped breakfast, packed her own

lunch box, and shouted good-bye to her father from the front door

before he even made it downstairs. He called after her as she

jumped into Lucas’s car, but she pretended she didn’t hear him.

“Shouldn’t we wait to see what he wants?” Lucas asked her.

“Nope. Let’s just go,” she said a little too quickly.

Lucas shrugged and drove off as Jerry made it to the front door.

Helen waved to him, but she knew she would hear about this little

stunt later. In detail.

“Okay, I’m still new around here so I don’t know the cafés.

Where’s a good place on this side of the island?” Lucas asked.