longer kissing her, but unable to let her go completely. “Nothing is forever, and there are no absolutes. We’ll find a way.”
“Lucas,” Helen said, frowning and pushing against his chest until he let her go. She sat down on the catwalk and pulled him down next to her so they could talk. “We would hate ourselves. And eventually, we’d hate each other.”
“I know that!” he said, his voice rising desperately. “I’m not talking about running off and doing whatever we want!”
“Then, what?” Helen asked softly, calming him down. “What are we supposed to do?”
“I don’t know yet,” he admitted. He leaned back against the glass wall of the lighthouse and pulled Helen against his chest. “But I will not go through another week like this last one.”
“Me neither,” she said. She rested against him, fully relaxing for the first time in days. “I don’t care how hard being together is, nothing is worse than being apart.”
“What was it you told me? Decide what you can’t do and then do the opposite?” he asked with an amused smile, pressing his lips against her forehead. “At least now we know we can’t be apart.”
“It was like being dead,” she said fearfully, as if even mentioning the numbness she had felt would allow it to creep back into her body.
“For me too,” he said in a strange, strangled voice.
“What about your mother? She won’t allow us to be together.”
“We’ll have to talk with her. We’ll have to talk to my whole family.”
“And if they still want to separate us?”
“Then we run,” Lucas said, his voice low and even.
Neither of them said anything for a while. They just watched the beacon light flash across the foaming waves of the storm-churned ocean. Helen could hear his heart pounding, but his grip on her only tightened as if he was already bracing himself for the battle he would have to fight to keep her close to him.
“They’ll chase us,” she whispered. “They’ll think we’ve started the war.”
“I know,” Lucas said. “But we won’t. We’ll keep the Truce, even if they don’t believe that we can.”
“We don’t have to make the same mistakes that they did,” Helen said defiantly. “It makes me so angry that everyone assumes that even though we know what would happen, we’ll still go out and do the same stupid thing.”
Lucas laughed, but there was no joy in the sound.
“It’s almost as if we don’t need to live our lives or feel our feelings at all, because someone already told us what the ending was going to be,” he said bitterly. She could feel him tensing with indignation, until a new and serious thought stilled him. “Are you really willing to do this? You know that it would mean you’d have to leave your father behind?”
“I know,” she said, knowing full well she’d be hurting her father far worse than her mother ever did, but also knowing that she would do it for Lucas—for both of them.
“I understand if you can’t do this—” he began, but Helen cut him off.
“If they won’t let us stay together, we have no choice. We have to run away.”
“It won’t be forever,” he said, trying to console her as well as himself. “Just until we can figure out a way around this. And we will figure it out. There has to be a way.”
“I’ve thought of something,” Helen said, her whole body going still. She felt Lucas tense.
“I think I know where you’re going with this, and I don’t think I want to hear you say it,” he said uncertainly.
“What if I wasn’t a virgin?” Helen said quickly, just to get it over with.
“I’m not sharing you, Helen,” he replied immediately. “Besides, it won’t work.”
“I’m serious, we have to consider it,” she insisted, struggling in his arms until he loosened his grip enough for her to lean back and look at him. “Tell me the truth. Would you stop wanting me if I was with someone else first?”
“Of course not,” he said, smiling tenderly at her. “And I don’t just want you, Helen. I love you. Big difference.”
“Okay, look. I hate to even think about this, but I’ll do it,” Helen pleaded as Lucas started to shake his head vehemently. “I love you, too, and I’ll do whatever I have to do if it will let us be together. What? Why are you shaking your head? You’re not the only one making this decision, you know.”
“Tricks like that won’t work, not unless you just want something physical.