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 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.”
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.
“Ah, the News Store?” Helen offered with a shrug. “I don’t think we’ll be able to talk there, though.”
“How ’bout this,” he said as he pulled into a chain restaurant that was popular with the tourists.
Helen winced but assented. There were other mom-and-pop choices, but she knew all the people who worked in those places. For this conversation she needed a little privacy.
They stood quietly together in line, waiting to sit before they started talking. Helen tried not to stare at Lucas, but it was difficult. It amazed her how comfortable he seemed wherever he went, as if the whole world was as private to him as his own bedroom.
She tried to watch him out of the corner of her eye, maybe catch him fidgeting or shuffling his feet the way she herself did in public, but there was none of that. He really didn’t care if people looked at him or not. He didn’t subconsciously apologize to the world for his presence by slouching or crossing his