She turned and waved at Helen, who thought to herself that the impossible had just happened. Claire had finally run out of nasty things to say to Jason. Helen shut the door behind them and took a deep breath. Then she glanced over at Lucas, and prayed to a pantheon of gods that looking at him would get easier someday.
“You look tired,” she said, realizing it was true as she said it.
“So do you. I hear you’ve been having a lot of nightmares,” he said back, completely unashamed to admit he was asking his cousins about her.
“Why do you care? Please, Lucas, just go away,” she begged, rubbing her face with her hands.
“I can’t. I won’t,” he said, moving forward and pulling her into his arms.
She felt too fragile to fight him off. She melted into his chest and rested there for a few moments.
“Why do you smell like the ocean?” he said suddenly, pulling away from her to get a better look. He studied her bedraggled clothes speckled with sand, and asked suspiciously, “What happened to you todaybesidesCreon?”
“How is that fair?” she demanded. She pushed him from her with a bitter laugh. “If I lie to you you’ll know, and if I stay silent you’ll assume something worse than the truth.”
“Then just tell me as much or as little as you want,” he said quietly, stepping away from her to allow her some personal space. “But tell mesomething. What happened?”
“I was dodging practice because I couldn’t bear to see you. Hector found me hiding on the beach, I got in his face, and he nearly drowned me to teach me a lesson in humility,” she blurted, tears of exhaustion brimming in her eyes. “Then I went to Claire’s to cry on her shoulder and tell her I was a Scion. Then I flew home, where Creon attacked me, tried to break my neck, and stabbed me in the heart. You pretty much know the rest. Now I just want to take a hot shower and lie down because I’m freezing cold and itchy and I don’t think I can handle anything else happening today.”
“Okay. You go shower,” Lucas said, nodding tightly as he stepped out of her path. “I’ll wait for you in your room.”
Helen staggered up the stairs and ran into the bathroom. She got into the shower and began to cry. Sitting down in the tub with the spray fanning out all around her she couldn’t stop the tears any longer. She tried to be as quiet as she could, and hoped that the droning rush of water would mask the sound of her crying.
When she finally got it all out she dried off and put on a sweet-smelling tank top and pair of sweatpants fresh from the laundry. As she flossed and brushed her teeth in the foggy bathroom, she heard her dad come home and turn on the TV in the living room. She went to the top of the stairs and shouted a good night down to him. He grunted a good night back, but he was too engrossed in the Red Sox race to October to start a conversation. Helen went into her bedroom.
Lucas was waiting for her in there. When Helen saw him, lying on top of her covers fully dressed with his shoes kicked off, she stopped and stared at him from the doorway. He was too long for her little-girl bed, but even so he looked just right lying in it. He stared back at her for a moment before he swallowed painfully, lifted up the covers, and motioned for her to get in. When she paused, caught between arguing that her father could walk in at any second and asking him to take his clothes off, he spoke.
“I only have so much willpower, Helen,” he whispered. “And since you apparently sleep in the most ridiculously transparent tank top I’ve ever seen, I’m going to have to ask you to get under the covers before I do something stupid.”
The blood rushed to Helen’s face, and she immediately crossed her arms to cover her chest. She ran and jumped under the covers. Lucas just laughed and folded the comforter up over her as if it were some uncrossable line that would magically keep the two of them from doing “something stupid.” As she snuggled down, he wrapped an arm around her and rubbed his face into the back of her neck.
“No need to be embarrassed. After seeing you in my cousin’s nightgown, you’ve got nothing to hide. But why were you crying in the shower?” he murmured into her hair. She could feel his lips moving against her scalp, and feel the press of his hips through the covers, but his arms were an unyielding cage. She tried to turn over to face him, to welcome him under the covers with her, but he wouldn’t let her.
“I was crying because I’m frustrated! Why are you doing this?” she whispered into her pillow.
“We can’t, Helen,” was all he said.
He kissed her neck and said he was sorry over and over, but try as she might, he wouldn’t let her face him. She began to feel like she was being used.
“Please be patient,” he begged as he stopped her hand from reaching back to touch him.
She tried to sit up, to push him out of her bed, anything but suffer lying next to someone who would play with her so terribly. They wrestled a bit, but he was much better at it than she was and felt even heavier than he looked. He easily blocked every attempt she made to wrap her arms or legs or lips around him.
“Do you want me at all, or do you just think it’s fun to tease me like this?” she asked, feeling rejected and humiliated. “Won’t you even kiss me?” She finally struggled onto her back where she could at least see his face.
“If I kiss you, I won’t stop,” he said in a desperate whisper as he propped himself up on his elbows to look her in the eye.
She looked back at him, really seeing him for the first time that night. His expression was vulnerable and uncertain. His mouth was swollen with want. His body was shaking, and there was a fine layer of anxious sweat wilting his clothes. Helen relaxed back into the bed with a sigh. For some reason that obviously had nothing to do with desire, he wouldn’t allow himself to be with her.
“You’re not laughing at me, are you?” she asked warily, just as a precaution.
“No. There’s nothing funny about this,” he answered. He shifted himself off her and lay back down alongside her, still breathing hard.
“But for some reason, you and I will never happen,” she said, feeling calm.
“Never say never,” he said urgently, rolling back on top of her and using all of his unusually heavy mass to press her deep into the cocoon of her little-girl bed. “The gods love to toy with people who use absolutes.”
Lucas ran his lips across her throat and let her put her arms around him, but that was all. He kept her pinned under the blankets, mummified in miserable chastity, allowing her to hold, but not fully embrace him.
