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Helen felt a pop behind her eyes and raised a hand to cover the gush of warm blood soaking her lips. Ariadne sat in stunned stillness on the edge of her bed while Helen ran to the window, wrenched it open, and jumped out.
Helen accelerated straight up. She wanted to see the thin blue line of air around the earth as it faded into black sky one more time. She wanted it fresh in her mind when she laid her head down that night. She was pretty certain that if she didn’t have some sort of miraculous epiphany, she would never pick her head up again.
Cleaning the freezing blood off her face as best she could with the edge of her shirt, Helen stared at the slowly spinning earth. It was nightfall on her side of the planet, but she could still make out the gossamer layer of atmosphere. It was just a fragile sliver of nearly nothing that kept life on one side and frozen oblivion on the other. Helen marveled that something that looked so delicate could be so powerful. Another gift from Lucas, she thought, smiling at the humbling sight.
Helen shut her eyes and let herself float. She was up high, higher than she had ever gone before, and the tug of the earth was so slight that for a moment she wondered if she could cut the final thread of gravity that tied her to the world and drift all the way to the moon.
A steely hand clamped onto the back of her jacket, yanking her down and nearly tearing her clothes off. Helen twisted around as she tumbled back to earth, and saw Lucas’s tortured face as he pulled her against him.
“What are you doing?” he gasped into her ear, clamping her tight to his panting chest as he rapidly sank them both back down. His throat was so pinched with emotion his voice broke repeatedly as he tried to talk. “Were you trying to drift off into space? You know that would kill you, right?”
“I know, Lucas. I . . . it feels good to just let go.” She realized that she had said his name aloud for the first time in ages. It was such a relief to finally have his name in her mouth again that she laughed. “I like to do it sometimes. Haven’t you ever?”
“Yeah. I have,” he admitted, still clutching at her and digging his face deeper and deeper into her neck as he floated them down from the cold night sky. He whispered in her ear. “But your eyes were closed. I thought you had blacked out.”
“I’m sorry. I thought I was alone,” she whispered back.
She knew she should ask, but she honestly didn’t care how Lucas got there. She held on to him tighter and tighter, as if she were trying to push him inside her chest and wrap her skin around him.
This was Lucas, and she wanted to hold on to him, hold on to the person he was in this moment, before he had a chance to turn into the angry stranger again. He sighed deeply and said her name before pulling back from her hug and searching for Helen’s widow’s walk.
“Where’s Jerry?” he asked as they hovered over her house. The Pig, Jerry’s ancient Jeep Wrangler, was conspicuously absent from the driveway and none of the interior lights were on.
“Probably still working,” Helen said, never taking her eyes off him. “Will you come in? Or is this about to get ugly again?”
“I promised you, no more fighting. It didn’t work, anyway,” Lucas said, and tugged Helen down to land with her on her widow’s walk.
“You did do it on purpose, didn’t you?” For a moment they stood there staring at each other through the heavy silence. “Did your father have anything to do with it?”
“It was my choice,” he said heavily.
She waited for him to explain himself, but he didn’t. He didn’t try to make any excuses or push the blame off onto someone else. Instead, Lucas left it up to Helen to decide what was going to happen between them next. She punched his chest in frustration, not as hard as she could, but hard enough to make him feel something. He didn’t try to stop her.
“How could you do that to me!” she cried, just short of howling.
“Helen.” He caught her tight fists and pressed them to the place on his chest that she had hit. “What else could I do? We were together all the time again. Sitting together, telling each other our deepest secrets, and it was confusing you. You have more important things to think about than me.”
“Do you have any idea how much that hurt?” she asked in a strangled voice, wanting to hit him again, but finding that her hands relaxed of their own accord and smoothed over him instead.
“Yes.” He spoke so tenderly Helen knew that he was just as hurt by their separation as she was. “And the consequences will stay with me for the rest of my life.”
Her brow wrinkled with worry. She knew that he wasn’t exaggerating—Lucas had changed. His face was so pale it reflected the moonlight, and his eyes were a dark blue that bordered on black. It was like looking at the midnight twin of her sunshine Lucas. He was still beautiful, but so sad it was painful for her to look at him.
After everything he’d put her through, Helen knew she should want to punish him, but she didn’t. Somewhere along the way she had laced her arms around his neck and he had started running his hands up and down her back, and she wasn’t the least bit angry anymore.
Staring into his eyes, she could see an odd gloom creeping around in there, trying to snuff out the glow she’d always found inside of him. But before she could figure out how to ask him what he meant by “consequences,” Lucas changed the subject and pulled away from her.
“I had a long exchange with Orion today,” he said, opening the door on the widow’s walk that went downstairs into the house and holding it open for Helen. “He had a feeling that you weren’t telling us everything about what was going on in the Underworld. He asked me to help. He cares about you very much.”
“I know that.” Helen led him into the house and down to her cold bedroom. “But he’s wrong. I’m not keeping anything from anyone. It’s just that I figured there’s no help for me, so why go into the details? I’m not dreaming, Lucas. How does Orion think you or anyone else can fix that?”
Lucas slumped down on the edge of Helen’s bed, shrugged off his jacket, and kicked off his shoes while he thought. He was so comfortable in her room, it was like he belonged there. Helen’s every instinct screamed that Lucas did belong in her bedroom, despite the fact that they both knew he shouldn’t be there.
“I descended into the Underworld the other night. At first, it was to see if I could help you in any way—without interfering, of course. And then after a few hours it was just to watch the two of you together. For a lot of reasons,” Lucas finally admitted, laying all his cards on the table. “Anyway, I got sloppy. Orion saw me there and worked out how I did it. He got in touch with me today to tell me why you were dying, and together we realized that I might have the one thing you need to get well again. So I guess
I did find a way to help you after all.” He swung his legs up onto her bed and settled back against the pillows.
Helen stopped dead. She wanted to stare at him all night, lying in her bed like that, as perfect as could be, but she couldn’t get past what he’d just told her.
