Goddess (Starcrossed)

something.” Helen grinned up at him, loving how he always downplayed his talents—and not just the Scion ones. “But you didn’t. You work for your money.”
    “All five dollars of it,” he said, rolling his eyes.
    “An honest buck may not buy any more groceries than a dishonest one, but it’ll always be worth more. Especially to me,” she replied seriously. He was a self-made man, just like her dad, and she respected that quality in him the most because his dignity was something he earned, not something he was born with.
    “Hey, Orion? Put some pants on, toss her over your shoulder, and carry her off like a man, for the love of Pete!” Hector hollered from inside. Orion cringed and shared a pained look with Helen.
    “The caveman approach,” he whispered to Helen conspiratorially. “Not really my style.”
    “Ah, Hector. Our loveable lug,” Helen replied quietly. Their heads leaned close as they shared a muffled chuckle.
    “Kiss. Kiss. Kiss,” Hector chanted, peeking at them between the misaligned slats over the broken window.
    “Can I bring you on all of my dates?” Orion asked Hector, clapping his hands together in mock excitement.
    “Sure, buddy! I’ll walk you through the whole thing,” Hector replied with a wicked grin. “First, you take the girl and grab her by the . . .”
    “And this is exactly why I’m so glad testosterone isn’t contagious,” Helen said loudly, cutting Hector off. She shoved Orion up the ladder to fix the mess she’d made, and went inside to help Hector finish cleaning up.
    Somehow, between all the horsing around, they managed to get the whole store boarded up, swept, and emptied of all the rotting perishables. Every now and again Helen would run across something personal amidst the smashed debris—an ill-shaped macaroni “I LOVE MY DADDY” sculpture she’d made in elementary school, a butt-ugly, heavy-as-a-horseshoe pot she’d made for Kate when she was trying to learn how to throw clay freshman year, and a bunch of second-place trophies from running track.
    Worst of all were the photos. It killed her to see the broken frames and the smashed glass that nicked the pictures, ruining them. Some of the shots had been hanging in the store since she was a little girl. She’d seen them every day and, as she tossed most of them in the garbage, she was all-too aware that she’d never see them again.
    Each time Helen came across one of these emotionally charged items, she noticed that either Hector or Orion would crack a joke or do something goofy to snap her out of it. She knew what they were up to, but that only made their lame attempts to cheer her up all the more touching.
    They knew it wasn’t really about losing a bunch of stuff. When Orion and Hector were goofing off to distract her, she couldn’t think too much about what was really bothering her—that her father didn’t seem to be getting better. Losing the pictures, the macaroni sculpture, and the hideous attempt at pottery were nothing compared to the fear she felt when she pictured her father lying unconscious in a bed. Why couldn’t he wake up?
    She wanted to say something to them both, to thank them for helping her get through this, but she knew enough about these two guys to keep her mouth shut. Hector would only tease her if she got all sincere on him, and Orion already knew how grateful she was because he could see right through her—literally. So Helen mentally filed away the hours they spent digging through her mugged childhood, knowing that she could never truly repay them for what they did for her.
    “So . . . Hector’s going to take the truck back,” Orion said, interrupting Helen’s sad thoughts. “By himself.”
    “Huh?” Helen said blankly. “No. Hector shouldn’t drive. He can’t be seen.”
    “I won’t be. It’s too dark now. No one will be able to recognize me,” Hector said. “And I can blur myself a bit if I hit oncoming lights—which I probably won’t.”
    Helen looked around and noticed that he was right. At some point when she wasn’t paying attention, the sun had set. It was nighttime, and no one was on the streets to begin with. Not many people had ventured out of their houses since the riots. Nantucket Island had been like a ghost town for days now.
    “Okay, I guess you’re right. Thanks for helping me out today,” Helen said to Hector, giving him a hug. She stopped herself before she got all mushy and said something he would find unforgivably