Starcrossed

had shin splints, had never had any kind of sports injury at all, but as she crept along she imagined that what she was feeling had to be similar, if not much, much worse. Her muscles wouldn’t stretch as far as usual; her joints felt swollen and hot. By the time she silently pushed Lucas’s door open she was covered in a thin, sickly sweat. Lying on his back and staring at the moon in the window, Lucas spun his head to look at Helen as she appeared in the doorway. A moment passed.
    “Hi,” he whispered.
    “Hi,” she whispered back. “May I come in?”
    “Yeah. But quietly.” He gestured to Cassandra asleep on a couch on the other side of the room. “She was awake for two days straight.”
    Helen made her way into the room, crouching like an old woman and wincing at the pressure on her feet. She felt like some ridiculous fairytale hag and she started laughing silently at the thought of chasing kids off her gingerbread lawn.
    “You shouldn’t have come on your own. You’ve worn yourself out,” Lucas admonished her gently.
    “I was fine a second ago, but it was farther than I thought. Your house is huge,” Helen whispered, aiming her creaky body at the chair next to his bed.
    “You won’t be able to sit up long. Here,” he said as he pulled back his covers. “You’d better lie down.”
    Helen looked uncertainly at his bed. She had spent all of last night melded to him, but now it was different somehow. If she lay down with him, it would be a choice. She saw him smirking up at her, and realized he thought she was being silly. Which she was, because her knees were shaking with the effort to hold her up. She tried to sit down as carefully as she could so as not to disturb him, but at the last moment her legs gave out and she pretty much flopped into bed with him.
    “Sorry,” she whispered as she gathered the covers over them.
    “It’s okay. Careful of your toes—my legs are splinted,” he warned her. Helen peeked under the covers and saw that his lower body was wrapped in soft casts. “See? You’re completely safe with me.” He grinned at her in the dark and she grinned back, until the reason for her draining trek came back to her. Her smile faded.
    “How bad is it? Can you even tell right now?” she asked him seriously. She propped herself up on an elbow so she could look directly into his face and scan him for any well-intentioned lies. Even in the low moonlight dribbling through the casement she could see the intense jewel blue of his eyes.
    “I’ll mend,” he said so softly his lips hardly moved.
    “Completely? Will you still . . . you know . . . walk and run and . . . fly and all that?”
    “Yeah,” he whispered before she had even finished talking. “Good as new in another day.”
    It occurred to Helen that all she had to do was lean down and she would be kissing him. It seemed like such a natural thing to do—as if she should be kissing him—that she was halfway to his mouth before she stopped herself and pulled back, stunned by her lack of self-control. She saw him swallow hard.
    “Lie back, Helen,” he told her, which she immediately did to hide her confusion.
    For a few minutes they were both breathing a lot faster than they should have been, but after a while, Lucas relaxed enough to take her hand and hold it under the covers. She watched his chest go up and down in a way that was familiar to her now, and smiled herself to sleep.

Chapter Seven
    B ecause I didn’t want to wake up Lucas!” a frustrated voice hissed.
    Helen had no idea how Ariadne had made it to the tea table at the top of the Golden Gate Bridge. Ariadne couldn’t fly.
    “Why are you fighting me on this?” Cassandra pleaded quietly. Hmm. Helen couldn’t be on top of the Golden Gate Bridge so she must be in bed, but she couldn’t figure out what Cassandra was doing in bed with her. If she could only open her eyes and see.
    “I don’t doubt you. But what can we do?” asked Noel.
    “We should leave. Now. Pack up the house and go back to Europe.”
    “You’re overreacting,” huffed Ariadne, not even bothering to whisper.
    “Two nights in a row, Ari. They ate the same food. Shared a roof and a bed, and now they have witnesses!” Cassandra said just as loud.
    “But they haven’t done the most important thing!” Ariadne shouted back.
    “Girls!”
    Even though she was still so tired she felt glued to the mattress, the yelling made Helen’s eyes open. She saw Ariadne, Cassandra, and