Starcrossed (Starcrossed 1)

?I promise I won?t say anything the rest of the way if you don?t

want me to. Just let me take you home,? Lucas replied calmly. She

hated that he was calm.

?Open the damn door, or I?ll rip it off!? Helen yelled back.

She knew she was making a fool of herself, throwing a tantrum in

the middle of the road like this, but she couldn?t stop. Humiliation

was leaking out of every pore and she needed to get away from him

fast. She didn?t want to leave anything behind, either?nothing that

would force her to come back to him later to ask for what was hers.

She stood at the back of his car with her head down and her arms

crossed tightly over her sore heart. She knew he was looking at her

in the rearview mirror, so she angled her body away. Finally, he

popped the back. She got her bike out and rode off without another

word.

When she got home she fell into bed without even taking her

clothes off. She could hear Jason moving around on the widow?s

walk as he settled down for the night, but she didn?t feel guilty

about leaving him up there. All Helen wanted was to run as far

away from the Delos family as fast as she could.

She was on the edge of the dry lands, in a new place that she had

seen from a distance, but had never thought she could reach. It

was still rocky, but interspersed with the tufts of razor-sharp

grass, there were tumbled-down drums of mason-carved marble,

a thousand Parthenons? worth of scattered columns. There had

once been an empire here. No longer.

Far off, there was the promise of a river. Helen couldn?t tell if

she could hear it, or if she felt the extra part per million of moisture

in the air, but she knew there was running water nearby. She

felt so dry and empty inside. Where was the river?

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