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easier for either of them, though it wasn?t like anyone had ever
asked them what they wanted.
?What does it matter how any of us feel?? he muttered. ?If I take
Helen, the war starts all over again. No amount of wishing will
make it different.?
?I don?t know that,? Cassandra replied with more than a little
/> self-doubt. ?I?m not strong enough yet.?
?But you?re pretty sure it is,? he said, sitting down on the end of
his bed, suddenly feeling as if he had taken on two planets? worth
of gravity. ?And don?t pretend you?re not, because not even you can
lie to me.?
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Chapter Eight
Helen spent the next few hours alternately listening to
the details of her father?s trip and insisting that Lucas
was not her boyfriend. She figured out pretty fast that
the only way to get Jerry to stop asking questions about
Lucas was to ask him questions about Kate instead.
And besides, she genuinely wanted to know what was going on
between the two of them. Jerry kept insisting that they had never
been anything more than friends. Disappointed that her dad was
obviously still lugging around a big bag of hurt for her mother, all
Helen wanted was to escape upstairs to her room to think, but she
had to wait until they finished dinner first. By the time she and her
father were done eating, arguing over how much salt he was allowed
to put on his dinner, and talking about the store, Helen was