Complete Nothing (True Love #2)(28)

“You can buy any music you want,” he said slowly, as if he was attempting to communicate with a dolphin. “You just need to open an account with a credit card number and you’re in.”

“Any music I want?” This was interesting. I scooted my chair closer to Wallace’s and tentatively touched the screen. I had missed music since I had been on Earth. The stereo system at Goddess Cupcakes played a steady stream of current pop hits, but I was more of a classical connoisseur, and I’d heard nothing of it since my arrival here over two weeks ago. Perhaps these soul-sucking devices I’d so vilified had a positive purpose.

“Here.” Wallace pulled out a pair of earphones and stuck one side in my ear, the other in his. “What do you like? Hip-hop? Hard rock? Country?”

“Mozart,” I told him.

He glanced at me, obviously surprised and maybe impressed. “Mozart it is.”

After hitting a few buttons on his phone, Mozart’s Requiem flowed through the earpiece. I leaned back next to him and sighed, the music instantly working its calming effect on my frayed nerves. “Thank you.”

He grinned. “You’re welcome.”

“Aw,” Hephaestus said. “True’s made a new friend!”

I picked up a carrot stick and chucked it at him. It bounced off Hephaestus’s forehead and landed on Orion’s foot as he was walking by. He froze. I froze. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed him coming our way. For the past three days I’d had a sort of instinctive radar alerting me every time he was within a twenty-foot radius. Orion looked from me to Wallace and got this odd expression on his face—one I couldn’t define. My heart pounded at his nearness.

“Your projectile?” he said finally, stooping to pick up the carrot.

I shoved myself up from the table, the earpiece ripping from my ear. “Hi,” I said. “I actually need to talk to you.”

“You do?” he said.

“You do?” Hephaestus echoed.

“Uh . . . yeah! About your spirit basket!” I improvised.

“Oh. Well, I was just going up to get something to drink.” Orion smiled, and it nearly melted me. “Wanna come with?”

It was a simple invitation, but it made my heart dance. “Sure.” I glanced at Wallace, who was wrapping up his headphones. “I’ll be right back.”

I wanted him to teach me more about the music purchasing system. If it was as easy as he made it seem, I might have to cave and finally get one of those cell phones for myself.

“So what’s up?” Orion asked, rubbing his hands together as we walked. His strong, gentle, masculine hands.

I drank him in, even as I realized he wasn’t looking at me. He was looking ahead, probably more interested in deciding what to drink than in me. My spirits began to sink.

I wasn’t going to get what I wanted out of this. I wanted him to take me in his arms and kiss me like he had that day in the woods back in Maine when I’d saved him from that huge bloodlusting bear. Or the time we’d gone skinny-dipping in the stream just outside our house. The day he’d caught me singing to the birds in the trees while I searched for kindling. Or any of the hundreds of small, seemingly insignificant kisses—the wake-up kiss, the good-night kiss, the see-you-when-I-get-back-from-hunting kiss.

Any of these would have been fine. But none of them were going to happen.

I reached up to touch his arrow pendant, which was tucked under the collar of my T-shirt.

“Well, first . . . I wanted to apologize for the other day,” I said, feeling as though my pulse was pounding in my skull.

He looked me up and down but kept walking. “Apologize for what?”

“For . . . you know . . . kissing you? I thought you were someone else.”

You. With your memories. That’s who I thought you were.

He glanced back over his shoulder at my table. “Oh, that.”

He laughed and mercifully stopped walking. I wasn’t sure I would be able to keep up with him with the room spinning and my brain weighing nothing and my heart slamming around inside my chest. I didn’t understand how humans managed to make it through an average day, what with the way my body always seemed to be at odds with my intentions. I so badly wanted to play it cool, but just being this close to Orion was putting me in need of an oxygen tank.

“You don’t have to apologize for that,” he said. “There are worse things than getting randomly kissed by a hot girl.”

I blinked, my face flushing with pleasure. “You think I’m hot?”

He grinned that grin that had stolen my heart. “Isn’t that an accepted fact?”

That was the Orion I knew and loved. Confident and complimentary. Honest and playful. I wanted to kiss him so badly my lips hurt.

“So, you wanted to ask me about the spirit basket?” he said.

“Right. I want to make sure I fill it with things you like.”

“Oh, you don’t have to worry about it. I like everything.”

“But everyone has favorites.” I took a breath and held it, anticipating his reaction to what I was about to say. “Let me guess, you seem like a peanut butter cup kind of guy.”

Orion’s jaw dropped slightly. “How did you know?”

Because I brought them to you to celebrate your one-month anniversary back on Earth and your eyes rolled back in your head when you tasted them?