Complete Nothing (True Love #2)(29)
“Lucky guess,” I replied with a smile. “I was also thinking raspberry cheesecake bars, pretzels, and maybe something with coconut?”
Orion actually took a step back and nearly leveled a pair of small girls walking by with vanilla cones from the frozen yogurt machine.
“That’s crazy. What are you, a mind reader or something?” he asked.
“Nah. I just think it was meant to be, us being matched up.”
He looked me over with a sort of pleased awe. “Yeah. Maybe it was.”
My fingers twitched to take his hand. To press it against my chest so he could feel my heart beat. To do anything and everything to make him remember. But I could do nothing other than stare into his eyes, his incredible blue eyes.
This was so wrong. We were soul mates. We were each other’s one and only. I knew him like the back of my hand. Shouldn’t he have known me no matter what? Shouldn’t our eternal connection be more powerful than any spell a god could cast on him?
I felt my blood begin to boil, even as I knew I was asking the impossible. Zeus was more powerful than any being in the universe. He could do anything, even erase true love, obliterate memories, alter souls. But still, I burned with anger.
Orion should have been able to overcome it. Our love should have been more powerful still.
“There’s something about you,” I said carefully, trying to tamp down my roiling emotions. “I feel as if we’ve met somewhere before.”
He tilted his head and in a breath, something stirred inside his eyes. Some spark of recognition. My heart leaped, and I did reach for his hand.
“Hey, Orion!”
We both flinched. Darla Shayne stood behind me with Veronica Vine at her side, each wearing the same low-cut T-shirt in different colors. Darla’s diamond D pendant hung right at the top of her serious cleavage, and I saw Orion’s eyes dart there.
“Hey, D,” he said, stepping toward her. “I didn’t think it was possible for someone to look that gorgeous after staying up all night.”
“I have my ways,” Darla said flirtatiously.
“You were up all night?” I asked. “How would you know that?”
“They were texting,” Veronica said with a sneer. “Not that it’s any of your business, freak.”
“I was just going to get a soda,” Orion said to Darla, as if I hadn’t spoken. “Want anything?”
“I’ll come with you,” she said.
“We’re good, right, True?” he asked me.
“Sure,” I replied quietly. “Yeah. We’re good.”
He lifted his hand in a wave, and the two of them walked off together to join the dwindling line near the soda machine.
“So many hot new guys and you seem to be going after every one of them,” Veronica said, tilting her head. “First Charlie, then Heath, now Orion. Too bad not one of them looks like he’s interested in you.”
My jaw dropped open to reply, but I had no response, and Veronica slowly sauntered off. She was right. Not one of them was interested in me. Charlie had Katrina, Hephaestus had my sister and previously my mother (gag), and now, it seemed, Orion was moving on to Darla. As Orion ordered his soda, Darla placed her hand delicately on his arm, and I suddenly saw myself with my bow and arrow, drawing, aiming, piercing her through the heart.
I felt the cool, smooth shaft of a wooden arrow in my fist and looked down. I was holding an actual arrow. A straight, perfectly calibrated arrow with genuine feather fletching and a silver tip. My heart vaulted into my throat. Not again. Had anyone seen that simply appear in my palm? I glanced around, but no one seemed to be watching me. Then I spotted Claudia approaching, her eyes trained down on her phone. It gave me enough time to drop the arrow on the floor and kick it under the nearest table.
“True! Hey,” Claudia said.
I glanced down at the arrow. The fletching was bright red and not entirely tucked away.
“Um, hi. How’s everything?” I asked.
“Everything sucks,” she replied plainly. “I think we need to step up our plan. Just gossiping about me and some fictional guy isn’t going to do it. You said you found someone?”
Keegan Traylor’s flirtatious smile flashed through my mind. “I did.”
“Good. I want to meet him.”
She turned to look back at the senior section. At Peter’s table, specifically. The buxom girl from the pep rally rehearsal was kicked back in the chair next to his, her legs propped up on his lap while she did some kind of ritual with his hand. Massaging his palm? Cracking his knuckles? Counting his digits? It was impossible to tell, but whatever it was, it was clear by the hungry look on his face that it was totally turning him on.
“Jealousy is definitely a powerful thing,” Claudia said, looking green.
I kicked the arrow that my own jealousy had conjured farther under the table and clenched my teeth at the sound of Darla’s flirtatious laugh. “You have no idea.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Claudia
“This is crazy,” I said to True, resting my “injured” leg atop the coffee table in front of us. It was covered with magazines for every audience, from Vanity Fair to Highlights to Men’s Fitness. “I can’t fake an injury.”
“Why not? People do it every day,” True replied. “Now pucker.”