by Kieran Scott
“No. I propose a bargain,” I replied, holding her gaze. “You stop stalking me and let me form true love between one more couple. Once I do, Orion will awake from his stupor, and we’ll ask him which one of us he truly loves.”
“And when he chooses me? Then I get to kill you?” Artemis demanded, an amused smile on her lips.
“No. If he chooses you, I will wish you all the joy in the universe and get back to my job,” I said as confidently as possible. “Because unlike Hera, you and I both know that if I am dead, then true love suffers. And if true love suffers, so will the women of this world. You do still care about your charges, don’t you, Goddess Protector of Women?”
Artemis lowered her knife and took a step back. “You knew the queen gave me her blessing to kill you?”
Now it was my turn to smirk. “I do still have my friends on Mount Olympus.”
“We believe that the queen wouldn’t mind seeing either of you dead,” Aphrodite told her.
“You’re wrong,” Artemis said. “The queen is on my side.”
“Think about it, Artemis. She knows of your growing powers,” Hephaestus said. “Of Eros’s abilities. The two of you are a threat to her throne. But she knows she can’t smite you herself without inciting Zeus’s wrath, so she sent you here to deal with Eros, hoping one or the both of you would die and take care of the problem for her.”
Artemis took this in. I could see her mind working, not wanting to believe the truth. Finally she looked to her brother. His thin-lipped expression said it all. He didn’t want to trust us, but he knew the queen well.
“Forget about the queen and her plans.” I closed the space between myself and Artemis, no longer feeling threatened. “Search your heart, Artemis. What is it that really matters to you? If it’s winning Orion back, this is the only way. If it’s exacting revenge on me, don’t you think that you running off with the man I love will be horrible enough for me to witness? Isn’t that the best revenge you could imagine?”
My throat constricted. Because there was the possibility, the tiniest possibility, that Orion would choose Artemis. And the worst of it was that his choosing her would be my fault. It was I who had matched them in the first place. I had manufactured their love with my arrows on a lark. That was what would hurt more than anything. If only I had known then that I would one day love him myself.
But I couldn’t think about that now. Artemis had to be convinced.
“I don’t like it,” Apollo said through his teeth.
“Of course you don’t. It means you get no blood spatter out of it,” Hephaestus shot back.
“I don’t like it because what if he doesn’t pick you, sister?” Apollo said.
Artemis’s jaw dropped indignantly, and I almost laughed until Aphrodite’s steadying hands came down on my shoulders.
“How dare you?” Artemis blurted. “Of course he’ll choose me. We were lovers for years. He’s known Eros for mere months.” She sheathed her knife in a hip holster and gazed coolly at me. “Our love was true. It was pure. I’m certain he’ll pick me.”
“Let us shake on it, then.” I thrust my hand at her. Her grip was as strong as ever.
“We have a deal.”
I was just letting out a sigh of relief when she withdrew her fingers and glanced at the silver watch clamped to her wrist. “It’s half past seven now. I’ll give you eight days. That’s about as long as I can last on this rock. After eight days, the deal is off.”
“You can’t be serious, sister,” Apollo countered. “Please tell me you’re not relegating me to this hell for that long.”
Artemis ignored him, her dark eyes glowering at me.
“Next Saturday, Eros. If you can’t manage your job by then, your blood is mine.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Darla
“Okay, so there are four downs, which means the offense has four chances to get ten yards.”
I took a sip of hot chocolate as I looked over the tiny diagram of a football field on Wallace’s iPad, letting one of the mini marshmallows melt on my tongue. I hardly ever ate anything sweet, and this stuff was like heaven in a Styrofoam mug. We were sitting at the picnic tables near Havemill High School’s refreshment stand, which was, like, half the size of Lake Carmody’s. It was manned by a bunch of face-painted freshmen, who were doing some kind of choreographed dance behind the counter and shrieking with laughter every ten seconds while I tried to concentrate.
Somewhere inside the school, getting his football gear on, was Orion. I hadn’t spoken to him since our tiff earlier, but I was going to corner him after the game and apologize. And before then, I was going to cheer my heart out for him to show him how much I cared.
Which I did. And I also knew I couldn’t win homecoming without him. Not that I’d be mentioning that part.
“But on the fourth down, they usually kick it away.” I put my cup down and rubbed my hands together between my legs to chase off the chill. “Why? Why not use all the downs you’ve got?”
“It really depends where you are on the field and how many yards you’d need to get for a first down. If you’re way back here, of course you’re going to punt it,” Wallace said, pointing at the 20 on the image, “because if you try for the first down and don’t get it, then your opponent has awesome field position.”
“Why?” I asked.
Wallace closed in on the twenty yard line by swiping his fingers across the screen. “Because if you don’t get the first down, the other team automatically gets the ball, and look how close they’d be to a touchdown.”
“Oh! Okay.” I took another sip of hot chocolate. “So if you punt it all the way down here, they have to go across the whole field to get a touchdown,” I said, stabbing at the far end zone.
Wallace’s face lit up, and for a second he looked exactly as he had back in fifth grade when he was cute and hyper, constantly spouting facts because he was just so excited that he had learned them.
“Exactly!” he said. “Now, what are your other options on fourth down?” he asked, leaning his chest into the edge of the table.
“You can either go for the first down, which I guess you’d only do if you had less than a yard or were really close to a touchdown or there was hardly any time left.”
“Good. Or?” Wallace prompted me.
“Or you can . . .” The word was on the tip of my tongue. I looked out across the field, where both our team and the opposing team were running onto the field for warm-up. The yellow goalposts rose up against the darkening sky. “You can kick a field goal!”
“Yes! You’ve got it!” Wallace lifted a hand and I high-fived him, even though I knew that was totally dorky. It seemed appropriate, considering we were talking sports. I pushed myself up and did a hip-waggling dance, enjoying my moment. Orion was going to be so psyched that I could actually have a conversation about this.
“How many points for a field goal?” Wallace quizzed me, watching my moves with a smirk.
“Trois!” I said, holding up three fingers.
“And for a touchdown?”
“Sept! No! That was a trick question!” I said, pointing at him. “You get six, but then one if you kick the extra point and two if you go for the two-point thingie.”
Wallace laughed. “That thingie would be called a conversion.”
“And you also get two points for a safety!” I announced, then stopped dancing. “Which I still don’t understand.”
“But you’re getting there.” Wallace folded his iPad into its cover and stood up as a long whistle sounded down on the field. “Before you know it, you’ll be a football savant.”
“Booyah,” I said, and reached out my fist. Wallace looked surprised. This was our move. Something we used to do whenever we made a breakthrough studying.
“Come on! Don’t leave me hanging!” I said.
He tilted his he
ad and touched his fist to mine, then we both exploded them, bringing them back over our shoulders. I giggled and held his gaze for a long moment, feeling nostalgic. I wondered what life would have been like if Veronica had never taken an interest in me. If I’d stayed Darbot the Geek for the last four years. Would I even be at a football game right now? Would Wallace and I have been friends nonstop since middle school?
“Thanks, Wallace,” I said, reaching for my flimsy mug. “It was really nice of you to meet me here so early and do this.”
Wallace smiled. It was a nice smile. I kind of liked the way his one front tooth sort of overlapped the other just a touch. “Anytime. Seriously.”
On impulse I reached in for a hug. Wallace hugged me back with one arm, and I felt a tiny flutter of something. It was like muscle memory. My body remembered this, what it was like to be close to him.
Then someone nearby cleared her throat in a very familiar and kind of aggressive way. I turned around, sloshing chocolate over the rim of the cup. Sure enough, Veronica was standing three feet behind me. She looked down at the chocolate puddle between us like it was acid.
“Hey, V!” I trilled, feeling as if I’d just stepped on a land mine. One false move and I was vapor.
“D.” Her voice was low, serious, sarcastic. Yeah. She could do that with one letter.
“I’m gonna head over and meet up with the rest of the boosters.” Wallace gathered his stuff, his head suddenly bowed so low you’d think the queen had just shown up and he was nothing but a lowly serf.
Which, let’s face it, was basically the deal.
“Um, okay. See you over there.”
As soon as he was gone, Veronica stepped over the chocolate splatter and faced me, toe-to-toe. “What. Was that?”
“Nothing,” I said, putting my hot chocolate down and reaching for my Tory Burch bag. I felt a pang realizing I’d have to abandon the rest of my drink if I didn’t want to sit through Veronica’s endless comments on sugar and calories. “Wallace was just trying to explain football to me so I can understand what Orion’s talking about after the game.”
Veronica’s eyebrows rose. “Really? Because from where I was standing, it looked more like flirting than explaining.”
“What?” My face burned like I’d had a bad reaction to a chemical peel. “No. He wasn’t flirting.”
Veronica rolled her eyes and walked past me. She was wearing four-inch platforms and towered over me in my kitten heels.
“Please. Wall-E was flirting with you, and you were totally flirting back. I know a good flirt when I see one.”
She paused and turned to face me, her eyes flicking over my outfit. “And what are you wearing? I thought we made a plan.”
My heart fluttered nervously. We had made a plan, but this time, I was the one who’d decided to go “caz,” as she would say.
“It’s a football game,” I said, crossing my arms over my cable-knit sweater, which I’d paired with skinny jeans. Veronica had worn the silk knickers, white tank, and faux-fur crop vest we’d agreed on, and she looked . . . cold. “I figured it was better to be comfortable.”
“If that’s the kind of look your new boy toy likes,” she said, wrinkling her nose.
“V. We were not flirting. I swear.”
“Please. You go ahead and hang out with the riffraff if you want,” she said, wiggling her fingers in the general direction of the bleachers. “Then you’ll have no shot at queen.”
She turned around again, her blond hair flying, and strode across the asphalt toward the visiting bleachers. I was so stunned, it took me a second to move. Had Veronica just said what I thought she’d said? I mean, not in so many words, but it was implied . . .
Holy crap. Veronica Vine was threatened by me!
Gripping my bag to my side, I jogged to catch up. The Havemill band chose that moment to march around the corner toward the field, and we had to stop to let them go by in all their tasseled and big-hatted glory.
I hid a smile behind my hand, trying as hard as I could to flatten it out, to turn my lips down. I bit my tongue, I pinched my side, I brought my heel down on my own toes, but nothing worked. I couldn’t stop myself from grinning.
“What’s wrong with you?” Veronica asked as the last bass drum marched on by. “Your face is all weird.”
“Is it?” I asked, trying not to laugh.
Veronica Vine was threatened by me. The formerly dorky Darbot the Geek. Veronica Vine thought I could beat her.
“Never mind.” Veronica rolled her eyes again and checked her phone. “Come on. Mariah and Kenna are saving us seats with the seniors.”
“But I’m supposed to sit with the boosters,” I said, matching her steps.
“Whatever. It’s your social suicide.”
Then she strode off ahead of me, her chin held high, as if I wasn’t even there. Which, for that one moment, was fine by me. Because it meant I could smile as much as I wanted.
If Veronica thought I had a shot at queen, then it had to be true. She’d never felt threatened by anyone in her life. But I couldn’t sit back and rest on my laurels, whatever that expression meant. Now was the time to get really serious about campaigning. I had to figure out a way to step up my game, and I knew exactly who to go to if I wanted to brainstorm ideas.
Orion and his teammates stood in a huddle at the sidelines, his last name FLOROS in big blue letters on the back of his jersey. I strode down the track toward the team, then passed them right by and jogged up the steps to the bleachers.
“Wallace,” I said, dropping down on the bench next to him. “It’s time to kick this thing up a notch.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Orion
We were down by six with one minute left in the game, lined up on Havemill’s thirty-two yard line. Coach hadn’t used the wildcat yet tonight, and if there was ever a time to do it, it was now. He called a time-out, and the whistle blew. We walked over to the sidelines, pads squeaking, breath panting. My chest pads had shifted somewhere in the last few plays, and something was sticking into my ribs. I yanked on the pads as I glanced up at the stands.
Darla was there. Right smack in the middle of the boosters. Even after that stupid fight we’d had yesterday. The fight I had totally turned around on her because she’d completely caught me checking out True.
I was such an asshole. And there she was, cheering for me. And guess who was nowhere to be found? True Olympia. Hadn’t been there all game. I mean, WTF? She was supposed to be my booster.
“Bring it in, guys. Bring it in,” Coach said as we gathered around him near the bench. He looked right at me, and my heart basically stopped. This was it. I knew it. “Floros, it’s all you,” he said. “We’re gonna snap it to you and you’re gonna take it upfield. Marrott, you line up in the wide receiver slot.”
“Got it, Coach,” Peter said.
“Granger, you’d best block number fifty-five like Floros here is carrying your mama across the line, you got me?”
“Yes, sir,” Donnie Granger said, giving me a confident nod.
“All right, then. Let’s win this thing,” Coach said. “Hands in.”
We piled our hands in the middle of the circle. My heart was pounding, like, a mile a second. The whole game rested on my shoulders. It was on me.
“Win on three. Ready?” Coach said. “One, two, three!”
“Win!” the team shouted.
The stands went crazy. Almost everyone was on their feet. As I turned toward the field again, I saw Darla, jumping up and down between Claudia and Wallace. My jaw clenched. I was about to be the hero of this game. And True wasn’t going to be here to see it.
“Sonofabitch,” I said through my teeth.
Why couldn’t I get that girl out of my head? The hottest chick in the junior class was right there in the stands, practically dancing with nerves for me, and I was thinkin
g about a random person who couldn’t even be bothered to show up.
“You all right, dude?” Peter asked me.
“M’fine,” I grumbled. “Let’s do this.”
Peter and Donnie exchanged a look but didn’t say anything to me as we lined up in the wildcat. The defense noticed my position and started to shout to one another in confusion, which was kind of the point. Donnie, who was the center, counted off and snapped the ball and just like that, it was in my hands. I gritted my teeth, put my shoulders down, and ran straight ahead. There was nothing but bodies ahead of me. I was about to crash into another wall, like I hadn’t had enough of that feeling lately. But at the last second, Donnie shoved his man aside and I saw a hole. It was a small opening, but I turned sideways and slid through, jumping over someone’s ankle and dodging an outstretched arm. Suddenly I was in the clear. Seeing nothing but the goal line ahead of me, I turned on the speed. Dirt flew up behind my cleats. My ragged breathing filled my helmet.
“Go!” the crowd screamed as one. “Go! Go! Go!”
On the scoreboard, the seconds ticked down. Forty-five, forty-four, forty-three. I crossed the goal line with exactly forty-one seconds left in the game and threw my hands in the air. The fans went nuts. My teammates swarmed me.
I looked over at the crowd while my friends slapped my shoulders and rubbed my helmet and shouted my name. Darla blew me a kiss, and I lifted the ball in the air for her.
That was it. I decided right then and there. I was done playing. I was done flirting. I wasn’t going to be that guy. Everything in my life was golden until I let True Olympia infiltrate my thoughts, but that was over. I had an amazing girlfriend. A girlfriend who was here for me. From here on out, I was only about her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
True
Inside his private bathroom, I touched a swab drenched with alcohol to Hephaestus’s cut. He winced and so did I.
“Sorry,” I said.