Paper Fools (Hearts and Arrows Book 1)

by Staci Hart

  Inspiration was the least Apollo could do, having ripped the boy’s chest open and thrown his heart into Hades. Dean set his book down next to a nearly empty bottle of whiskey and reached for his guitar.

  He looks like hell, Apollo thought as he turned his eyes away. He understood in a very intimate way how it felt to want what you couldn’t have, and he hoped that something good would come from the whole affair. The humans had earned that much.

  He lay back and closed his eyes.

  This is it.

  In his mind, he was thousands of years before and thousands of miles away, stretched out on the spring grass next to Daphne in old Greece. Her face was turned up to the sun, his sun, and he bathed her in warmth. Eyes closed, she sighed, her copper hair shining, spread out on the grass around her.

  Apollo rolled over to his side and propped his head on his hand, and she turned to the movement, opening her green eyes.

  “Play me a song,” she said sweetly.

  “That, my dear, is my specialty.” He sat gracefully and produced a lyre out of the air, strumming a melancholy song with a mock somber face.

  She propped herself up and threw a handful of grass at him, giggling. “Do not jest, Apollo. It is a beautiful day, not a day for weeping. It is a day for love. Play me a song of love.”

  Her eyes shone with hope and devotion, and he knew he would deny her nothing as long as he could give it to her, as long as he should live.

  “And now, beloved, you have guessed my second specialty — songs of love.” He leaned forward and kissed her lightly, then strummed and sang, the song so sweet, so full of the love in his heart that tears rolled down her freckled cheeks, her face alight with her joy.

  When he stopped playing, he could do nothing but kiss her tenderly, completing the circle of what he could not tell her with words, imparting his love through his touch. She twined her arms around his neck, and he held her small waist as he lay down and pulled her on top of him. Her red curls fell around them like a curtain, the light beaming through as the sun flashed with the beat of his heart.

  Apollo gazed at the space where she stood in his vision, there in his apartment. Daphne, in the flesh. His. For the first time in eons, he allowed himself to believe, truly believe that it would be, and he soared.

  Kara made her way into Lex’s building with a furrowed brow. She was worried about her friend since every time they’d spoken, Lex had cried so hard, she was barely intelligible.

  Lex had officially reached hot mess status, and it was unnerving, to say the least.

  The band had started recording the day before, and they’d all slept for a few hours at the warehouse before getting up to do it again. Travis hadn’t been home, though Kara figured at some point the guys would cave and take a legit break. And when Travis did make it back, he’d be in for a serious surprise, one she had a feeling none of them would be ready for.

  She used her key, opening Lex’s door to find her molded into the window seat, writing in her notebook. Her hair was dirty, and she was in her pajamas. It was two in the afternoon.

  “Wow, look at you.” Kara shut the door behind her and made her way across the room. She sniffed dramatically. “Lex, you smell like a subway bathroom on a Saturday night.”

  “How would you know? No one goes into subway bathrooms.”

  “Just a hunch.” Kara dropped her bag and sat in the chair across from the window seat and crossed her legs. “I’m guessing you’re not feeling any better?”

  Lex dropped her pencil in the crease of her notebook. “Not really. I thought I’d at least be functioning by now.” Her eyes misted up.

  “Do you need to have an ugly cry? I wore a T-shirt, so mascara is no prob.”

  Lex chuckled as a tear fell down her cheek, and she sniffled. “I guess I just need more time.”

  Kara seriously doubted that time would make the situation better. She spotted a Hershey’s bar next to Lex. “Share.” She stuck out her hand and wiggled her fingers.

  “God, you’re so demanding.” Lex broke a piece off and handed the chocolate over.

  Kara popped off a piece and put it in her mouth. “I’m sort of in uncharted waters here. This,” she motioned to all of Lex, “is new.”

  “I just … I thought … I thought I could trust him. I mean, Kara … he’s fucked up. But we connect on levels of fuckedupedness.”

  “Is that in the dictionary?”

  “It is. Right next to bitchass and your picture.”

  Kara paused as the little rectangle of chocolate melted in her mouth. “You should talk to him.”

  “I said what I needed to say, and honestly, if I see him again, I don’t even know if I could walk away a second time. And I have to walk away. How can I not? How can he possibly prove that he’s not a user? That he’s not going to hump-and-dump me?”

  Kara uncrossed her legs and leaned forward, forearms on her thighs. “I don’t know, Lex. Are you going to let something pass you by because you’re afraid to take a chance?”

  Lex looked down at her hands and picked at her nails, sniffling a second later. She turned to the window and brushed a tear away.

  After waiting for a response for a minute, Kara realized that Lex didn’t have an answer. At least not one that she was willing to share.

  She stood up. “Come on, pretty. Pack a bag. Moping around here isn’t helping you, so you’re coming with me to a magical land full of showers and pants without elastic waists.”

  Lex frowned. “What about Travis? I need to talk to him.”

  “Travis is busy recording. But honestly — do you feel like you’re in the proper state of mind to deal with Travis?” Kara asked with one brow up. “What would you tell him if he walked in right now?”

  “I … I don’t know. Probably everything.”

  “Is that what you want? Do you want him to know about Dean?”

  “No, but he deserves to, doesn’t he? Don’t I have to tell him?”

  “Wasn’t that the whole point of not breaking up with him before the date?”

  Lex sighed. “Yeah.”

  “And if you told him about you and Dean right now, while they’re in the middle of recording an album together, what do you think might happen?”

  Lex buried her face in her hands.

  “I’m just saying, Lex, I don’t think you should talk to him until you’ve calmed down.”

  “What am I going to tell him? I can’t just leave.”

  “Just tell him you’re coming to stay with me for a few days since he’s not going to be home. Easy.”

  Lex took a heavy breath and let it go. “Okay.”

  She peeled herself out of the seat, and Kara pulled her in for a hug.

  “It’s gonna be all right.”

  Lex’s chest hitched, and she nodded against Kara’s shoulder before she pulled away and shuffled into her room.

  While Lex packed her things, Kara sat at the window seat and stared at her phone. Lex cared enough about Dean that she had turned into a teary lump of sadface, which was something that, in the twenty-some-odd years that they’d been friends, Kara had never seen. For Lex to feel like she did about Dean and not let him know was ludicrous, especially over something so stupid as tarot cards.

  Kara smiled as a plan formed in the back of her mind, and she wondered if there wasn’t a way she could help make it right after all.

  Roe paused before he knocked on Dean’s door and braced himself, afraid of what he would find inside. He had almost made it home after practice when Kara texted him to ask if he would scope out Dean, and he couldn’t say no. His shower and bed could wait for Dean and Kara.

  He hadn’t been able to talk to Dean, not really, not since after Lex ended things. Dean was trying to hold it together, Roe could tell. It had been painful to watch him around Travis over the last few days, and he couldn’t imagine what Dean was actually going through. They were finally recording and had been working nonstop, so it was, essentially, the worst timing ever.

  A rum
pled Dean answered the door with eyes framed by dark circles and heavy stubble working into a beard. He didn’t say anything, just turned to walk back into the dark apartment, leaving the door hanging open behind him.

  Roe walked in and closed the door as Dean sat back down amid stacks of records, broken and lost in a sea of vinyl.

  “Reorganizing your records, huh?” It was worse than he’d thought.

  “Chronologically, by genre.”

  “And before they were …” Roe stepped around piles of records as he made his way toward the couch.

  “By genre, chronologically.”

  “Right.” Roe threw his jacket over the back of the couch and sat, pausing for a moment before asking a question he already knew the answer to. “What happened?”

  Dean slumped on the floor, his hand on a stack beside him. He looked up at Roe. “You really want to know?”

  “You need to tell somebody.”

  “It didn’t go well.”

  “Obviously. Have you looked in a mirror lately?” Roe waited for Dean to continue. He didn’t. “So, are you going to tell me, or are we going to play Twenty Questions?”

  “Okay, okay.” Dean’s forearms rested on his knees, and he bent his head down to run his hand through his hair. “I don’t even know how to talk about it.” He paused. “It’s bigger than me being interested in her, Roe. It’s more than that. She’s … I … I care about her. I want her, all of her. I want to make her laugh and kiss away her pain. I want to love her. But I’ll only ruin her.”

  Roe sat back, arms crossed on his chest as he took it all in. “What are you going to do about it?”

  “Nothing. She made it clear how she feels.”

  “Which is? God, I hate being your shrink.”

  “She blew me off. And that’s the end,” Dean said simply.

  “Are you sure you shouldn’t try to talk to her? I mean, if she means that much to you—”

  “Roe, she said she couldn’t trust me. How would you suggest that I prove to her that I want to be trustworthy? That I want to give her everything I am? That I would rather walk away from her forever than risk hurting her?” His face twisted in pain, and at that moment Roe was certain there were tears in Dean’s eyes.

  “Dean … I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah,” he said, his voice ragged, “me too.”

  Kara found Roe leaning on the doorframe when she answered the knock at her door.

  He stood up straight and clicked his heels together. “Captain Snitch, reporting for duty.”

  She rolled her eyes as he gave her a salute. “Get in here, Captain, before I discharge you dishonorably.”

  He sauntered over to her couch and sat, and she curled up next to him.

  “How’d yours go?” she asked.

  “Well, Dean smells like shit, looks like a lumberjack, and has a horrible case of sad, lonely eyes. Yours?”

  “Also smelly, though she looked less like a lumberjack and more like a hobo. I brought her home with me.” She felt Roe stiffen and his head turn. “Don’t worry — she’s at work.”

  He relaxed under her. “Dean is a mess, Kara. I swear to God, I thought he was going to cry and I was going to have a heart attack from shock.”

  “Lex too. I have never, ever seen her get so worked up over a guy.”

  “Did she explain why? I mean, you said the date was … what did you call it?”

  “The Niagara Falls of Emotional Awakening.”

  He snorted. “Yes, that.”

  “Well, what you need to know about Lex is that she has serious abandonment issues. And that she’s superstitious. I guess she had a run-in with a tarot card reader who did a reading for her. Lex’s interpretation was that Dean wouldn’t be faithful to her and that she had to break down the tower now instead of waiting for it to fall — or something crazy like that. I’m pretty sure she was just scared shitless and looking for a way out of the relationship before she could get hurt.”

  “Hmm.” He scratched his jaw. “I’m guessing Travis doesn’t know what’s going on. He’s been a little quiet, but he hasn’t done anything to indicate he knows what’s up.”

  “No, she hasn’t even seen him to tell him anything — since you guys have been so busy. She’s planning on breaking up with him as soon as she does.”

  “What are we going to do with them?”

  Kara sighed. “I don’t know, but we have to do something. Lex is a wreck. She cares about Dean way more than she’ll admit to.”

  “Honestly? Dean never talks about the girls he’s with — like, not even in high school when guys are supposed to talk about that sort of thing. And? He never gets emotional, and I would know. I have been there for some of the hardest things he’s gone through, and he’s been through a lot. So, to see him like this over Lex is shocking. I have no idea how to handle it.”

  “We’ve got to set something up because they’ll never make a move on their own. I think they’re supposed to be together. The only thing that we have to work out is Travis.”

  Roe ran his hand up and down her back. “Well, you said she was going to break up with him, right?”

  “Yeah, she said she was. She said she needed to be alone, as in single, which is crazy coming from her. She hasn’t been single since she was out of a training bra.”

  Roe laughed. “Let’s figure it out once they break up. At least then we won’t have to worry so much about him wigging out about Dean.” He squeezed her a little tighter. “So, have you told her yet? About us?”

  She twisted to look at him with her eyebrow cocked. “Seriously?”

  He sighed. “I know. I get it. It’s not ‘appropriate,’ or whatever.”

  Kara snuggled back into him, but wrinkled her nose. “Why aren’t you guys working anyway? And, by the way, you don’t smell so great yourself.”

  “Yeah, four dudes sleeping on three couches in a warehouse will do that. You should have seen Kevin on the pullout bed, cuddled up with Dean. It was worth the stink just for that. We broke for the night since everyone was exhausted, and we weren’t getting anywhere.”

  “Well, smelly boy, perhaps we should get you cleaned up.” She flipped around to lie in his arms and tilted her face up to his.

  “Now that sounds like a great idea.” He scooped her up and carried her to the shower.

  Day Sixteen

  Travis stuffed his drumsticks into his bag and slung it on late that night, ready to get home. It had been a long few days in the studio, and everybody was exhausted and on edge. Every day, Dean had come to practice with a handful of songs, but he looked like hell. Something was going on with him, but Travis didn’t know what. He was still focused, but he was haggard and was almost silent. Every new song was good, so good that they were considering putting them on the album, but they were angsty and heartbroken.

  The confident Dean that he’d come to know was nowhere to be found.

  The band had a gig coming up to test drive the new stuff on a crowd, and Travis was ready for his first show. They’d been working their asses off, but they were getting somewhere. Their label rep was pleased, which took some of the pressure off. No one was resting easy though — they weren’t out from under the gun.

  At that point, he just wanted to sleep in his own bed. His heart fell when he remembered that Lex wasn’t there, and his brows dropped as he wondered what was going on with her. They’d texted briefly, and she’d said she was staying with Kara to keep her company while he was gone, but he didn’t buy it. But he’d been too busy to call, and he hadn’t heard from her. He had a feeling that it was over and found some comfort in the explanation of her behavior, though it didn’t stop him from worrying about her.

  Travis clapped Dean on the shoulder as he passed by. “See you tomorrow, man.”

  Miserable eyes turned to him. “Yeah, sure.”

  Travis shook his head as he caught up to Roe. “Is Dean all right? He hasn’t really been himself.”

  Roe looked back over his shoulder at Dean. “Yeah, h
e will be. I hope, at least.”

  They walked out into the New York night, and the heavy warehouse door banged closed behind them.

  Perry sat sideways on Dita’s couch with a pint of ice cream, making out with her spoon as she watched Travis head to the subway station.

  Dita paced her apartment to the sound of her speakers blaring house music, which was her best and most favorite thinking music.

  She looked over at Perry, who bobbed her head.

  “Wan’ thum?” Perry asked with a spoon in her mouth.

  “That’s all you.”

  Perry wiggled in her seat, couch dancing. “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know, but I have to do something. I can’t stand seeing Lex and Dean hurting like this.”

  “Who knew Lex’s fatal flaw would be superstition? Of all the stupid things.”

  Dita snorted. “Put that in the record book.”

  She turned on the plush carpet to walk back across her apartment, Bisoux at her heels.

  Think, Dita.

  “So,” Dita said, half to Perry, half to herself, “Apollo’s prophecy said Dean would be unfaithful — or at least that’s what the cards implied. And if Lex pushed the tower down, she would avoid some of the pain because she took control instead of letting fate push it over for her. The tower must be her and Dean’s relationship, and the truth inside is his true nature.”

  Perry dug her spoon in the carton. “Well, she pushed the tower down all right.”

  “I mean, if we’re just talking about Lex, the tower would be around her heart …” Dita turned again, and Bisoux hopped over her foot. She stopped dead in the middle of the room. “Oh my Gods, Perry. What if that’s not it at all?”

  “Huh?”

  “What if the prophecy isn’t about Dean? What if it’s about Travis?”

  She thought back over the cards. What if …

  “Okay, so the infidelity … what if I could make it about Travis instead of Dean?”

  “I’m not following, Dita.”

  “What if The Moon, the deceit, was the reading? And what if The Lovers, the breakup … what if that’s Travis? What if he is the one who’s unfaithful? And that the truth in The Tower was Lex’s truth, that she’s built a wall to protect her feelings for Dean?”