Complete Nothing (Volume 2) (True Love, Band 2) - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Kieran Scott is the author of the True Love series, including Only Everything, Complete Everything, and Something True; and the Non-Blonde Cheerleader series along with the He’s So/She’s So trilogy: She’s So Dead to Us, He’s So Not Worth It, and This Is So Not Happening. She also writes the New York Times bestselling series Private, as well as the Shadowlands trilogy, under the pen name Kate Brian. She resides in New Jersey with her family.

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Complete Nothing

CHAPTER ONE

True

“I’m . . . fine,” the love of my life mumbled, searching my face. “But who the hell are you?”

I gazed into his deep blue eyes and stopped breathing. I knew every green and brown fleck within them. I knew every dream and fear and hope they disguised. And yet they were a complete blank as they stared back at me. Slowly, achingly, a cold terror settled into my veins even as my lips tingled from our kiss. He wasn’t joking.

“Orion, do—do you truly not know me?” I stammered.

He chuckled in an embarrassed way and smoothed the back of his dark wavy hair as he looked around, waiting for the punch line. I took a startled step back, catching my shoe on the curb. Automatically, instinctively, Orion reached out and grabbed my arm to steady me. His touch stopped my heart, and I stared at his tanned fingers, then into his eyes.

It’s me, Orion. Please. Please, remember me. I’m the one who saved you. I brought you back to life after eons of hanging among the stars. I nursed you back to health and we fell in love. We spent hours, days, weeks together, telling our secrets, whispering our hopes, learning everything there is to know about each other. Please, you must remember me. Please, please, please.

He released me. “Sorry, no. How do you know my name?”

I felt Hephaestus’s presence at my side, the left wheel on his chair coming to a stop right next to my leg. I stared mutely down at him, my dark-skinned, dark-eyed, leather-and-metal-and-denim-sporting friend, wishing he could snap his fingers and wake me from this nightmare. Like me, Hephaestus was a former god, and as such, was almost mind-bendingly handsome with his square jaw, flawless complexion, and perfect muscle definition, but while he had been human for generations, I had only been in this mortal body for two weeks. I was still getting used to its quirks. Like the psychotic, panicked pounding of the pulse that I was currently experiencing. I had thought that I was familiar with every working of the human heart. As Eros, the Goddess of Love, it was supposed to be my specialty. But this was something new.

Hephaestus nudged my leg with the rubber coating on the wheel of his chair, but my brain couldn’t form words. My brain could form nothing other than a silent, anguished scream.

“Lucky guess?” Hephaestus offered.

Orion laughed again. “That’d be a first. Everyone’s always surprised when I introduce myself. I think my mom was high when she named me. She never heard of Michael or David or James?”

“You have a mom?” I blurted.

His handsome brow knit. “Doesn’t everyone?”

Hephaestus laughed loudly, forcibly. “Good one.” He looked at me with wide eyes, urging me to get it together. But at the moment I didn’t even know what “it” was, let alone how I could get it together. From the corner of my eye, I saw Darla Shayne and Veronica Vine in their matching outfits—Darla’s a blue minidress, Veronica’s a pink one in the same style—checking Orion out as they sauntered by on their way into school.

Back off, I thought, angry adrenaline surging through me. Back the eff off.

Darla turned to walk backward, slipping her sunglasses to the tip of her nose for a better look. Some skateboarder guy was performing tricks nearby, and without a thought I glared at his board, sending it flying out from under him and rolling into Darla’s path. She tripped and fell right on her ass on the sidewalk with a screech.

That was what you got for coveting a goddess’s man. But as I watched the boy retrieve his board and Veronica help Darla brush off her backside, I knew I was out of line. My power of telekinesis had only just returned to me, and I still had no idea why. The deal with Zeus was that I had to form three couples without my powers. To that end, he’d stripped me of every last one before depositing me here on Earth. So why had this one returned? What did it mean?

And most importantly, would I get in trouble for using it?

I decided not to think about that right now. It was too much to wrap my brain around. Especially now, with Orion standing two feet away from me. I’d deal with the power issue later.

“Yeah, well, Dad says it was her idea.” Orion gestured toward the white SUV that had dropped him off, which was now idling at a stoplight near the corner. “He put his foot down when it came to my sister, so she lucked out and got Amy. Boring, normal Amy.”

I swallowed a sharp lump in my throat. He had a mother? A father? A sister? What was happening? How was this possible?

“I’m Heath,” Hephaestus introduced himself, extending one mesh-gloved hand. Orion shook it, then looked at me. “And this is True,” Hephaestus added.

“Nice to meet you guys.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “So, you greet all the new guys in school with a kiss like that?”

“No,” I said.

They both looked at me, waiting for more. Expecting more. An explanation, a joke, an excuse. But I had nothing. Orion was right there. Right. There. So close I could smell the piney shampoo he’d used this morning and see the tiny cut on his neck from shaving. I could have reached out and brushed the lobe of his ear and knew exactly how it would feel beneath the pad of my thumb. I knew every last inch of him—each variation of his laughter, every lilt of his voice, and the nose-prickling scent of his skin. I knew the particular way he stretched upon awakening, how he smacked his lips when he tasted something sour, that his gaze would dart to the horizon whenever he was startled.

But to him, I was a stranger.

“Anyway . . . I’m supposed to go to the main office?” Orion said, raising his eyebrows. He directed this comment at Hephaestus, probably discerning that I was a lost cause.

“We’ll show you, right, True?” Hephaestus said, turning his wheels toward the ramp outside the school’s side door.

“Yes,” I replied, finding my voice. “Yes. Of course.”

Orion walked next to Heath up the ramp. When I turned to follow them, my knees went weak and I had to grab on to a NO PARKING sign to keep from going down. I clung to it and tried to breathe.

What is happening? What is happening? Why is he here? Why does he not remember me?

“True?” Heath prompted as the door automatically opened in front of them.

“Coming!”

I summoned every ounce of strength within me, called on every triumph of my endless, immortal existence to buoy me, and forced myself to stand. Then I cleared my throat and followed the love of my life and the former god who was my best friend into Lake Carmody High. If ever there had been a sight more surreal than the two of them moving together under the huge HOMECOMING! banner, I wasn’t aware of it.

“So where’re you from?” Hephaestus asked Orion, glancing over his shoulder at me as we made our way down the front hallway. A few students milled around at their lockers, checked their phones for messages, and reviewed their homework. I was aware of them, but I didn’t really see them. Orion was the only person I could see. I had never felt a longing like this in my life. It was as if he was pulling me along by a leash clasped...