Of Poseidon 02: Of Triton (6 page)

Mom kneels beside her. “You’ve been shot,” she tells Rachel.

“You shot me, you crazy bit—”

“We don’t have time for the ER protocol crap, Mom,” I cut in. “She knows she’s been shot. She’s alert. Help. Her.”

Mom nods. She looks at Rachel’s clenched fist where it’s balled against her lower stomach. “I’m sorry I shot you. I need to look at that. Please.”

Rachel gives her The Stank Eye. Rachel is very good at The Stank Eye.

“I’m a nurse, remember?” Mom says, her voice dripping with impatience. “I can help you.”

Rachel inhales and eases her hand away from her stomach, but I can’t bring myself to look at it so I just watch Mom’s face to maybe gauge how bad the wound is. I imagine dark blood and entrails and …

“What the…?” Mom gasps. As an ER nurse, Mom’s seen a lot of things. But by her expression, she’s never seen this. I’m thinking it must be way serious. Also, I’m thinking I might throw up.

Until Rachel slaps a handcuff around Mom’s wrist. “I’m sorry,
Nalia
. I hope you understand.” Then she clinks the other end of the cuff around her own wrist. I steal a glance at Rachel’s very clean, very intact, very non-bloody-entrails T-shirt.

Rachel is a smart woman.

Mom lunges for her, hands aiming for her throat. Rachel pulls some karate-chop-move thing and slams Mom against the door behind her. “Knock it off, hon. I don’t want to really hurt you.”

“You … you told Galen you’d been shot,” I stammer. “I heard you tell him that. Why would you lie to him?”

Rachel shrugs. “I
was
shot.” She glances down at her feet. There’s a good-sized hole near the big toe of her boot, and bit of red staining the edges of it. “And I’d better be able to wear high heels after this, or one of you is going to swim with the fishes.” Then she laughs at her own stupid Mob joke.

Mom plops down beside Rachel and leans against the car, too, in obvious surrender. She looks up at me. It’s a look brimming with “I told you so.” And I already know what she’s going to say next. We won’t make it very far before someone notices two women handcuffed together. Bathroom breaks will be impossible.
Any
public place will be impossible. I’m guessing Mom didn’t anticipate needing a hacksaw on this vacation of ours. But I know what she expects from me now. And that’s just too freaking bad. I hold up my hand. “I’m not going without you.”

“Emma—”

“Not happening.”

“
Emma—
”

“No.” I whirl around so I don’t have to look at her pleading face. Not to mention I feel guilty now because it’s technically my fault that my mom is handcuffed to the world’s best manipulator. Mom groans and beats her head against the door. Which means she knows that I’m not going anywhere.

Catching my breath, I lean against the front of the car and focus on the individual blades of grass hedging my flip-flop, trying not to throw up or pass out or both. In the far distance, a vehicle approaches—the first one to witness the scene of our accident. A million explanations run through my mind, but I can’t imagine a single scenario that would solve all—or any—of our issues right now.

None of us can risk going to the hospital. Mom technically doesn’t qualify as human, so I’m sure we’d get a pretty interesting diagnosis. Rachel is technically supposed to be deceased as of the last ten years or so, and while she probably has a plethora of fake IDs, she’s still antsy around cops, which will surely be called to the hospital in the event of a gunshot wound, even if it is just in the foot. And let’s not forget that Mom and Rachel are new handcuff buddies. There just isn’t an explanation for any of this.

That’s when I decide I’m not the one who should do the talking. After all, I didn’t kidnap anyone. I didn’t shoot anyone. And I certainly didn’t handcuff myself to the person who shot me. Besides, both Mom and Rachel are obviously much more skilled at deception than I’ll ever be.

“If someone pulls over to help us, one of you is explaining all this,” I inform them. “You’ll probably want to figure it out fast, because here comes a car.”

But the car comes and goes without even slowing. In fact, a lot of cars come and go, and if the situation weren’t so strange and if I weren’t so thankful that they didn’t actually stop, I’d be forced to reexamine what the world is coming to, not helping strangers in an accident. Then it occurs to me that maybe the passersby don’t realize it’s the scene of an accident. Mom’s car is in the ditch, but the ditch might be steep enough to hide it. It’s possible that no one can even see Rachel and Mom from the side of the road. Still, I
am
standing at the front of Rachel’s car. An innocent-looking teenage girl just loitering for fun in the middle of nowhere and no one cares to stop? Seriously?

Just as I decide that people suck, a vehicle coming from the opposite direction slows and pulls up a few feet behind us. It’s not a good Samaritan traveler pulling over to see what he or she can do to inadvertently complicate things. It’s not an ambulance. It’s not a state trooper. If only we could be so lucky. But, nope, it’s way worse.

Because it’s Galen’s SUV.

From where I stand, I can see him looking at me from behind the wheel. His face is stricken and tired and relieved and pained. I want to want to want to believe the look in his eyes right now. The look that clearly says he’s found what he’s looking for, in more ways than one.

Then Toraf opens the passenger side door …
Wait
.
That’s not Toraf
.

I’ve never seen this man before, yet he’s eerily familiar. His silhouette sitting next to Galen was definitely classic Syrena male, but the glare from the sun had hidden his face. I’d naturally just assumed that where there’s a Galen, there’s a Toraf. Now that his face is in full view though, I see that this man looks like a slightly older version of Galen. Slightly older as in slightly more jaded. Other than that, he could be his twin brother. It may be because he’s wearing some of Galen’s clothes, a wrinkled brown polo shirt and plaid shorts. But he shares other things, too, besides clothes.

He’s handsome like Galen, with the same strong jaw and the same eyebrow shape and the way he’s wearing the same expression on his face that Galen is—that he’s found what he’s been looking for. Only, the stranger’s expression clearly divulges that he’s been looking for a lot longer than Galen has—and this man is not looking at
me
.

And that’s when I know just exactly who he is. That’s when I believe the look in Galen’s eyes. That he didn’t lie to me, that he loves me. Because this man has to be Grom.

Mom confirms it with a half cry, half growl. “No. No. It can’t be.” Even if she weren’t handcuffed to Rachel right now, I’m not sure she’d actually be able to move. Disbelief has a special way of paralyzing you.

With every step the man takes toward Rachel’s car, he shakes his head more vigorously. It’s like he’s deliberately taking his time, drinking in the moment, or maybe he just can’t believe this moment is actually happening.
Yep, disbelief is a cruel hag.

Still, this moment belongs to the two of them, Mom and this handsome stranger. He reaches the passenger side door and stares down at her with steely violet eyes—down at my mother who never cries, down at my mother who’s now bawling like a spanked child—his face contorted in a rainbow of so many emotions, some that I can’t even name.

Then Grom the Triton king sinks to his knees in front of her, and a single tear spills down his face. “Nalia,” he whispers.

And then my mother slaps him. It’s not the kind of slap you get for talking back. It’s not the kind of punch she dealt Galen and Toraf in our kitchen. It’s the kind of slap a woman gives a man when he’s hurt her deeply.

And Grom accepts it with grace.

“I looked for you,” she shouts, even though he’s inches from her.

Slowly, as if in a show of peace, he takes the hand that slapped him and sandwiches it between his own. He seems to revel in the feel of her touch. His face is pure tenderness, his voice like a massage to the nerves. “And I looked for you.”

“Your pulse was gone,” she insists. By now she chokes back sobs between words. She’s fighting for control. I’ve never seen my mother fight for control.

“As was yours.” I realize Grom knows what
not
to say, what
not
to do to provoke her. He is the complete opposite of her, or maybe just a completion of her.

Her eyes focus on his wrist, and tears slip down her face, leaving faint trails of mascara on her cheeks. He smiles and slowly pulls his hand away. I think he’s going to show her the bracelet he’s wearing, but instead he rips it off his wrist and holds it out for her inspection. From where I’m standing it looks like a single black ball tied to some sort of string. By my mom’s expression, this black ball has meaning. So much meaning that I think she’s forgotten to breathe. “My pearl,” she whispers. “I thought I’d lost it.”

He encloses it in her hand. “This isn’t your pearl, love. That one was lost in the explosion with you. For almost an entire season, I scoured the oyster beds, looking for another one that would do. I don’t know why, but I thought maybe if I found another perfect pearl, I would somehow find you, too. When I found this though, it didn’t bring me the peace I’d hoped for. But I couldn’t bring myself to discard it. I’ve worn it on my wrist ever since.”

This is all it takes for my mom to throw herself into his arms, bringing Rachel partially with her. Even so, it’s probably the most moving moment I’ve ever encountered in my eighteen years.

Or at least it would be, if my mom weren’t clinging to a man who is not my dad.

* * *

I’d rather be in the adjoining hotel room with Rachel, even if it meant watching television on mute while she sleeps with her bullet-ravaged foot propped up on a pillow. But apparently my presence is needed here. Apparently it’s very important to hear Mom and Grom fill each other in on the last who-knows-how-many decades they’ve been apart. To hear how she’s missed him so much and still loves him and thought about him every single day. To hear that he swore he sensed her sometimes, that he thought he was losing his mind, that he visited the human mine daily to grieve her loss, blah blah blah.

Galen happens to be in possession of my favorite pair of arms—his—and most of the time when they’re wrapped around me, I feel whole and secure and like my blood has turned into hot sauce running through my veins. I should especially be feeling all melty right now. After all, I’d virtually lost him then gained him back within the cruel space of twenty-four hours. But right now his arm feels like a shackle chaining me to the hotel bed—and not in a good way.

What’s worse is that he’s doing it on purpose. Every time he feels me tense up, as Mom and Grom exchange mushy sentiments and googly eyes, Galen tightens his hold on me. Which makes me wonder what my face must look like. Does it reveal all the betrayal and hurt and pain I feel inside? Is it obvious that I want to fling myself across the hotel room to where they sit together in one chair, my mom on Grom’s lap, wrapped around him like there’s no such thing as gravity and she’s trying to keep him grounded? How apparent is it that I want to put Grom into a headlock until he goes to sleep, and yell at Mom for not loving Dad or caring that he’s dead?

I know Mom and I talked about this at the diner. That it was never love, that it was an arrangement that suited them both and that I was an added one-time bonus to that arrangement. But somehow I just can’t believe that Dad wouldn’t mind seeing this if he were here. Fine, it wasn’t love at first sight for my parents. But how, after all those years together, could it not have been love
at all
?

But maybe my expression isn’t as bad as I think it is. Maybe Galen’s just really good at reading me. Or maybe he’s just being overly mushy himself. He is a tad protective, after all. I glance at Toraf, who’s sitting on the other full-size bed next to Rayna. And Toraf is already looking at me. When our eyes meet, he shakes his head ever so slightly. As if to say, “Don’t do it.” As if to say, “You really don’t want to do it.” As if to say, “I know you really want to do it, but I’m asking you not to. As a friend.”

I huff, then adjust myself in Galen’s death grip. It’s not fair that Galen and Toraf silently ask me to accept this. That my mother is putty in Grom’s proficient hands. That her temperature barely raised a degree around my dad, yet Grom, within an hour of reunion, has her titanium exterior dissolving like Alka-Seltzer in hot water.

I can’t accept it. Won’t. Will. Not.

How can she sit here and do this? How can she sit here and tell him how much she’s missed him, and that she never stopped loving him, when she had my dad?

And ohmysweetgoodness, did Mom just say she’s going back?
“Wait, what?” I blurt. “What do you mean, ‘I’ll call my boss and let him know’? Let him know what?”

Mom gives me a rueful smile, full of motherly pity. “Emma, sweetie, I have to go back. My father—your grandfather—thinks I’m dead. Everyone thinks I’m dead.”

“So you’re just going to go back to show him you’re alive? You’re just letting him know where you are, right? In case he wants to visit?”

Her eyes get big, full of charity and understanding and condolence. “Sweetie, now that Grom is … I’m Syrena.”

But what she’s really saying is she belongs with Grom. What she’s really saying is that she should have never left. And if she should have never left, then I should have never been born. Is that what she means to say? Or am I seriously freaking out? “What about me?” I whisper. “Where do I belong?”

“With me,” my mother and Galen say in unison. They exchange hard glares. Galen locks his jaw.

“I’m her mother,” she tells Galen, her voice sharp. “Her place is with me.”

“I want her for my mate,” Galen says. The admission warms up the space between us with an impossible heat and I want to melt into him. His words, his declaration, cannot be unspoken. And now he’s declared it to everyone who matters. It’s out there in the open, hanging in the air. He wants me for his mate. Me. Him. Forever. And I’m not sure how I feel about that. How I
should
feel about that.