The Summer of Chasing Mermaids (22 page)

Chapter 29

“Limited-time offer,” Christian said.
We were lying in the berth later, naked and warm, the moon our only light. I'd been trying to bribe him to reveal his secrets, one kiss at a time, and this was his response. “Ask me anything. But in exchange for answers, I get to do something to you.”

What?
I didn't bother hiding my grin.

“That's for me to know, and you to experience.” He pressed his lips to my mouth, traced the edges with the tip of his tongue.

Before things got too hot and heavy again, I grabbed his hand to stop him, found a Sharpie on the shelf.

On the back of an old nautical chart we mapped out pieces of each other's histories, trading childhood stories for kisses. I told him about being born in the sea, and how we'd gone to Tobago to live with Granna after that. He told me about the day they brought
Sebastian home from the hospital, a bundle of chubby pink limbs with a shock of white-blond curls, and how Christian fell in love with him instantly.

Finally, when all the safe topics had been exhausted, I found the courage to write the question I'd most been pondering.

Once you said you almost weren't his. Why?

The muscles of his jaw ticked. He knew I'd meant his father, and for a moment I regretted bringing it up, weighting the lightness between us. But I was chasing away my own secret admissions, and this was something Christian held deep, almost hidden. Knowing him seemed utterly wrapped up in this mystery.

“God,” he said, rolling his eyes in a gesture that failed to be as dismissive as he'd intended. “You don't want to hear
that
weeper. Trust me.”

I do
, I mouthed.
If you want to tell.

For a moment he said nothing, his face turned toward the forward hatch, which we'd left open to the night sky. He seemed lost among the stars, and I thought maybe he wouldn't answer after all, that we'd reached the outer boundaries of that limited-time offer.

But then he shook his head, ran a hand through his hair.

“Before I was born,” he said, soft and low, “my mother had an affair. He was another long-term renter here, down the north end of the shore, near town.”

I tried to keep my face neutral, but shock rippled through me. For
all her coldness, her snippiness with Mr. Kane, her awkwardness with me, her long hours hiding away in her office, the tears on tarot night, I never would've suspected Mrs. Kane had been the one to cheat.

Christian's confession was just another reminder that no matter how much you thought you knew about someone, no matter how much you guessed from their movements and actions and words, you never had access to the inside. Never saw the complete, intricate, messy, shades-of-gray picture.

“It went on a few years,” he said, “though Dad supposedly had no idea. Fast forward a decade, and it all comes out one night during this huge fight. I'm in the next room, supposed to be sleeping but obviously not.”

I tried to imagine Christian as a little boy, ear pressed to the wall, scared and confused. Blood pulsed behind my scar, my throat tightening at the memories as if they were mine.

“After a lot of yelling, Mom admitted that she couldn't say for certain whether Dad was my biological father. Dad said he didn't care, and I felt this . . .” Christian pressed his fist against his heart, spread his fingers. “Like, a wave of relief. But then something shifted, and I got it. He wasn't saying it like, ‘He's my son no matter whose DNA he has.' He was saying that he didn't trust anything Mom told him. I was standing in the doorway at that point, and when my father finally noticed me, the look on his face . . .” Christian closed his eyes. “It was like I'd gone from his kid to this disgusting
thing
. He stormed out of the room, didn't even touch me. I felt like a ghost.”

I grabbed his hand, squeezed.

“He made us take a paternity test,” he said. “I think he was already preparing for the bad news, and a divorce to follow.”

Christian turned back toward the stars again, found a bright one to focus on.

Vega, watching over us.

“He loved us, I figured,” he said. “He wouldn't have cut ties on his own. But after what Mom did? It's a lot easier to walk away when someone else cuts the ties for you.” Christian looked at me again, his eyes sad and lost.

“But as it turns out, I'm his real kid. Lucky me, right?” He sighed. “I waited for weeks for things to get back to normal. Months. Years. But the damage was done. The test results didn't matter, because all I'd ever be was evidence of Mom's affair. Even more fucked up? I think Mom
wanted
to bail. Like she was almost hoping the test would be different, then she could have a legit reason to walk away.”

I didn't know what to do, to say. So I just moved closer, pressed my lips to his shoulder.

“It's the thing I'll never understand, never respect about her,” Christian said, tightening his grip on my hand. “She could've just divorced him. She stayed, though. Not because she thought they could work it out. She stayed because she didn't know what else to do.”

That much I understood.

It was the same reason I'd left Tobago.

I didn't know what else to do.

It was possible Christian couldn't see past his own hurt, the rawness of his own memories, to understand that maybe she had other reasons for staying.

Webs, sticky and layered.

Who was I to judge?

Maybe I couldn't see through my own hurt and raw memories either, and I'd pushed my family away because of it. Pushed my sister away.

Webs, gossamer and strong.

I took Christian's face in my hands, turned him toward me.
I'm so sorry.

“Oh, this tale gets better. Sebastian? He was supposed to be the do-over kid. Mom and Dad wanted to work it out, and I guess they thought they could get a fresh start. But Sebastian doesn't meet Dad's criteria for the perfect son either.”

Gently I grabbed his arm, turned it over to the pale skin that stretched over his veins. From wrist to elbow, I wrote:

I think the Kane brothers are perfect.

Christian sighed. “Sometimes I wish I could just take him, you know? Go start our own thing somewhere before my dad does any more ­damage. But he wouldn't want that, not really. Sebastian still looks up to our parents—poor kid. Yeah, I say that, then I feel like the world's biggest dick because I'm not married; I don't know what
they went through. Just because they screwed up, does that make them bad people?”

Human,
I mouthed.

“Sometimes I think he wants to sell the house because the Cove reminds him of all that bad shit. How could it not? Just because the dude's not here anymore doesn't mean his ghost isn't.” Christian shook his head, cleared the cobwebs. “Fuck. You just Oprahed me, didn't you?” He shook his head again. “Forget it. You're not getting anything else out of me tonight. Except, maybe . . .” He flashed me a dangerous look that sent a shock of heat between my thighs.

I pretended to cower away, but he only laughed.

“You're always writing on me,” he teased. “Let's see how you like it.” He grabbed my foot, stole the Sharpie from my grasp. I squirmed beneath his touch, loving every searing-hot minute of it.

“Hold still,” he warned. “You'll mess up my art.”

I waited until he'd finished scribbling on the bottoms of both feet before I lifted them to see. Each was inked with a sunshine wearing a pair of sunglasses and a smile.

“Now wherever you go, you'll be walking on sunshine,” he said.

I rolled my eyes.
Everyone's a poet.

He handed over the marker. “Money, mouth. Put them together.”

I knelt before him in the small space of the berth, ran my fingers along his jaw, down to his collarbone, then to his chest. I kissed his neck, traced the lines of the tattoo on his shoulder, ship and compass, the black sea.

Beneath my touch, his heart beat strong, steady.

With the marker pressed against his skin, I spun words in the moonlight, tattooed them over his heart.

For all the strength of men

And the divine power of their gods

But for a spell in a pale blue dream

Not even the wisest among them

Can harness the silver moon

Nor cease with thoughts or words

The beating of their own fragile hearts

He read upside down, his fingers lightly touching the words.

“Okay, show-off. That's just . . . epic.”

I gave him a casual shrug.
Had enough?

“Oh, I'm just getting started, Stowaway.” Gently he pushed me back onto the bed, took my foot into his hands. He started to write something on the top, but then he ditched the marker. “Wait. I think we're doing this wrong.” His lips landed softly on my ankle, trailed a line of kisses up to my knee. “I'm about to make you wish you'd kept your clothes on.”

After, our skin bathed again in moonlight, Christian reclaimed the marker, painting letters on my back, slow, soft.

I turned to meet his eyes over my shoulder, raised my brows in question.

“For later,” he said, capping the marker. Before I could turn over, he was beside me, close, his hands gathering my hair and lifting it off my neck. His kiss was gentle, drawing a path down the back of my neck, across my shoulder, across the front of my chest, finally landing on my lips.

He watched me endlessly, his eyes tracing the planes of my face, fingers following in gentle strokes that threatened to put me to sleep.

“I want you to do the honors,” he whispered, and I knew he meant the boat. My heart swelled at the immensity of the gesture. “We don't have to keep the
Queen
part if you don't like it. Up to you.”

It came to me in an instant, a flash. Lemon's tarot cards, the compassionate queen and her golden chalice. The night of the reading, Lemon had said that the Queen of Cups awaited me, that if I could finally let go, find my way back to myself, open my heart to her, she'd be there to embrace me, to help me on this journey. Lemon had meant friendship and compassion, maybe even the chance at love. But it was the boat, too. I was certain now. For me, they were bound—the boat and my heart. Broken and damaged, but maybe—hopefully—not irreparably so.

I thought of all the things that had happened, leading us to this moment, to this opportunity for me to name the vessel upon which I'd spent my first weeks here hiding out. The vessel that might save my home. Chance encounters. Dedication and care. Friendship. Passion. Lots of things had brought us together, and lots of things could make us whole again.

There was no other name for her. I wrote on my hand:

Queen of Cups

I held it up to his eyes, watched the smile stretch across his face.

“Queen of Cups.”
He kissed me on the mouth, bolted back into the saloon where we'd left the champagne. He grabbed the bottle and nodded for me to follow him above deck.

Nude and free and wholly unconcerned, we christened the boat under her new name, splashing champagne over the hull. Christian poured a final glass, held it to the stars. With a glint in his eyes, he dumped it overboard.

“To Neptune,” he proclaimed.

He kissed me passionately, then ducked belowdecks alone, leaving me to whisper my own prayers to the god of the sea.

Moments later, switches and fans flipped on, and the engine purred to life.

“That's our girl,” he shouted over the noise. “That's our girl.”

Christian eased the
Queen of Cups
out of the slip, and in an instant, a moment, a heartbeat, we were on the open water. Choppy. Foaming at the mouth. Hungry.

Panic flooded my limbs, icing me from head to toe. The boat shimmied against the waves, and everything in me shook. I tried to make my legs move, make them carry me belowdecks to tell him to stop, but they wouldn't budge.

I was anchored to the deck, naked and shivering, and all around me the stars blinked into blackness.

I was sinking.

Cold.

Falling.

Dropping like a stone to the bottom of the sea, and Christian wouldn't even know I'd fallen.

I've been waiting for you. . . .

The mermaid's voice was in my head. She reached out through the water, pale fingers stretching to reach me, to ensnare me, to pull me into the depths. . . .

“Elyse!”

I opened my eyes, surprised to find myself on deck, the Vega bobbing innocently in the slip. We'd never even left, I saw then.

Christian was looking up at me through the companionway, his face panicked and confused. “What's wrong? What happened?”

I shook my head.
I can't.

“Can't what?” He killed the motor and fans, climbed up top to reach me. His hands were warm on my bare arms. “You can't tell me? No way. You can tell me anything.”