Tempest Revealed (12 page)

Still, I could barely wrap my head around what I was thinking. Was I really going to do this? To try to find a way to just walk out and never come back?

I was. As soon as I figured out how.

The thought was so depressing that it nearly brought me to tears all over again. Instead, I crawled under my covers and pulled my pillow over my head, willing the world to just disappear as I tried to block out the horror of what I was about to do. Part of me wanted to seize these last moments with my family, to wrap myself around Moku and breathe in every ounce of his wild, sweet little boy scent. But the other part was already wounded, already bleeding out at the thought of leaving him, and it wanted nothing more than to shove him away. To spare itself, to spare me, any more pain than I absolutely had to experience.

In the end, I let Moku into my room. Held tight to him and murmured prayer after prayer, plea after plea as I tried to find a way to let him go. Eventually, he did it for me. Prying himself out of my arms, he ran for my bedroom door with a giggle and a wave. I might have been content to lie in bed all day, but he wasn’t.

After he left, I glanced at the clock listlessly. It was five, past time when I should have begun getting ready for the homecoming dance. Bree and Mickey had started hours ago, with nail and hair and facial appointments, but I had begged off. That wasn’t really my scene anymore. Besides, it had felt silly to waste my precious time at home getting painted and sprayed and arranged into something untouchable.

I snorted. So instead I’d spent it locked in my room in the
middle of an existential crisis. Or at least as close as I’d ever come to one.

I forced myself to get up, to take a shower. I had one last night with Mark and I wasn’t going to waste a second of it. Especially since by the end, I was going to have to break his heart. And my own.

Chapter 10

“Tempest! Mark’s here!” My dad’s voice floated up the stairs.

“I’ll be down in a minute.” I slipped into my shoes—a pair of killer black stilettos that would murder my feet before the night was over—and took one last look in the mirror. I was wearing a dress from my sophomore year in high school, from the one dance Mark hadn’t taken me to. It was short and black and hugged me in all the right places. I wore fishnet stockings to cover the burns on my ankles and gloves to do the same for my fingers. The result was a slightly goth look that wasn’t quite me, but one that I found myself liking anyway. At least I’d look good when I destroyed my life.

I started down the hall, paused outside of Rio’s door. Loud music was playing—System of a Down’s “Chop Suey!”—and I almost kept walking. But I couldn’t stand the thought of leaving without trying one more time to patch things up with my brother. If nothing else, I wanted to let him know that he wouldn’t be alone when he turned seventeen. If I wasn’t there to help him, I would make sure Mahina was.

I opened the door without bothering to knock—first because I didn’t think he’d hear me and second because even if he did, I doubted that he’d let me in. He was lying on his bed, face buried in a comic book.

It took him a minute to notice me, but when he did, he shouted, “Get out!”

“Rio—”

“Did you hear me? I said get out!”

“I want to talk to you—”

“Why should I listen to anything you have to say? You’ll be gone in a few days, and who knows when you’ll be back?”

The truth of those words nearly brought me to my knees. “Maybe that’s why you should listen. Because you don’t know when you’ll see me again.”

“Your choice. Not mine.”

“What about
your
choice? What about when you turn seventeen?”

He snorted. “Well, I’m not going to make the same choices you did. I’m not weak like you and Mom. I won’t run out on Moku and Dad the way you did.” He scrambled off the bed, crossed to where his iPod was docked. Turned the speakers up super loud—a giant
get lost
signal if I’d ever seen one.

“I love you,” I told him, getting ready to leave.

“What?” he asked with a sneer. “I didn’t hear you.”

“I said, I love you!”

“Yeah.” He gave me a dismissive nod, then turned to fiddle with his tablet. I was almost out the door when he turned the music back down to a semireasonable level. Still, I almost missed him saying, “You’re leaving.”

I stared at him. “What?”

“I can always tell. You get the same look on your face. I’m right, aren’t I? You’re planning on leaving tonight, aren’t you?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Typical.” This time when he crossed the room it was to get up in my face. “Do you ever get tired of just walking away?”

“Every day of my life.”

He looked uncertain, like my response had surprised him. “Then why do it?”

I didn’t know what to say at first, didn’t have a clue how to explain to Rio how things were without freaking him out completely. But then I looked at him, really looked at him, this boy who was almost a man. And I knew I couldn’t prevaricate or sidestep the question. Not anymore. Not when, in a few years, his safety would depend on it.

“Rio, there’s a lot going on under the ocean. Battle lines have been drawn. People are dying. More will die if I don’t try to stop what’s happening.”

“But what about us? Don’t you want—”

“It’s
because
of you that I’m trying to stop what’s happening. When I turned seventeen I was thrust into the middle of a warzone with barely any help or direction. I don’t want that same thing for you or Moku.”

“I won’t be mer.” He tilted his chin defiantly.

“I’m totally on board with that. But I thought the same thing, right up to my seventeenth birthday. Things change, Rio.”

“Only because people change them.”

I smiled sadly. “Sometimes it’s circumstances, not people, that cause the change. Sometimes all you can do is go along for the ride.”

“And sometimes you can get off the ride! You can choose, right now, not to go back. But you won’t do that.”

“I
can’t
do that.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I’m sorry, Rio. I never meant to hurt any of you.”

He shrugged, turned away. I knew I should leave—Rio had made it clear he didn’t want me there, and Mark was waiting for me downstairs—but I had to try once more. I put a hand on Rio’s shoulder, expecting him to shrug it off even as I did.

Except he didn’t shrug at all. Instead, he grabbed on to my hand with every ounce of strength he had. I could feel him shaking. I hugged him then, and he turned. Hugged me back. His arms were so tight around me that I could barely breathe. But I didn’t care. My brother was hugging me.

Rio
was hugging me.

Tears welled up in my eyes, but I blinked them away. I wanted to remember every moment of this night, didn’t want emotion to blind me when I thought back on it.

“Be safe, Tempe.”

Those three hoarse words shattered me, and I pulled away. All but rushed for the door. I needed to get out of there or I’d never make it. I’d never go and it would be open season on all those I cared about.

I stopped when I was halfway out the door. Reached into my clutch and tossed him the piece of green sea glass I’d been carrying with me for months. He caught it, looked at me inquiringly.

It was more than just sea glass; it was a memory. One of our mother’s memories, specifically. And unlike most of the ones I found in her sea cave, this one was a happy one. It was about Rio and Moku and me, and I thought he should see it.

“Keep it,” I told him huskily. “When you turn seventeen, you’ll know what to do with it.”

“How?”

“Because I’ll be there to tell you.” It was a vow, one rife with resolve. I would see him again.

His face lit up, and I knew that somehow I’d said the right thing. It was enough, at least for now. “Good-bye, Rio.”

His smile faded. “Bye, Tempe.”

I closed his door on the way out. It was a fitting metaphor.

I paused in the hall, took a few deep breaths. At least he and Moku had Sabrina, I told myself as I struggled for composure. I might hate her, but
they
didn’t, and it would be good for them to have someone to lean on while I was gone. I knew I should be unselfish, that I shouldn’t care about her taking my place. But it still hurt.

I struggled to compose myself. It was almost over. Just a few more good-byes and then I’d be free of this place.

I glanced back at the closed door. Or locked out of it.

I straightened my shoulders and headed for the staircase and my next good-bye. And pretended not to feel the tears rolling silently down my cheeks.

“In case I forgot to say it earlier, you look beautiful.” Mark pulled me into a loose embrace, buried his face in my hair with a long, low sigh. “I’ve been wanting to do that all night,” he whispered, his arms tightening around me.

I tried to relax into him, to hold him as tightly and sweetly as he was holding me. But I couldn’t. Not when, inside me,
everything was screaming. I’d made the decision earlier to end it and I knew that I needed to do just that—right here, right now—but all I could see was his face. All I could feel was the unsteady rise and fall of his chest under my ear and all I could hear was the fast, heavy beating of his heart.

This was Mark, my Mark. The boy I knew better than anyone else in the world. And because I knew him, I knew that what I was going to say would devastate him. And still I would say it. What kind of heartless bitch did that make me?

Not heartless. Heartbroken.

He nuzzled my cheek, breathed me in like he wanted to take me deep inside himself. I knew how he felt. After all, hadn’t I put off breaking up with him all night because he was already deep inside of me? I was certain I could feel him in every pump of my heart, could smell him in every breath that I took.

Reluctantly, I pulled away and started moving again. We were walking on the sand, only a few feet away from where it met the roiling, angry Pacific. Though the storm had passed a while ago, the water still remembered it, the waves choppy and disjointed as they crashed against the shore.

It was late and the beach was a series of ever-darkening shadows, the only light coming from the luminescent moon above us and the streetlamps down the block. The ones on the beach were dark, the quick, unrelenting violence of the storm having blown them out a few hours before.

I could still see the waves, though. Or maybe it was just that I could sense them, much like I had last night. No matter how hard I tried to distance myself while I was on land or how hard I tried to be completely human, the rhythm of the water—of
the tides—was always a part of me. It had always been like that, from the time I was a small child. But lately it had become more obvious, more all-encompassing, until it felt like even the beat of my heart echoed the push-pull of the waves as they crashed against the land.

Which was fine, I told myself. Good, even, because that was just one more tie I had to the ocean. One more thing that would distance me from Mark and my family.

As we walked, the wind picked up, tangling in my long blond hair and whipping it against my frigid cheeks. I gasped at the stinging contact and at the violence of the wind as it slapped and whirled around us. A particularly strong gust came up, tore right through the dubious protection of the dress I was wearing, and a violent shiver worked its way through me—though I was pretty sure the wind was just an excuse. I’d been freezing since I’d made my decision earlier in the day, my body turning frigid in response to the shocking chill in my mind.

I shivered again, and Mark slipped off his suit jacket, draped it over my shoulders. Then he slipped a scarf out of the jacket’s pocket and wrapped it gently around my neck.

“Better?” he asked.

I nodded, then looked away as I blinked tears out of my eyes. I wouldn’t cry tonight. Mark deserved better than that.

“Since when do you wear a scarf?” I demanded, trying to inject a lightness into my voice that I was far from feeling.

“I don’t.” He wrapped his arm around my shoulder, pulled me back against the warm, lean length of him. Immediately some of the chills subsided, though I knew they’d be back soon enough.

I tugged on the scarf around my neck as proof to the contrary.

“I started carrying one around about the time my girlfriend grew a tail. Blue lips aren’t exactly the best look for you.”

He was smiling, expecting me to laugh, but I couldn’t. Instead, I glanced away, my cheeks burning with pleasure—and shame. I never knew quite what to say when Mark revealed just how closely he watched me or how much he saw, despite my efforts to keep things hidden. I’d had so much to hide for so long that it felt strange now that there were no secrets between us. Good, but strange.

The good feeling lasted only as long as it took to remember that soon there would be a giant secret between us. Soon I would have to convince him that I didn’t love him, that I didn’t want to be with him. If I didn’t, I knew he would never let me walk away.

With that in mind, I decided to start laying the groundwork. To get him thinking about the way things were versus the way he wanted them to be. The way we both wanted them to be. After all, if I focused on everything that was wrong between us, maybe it would drown out the soul-deep rightness I felt whenever I was near him.