Tempest Revealed (4 page)

Suddenly I didn’t want to go to the football game, didn’t
want to be anywhere but alone with Mark so we could talk and laugh and kiss. So he could hold me and I could touch him the way I’d been dreaming about for days. Weeks. Months. I had so little time with him that it seemed a waste to spend it in the middle of a crowded stadium watching a game neither of us gave a damn about, even though it meant spending time with our friends.

“Tempest—” Mark’s voice was a low rumble ripe with need … and with warning. If I didn’t plan on spending the rest of the night stretched out underneath him in the back of the car, now would be a good time to look away.

I didn’t move. And for long seconds neither did he. And then he was lowering his mouth to mine, his lips—

Behind us a car honked and I jerked away, glanced up at the light. It was green, and God only knew how long it had been like that—the lane of cars next to us was moving past at a steady stream. Mark cursed softly, then pulled forward, his fingers suddenly as tight on mine as mine were on his. Then he was making the last turn onto the crowded, car-lined street that ran in front of LJHS, and it was too late to ask to leave, too late to tell him how much I craved the feel of him against me.

Mark parked, then came around to hold the door for me while I slid out of the car. Wrapping an arm around my waist, he jerked me toward him. I had only a moment to register the feel of him against me before his mouth was on mine in a kiss so hot, so possessive, that it stole my breath and my brain cells. All I could do was lean into him—I didn’t think my legs would support me, anyway—and kiss him back with all of the mixed-up, desperate emotions inside of me.

As his mouth consumed mine, I brought my hands up to his face. I cupped his cheeks, feeling the sharp stubble from where he’d forgotten to shave, then shoved my fingers through his glorious, too-long mane of dark blond hair.

He groaned a little, finally pulling away though I wanted nothing more than to hold him like that forever. It was ridiculous, an impossibility, but I wanted it anyway. Desperately and with every too-fast beat of my mixed-up heart.

Something of my desperation must have shown on my face, because Mark’s hands tightened on my arms—almost as if he was as afraid of losing me as I was of slipping away. For long seconds neither of us moved. We just stood there, staring into each other’s eyes as the reality of what we had, and didn’t have, crackled in the air around us.

Then Mark was burying his face against my neck and breathing deep. “You smell like the sea,” he told me. A year ago I would have taken that as a compliment. Here, at this moment, I wasn’t so sure. I started to ask him what he meant, then decided I didn’t want to know. Instead, I made a joke of it, playfully poking him in the stomach while I told him, “Yeah, well, you smell of Sex Wax.”

He laughed. “Like that’s an insult? I happen to know exactly how much you love that smell.”

He was right; I did. Some of my first memories were of hanging with my dad at professional surfing competitions, helping him wax his board before he hit the water. Back then I was more hindrance than help, but he never acted like it. Instead, he patiently showed me how to coat his board with the grape-scented wax, teaching me to leave a few little bumps here and
there to smooth out with my heels when I was riding and found a slick spot beneath my feet.

Pressing my face against Mark’s chest, I breathed in the comforting scent of him. Pulled him deep inside my lungs, deep inside of myself, in an effort to hold on to him forever. Mark’s arms tightened around me as if he wanted to hold me inside of him too. His lips skimmed down my cheek to the corner of my mouth and back up again, until I could feel his breath—hot and fast—against my ear. “I love you,” he whispered, and everything inside of me lit up like a shooting star over the Pacific. It was the first time he’d said it since I’d been home, and I hadn’t realized, until now, just how much I’d needed to hear the words from him.

“I love you too.”

His cell phone buzzed in his pocket and he stepped back reluctantly, pulling it out to read the text. He grinned a little as he wrote back.

“What’s so funny?”

“Logan just texted that I should stop trying to get you out of your clothes and get you inside where they can see you too.”

“What’d you tell him?”

“That he shouldn’t be worrying about your clothes one way or the other.” He shoved the phone back in his pocket, then reached for my hand. “You ready?”

I nodded, suddenly as anxious to see my friends as they were to see me. “Where are they sitting?”

“A few rows under the announcer’s booth.”

I looked at him blankly. I’d been a student at La Jolla High for more than two years before I’d become mermaid, but this
was the first football game I’d ever been to. Mark should consider himself lucky I knew where the football field
was
.

He laughed at my clueless expression even as he propelled me toward the stadium entrance. “Don’t worry. I know exactly where they are.”

I nodded and let him lead, enjoying the novelty of the experience. When I was mermaid, it seemed like everyone in Coral Straits was always looking to me to solve every problem. It felt good to let someone else be in charge for a little while, even over something as minor as this.

Mark kept me close as he bought tickets and chatted with an incessant string of random people. Some of them I knew, or at least recognized, but most of them were strangers. Which was weird on a whole new level. Even when Mark and I hadn’t been together-together, we’d been close friends, our lives intersecting and overlapping on all sides.

But I’d been gone a year. My life had continued on without him, and now, standing here watching as girl after girl jockeyed for his attention, it became clear that his had done the same without me.

I guess I assumed he’d spent most of his time doing the usual while I was gone—surfing with our friends in the morning, the quick rush to school in an attempt to avoid a tardy slip and the subsequent detention, surfing and basketball practice after school followed by homework. Which I still knew was partly the case. But there were too many people who knew him—too many who made room in their rows and invited him to sit with them—for me to think that was all he’d been doing these last months.

It was a strange realization, one that had me looking at Mark a little differently.

Which was crazy. I was the one who had left him, after all. The one who had thrown him over for a selkie prince and a life beneath the waves. How selfish, how stupid, how
ridiculous
was I to imagine he’d spent the last year pining for me? Even if I’d spent a great deal of it pining for him.

Doing my best to ignore the uncertainty niggling at me, I followed Mark into the stands. He was leading the way, blazing a trail through the crush of people—all of whom seemed to know him. But the entire time his arm was stretched behind him, his hand clasped tightly with mine. There was no reason for me to feel insecure or superfluous, I reminded myself.

But when we went to weave through a group of guys spilling out onto the steps of the bleachers, I realized I wasn’t the only one feeling a little off-kilter.

“Hey, sweetheart. How are you?” one of them said as he reached out and wrapped an arm around my waist, pulling me toward him.

I gasped, startled, and somehow Mark heard it. He whipped around and before I could say anything, he had put himself between us. “What the hell, man?” he demanded, shoving him hard enough to make him fall backward into his friends. “Don’t touch her!”

The guy sprang up, fists clenched at his sides. It didn’t take a lot of observation to see that he was drunk, and I shrank back a little. Not because I was worried about him hurting me—Mark wouldn’t let him touch me again, and besides, I could take care of myself—but because he was far enough
gone to be belligerent. Worse, he looked like he was in college, which meant he wouldn’t like being told off by a high school kid.

Sure enough, he slammed his fists into Mark’s chest with a lot more force than Mark had initially used on him. “What’s your problem? I was just saying hello!”

Mark didn’t so much as flinch at the attack. “She doesn’t want to say hello.” He grabbed the guy by the collar of his preppy polo shirt and shook him some. “And you don’t go around grabbing girls like that unless you’re a total dick.” Mark finally let go of the guy’s shirt but added another shove—this one hard enough to have him landing on his ass in the bleachers. He didn’t get up. One of his friends made to intervene, but Mark gave him a bad-ass look that told him to bring it on. He didn’t. Instead, he muttered a curse and sat down, feigning an intense, sudden interest in the game.

“Come on. Let’s go find the others,” I told him, tugging at his hand.

It took a minute, but I finally felt the tension drain out of him. Then he wrapped an arm around my waist and began propelling me toward the top of the bleachers.

“You didn’t have to do that, you know,” I told him even as I snuggled into his side. “I could have taken care of—”

The look he shot me smoldered with a rage that surprised me. “I may not be able to protect you while you’re in the ocean, but I can damn well do it here. He had no business touching you.”

I wasn’t going to argue. Not when Mark was so adamant about it. So I just said, “Thanks,” and rose up on my tiptoes to kiss his cheek.

He paused, like he couldn’t believe I wasn’t yelling at him. But why should I cause a fight when it was so important to him? Besides, Mark had always been a bad-ass. I’d known that when I fell for him. Trying to change that part of him now would be ridiculous.

He pulled me in front of him, kissed my neck softly. “I’m sorry he touched you.”

I shrugged. Of all the stuff that had happened to me in the water, being grabbed by a drunk guy at a game didn’t even register. But Mark was clearly still upset. He kept me in front of him as we climbed the rest of the steps, his arms wrapped around my waist. We made slow progress as he stopped every few stairs to press kisses on my shoulder or skim his lips down my jaw.

“You look beautiful tonight,” he murmured against my ear.

I turned my head so that our lips were barely a few centimeters apart. “So do you.”

He flushed a little. “Maybe we should get out of here.”

“Maybe we should.”

He was just lowering his mouth to mine when I heard a familiar voice crow, “Hey, man, get a room. Or better yet, pass her over here!”

I looked up in time to see Logan bounding over our other friends—as well as a middle-aged couple who was obviously there to cheer for their son—and down the crowded steps toward us. Then he was there, in front of me, and I was yanked into the hugest bear hug of my life.

“There you are, Tempest! About time too. It took every ounce of self-control I had not to storm your house this
morning and drag you down to the water.” His Australian accent was as heavy as ever, his eyes gleaming just as wickedly as I remembered. “I’ve missed you, girl.”

He started to pull away, but I held on tighter, keeping him in place just a little longer. It was a purely platonic hug, without demands or expectations, and I was nowhere ready to end it.

Logan’s and my friendship just was. We could talk every day or once in six months; it didn’t matter. When we saw each other again, there was no guilt. No recriminations. Just pure joy with a side order of teasing thrown in to keep things interesting. Plus, he was the one who helped Mark save Moku when he’d nearly drowned the past summer. That wasn’t something I could ever forget.

I finally relinquished my hold on him, but it was hard. For me, Logan was everything fun and uncomplicated about my human life. Tonight, when I was feeling so uncertain about things, he was exactly what I needed.

“You’re still pretty,” I told him with a mock sneer.

“And you’re still mean.” He wrapped an arm around my shoulder, guiding me up the five rows to where he and the others were sitting. Then I was in the middle of all my friends, and it felt so good I never wanted to leave. Smacking kisses from my surfer pals, Bach, Tony and Scooter, followed by hugs from Bri and Mickey, my two best girlfriends. After we’d chatted for a few minutes, Logan pulled me over all of them—and the middle-aged couple—so that I was seated between him and Mark.

On the field below us, they started introducing the football
players from both sides, but I was too busy being interrogated by Logan and the other guys to pay any attention to it.

“So, why weren’t you outside this morning?” Bach demanded from his spot on the other side of Logan. “I’ve never known you to miss a chance to surf.”

“Yeah,” Scooter chimed in. “We waited for you so long we were practically prunes by the time we got out of the water.”

“I’m sorry. I was jetlagged,” I told them, embarrassed to admit that I
had
gone surfing—after they’d all left for school. I’d been lying in bed, staring at my ceiling when I’d heard the dawn patrol heading down the street toward the water at four thirty in the morning. Everything inside me had quickened with the need to join them, to run down to the water and throw myself into the surf, my favorite board clutched in my hands. I wanted to ride the waves, to surf for mindless hours where nothing mattered but getting covered.

I’d stayed in my room, in my bed, because I’d been scared. Scared of my reception from them and scared of looking like an ass after going months without so much as touching a board. When I was on my game and practicing regularly, I was one of the best surfers in the group. And since they all thought I was living in Hawaii and surfing daily, the last thing I needed was to look like a total frube in front of them.

I’d remedied the situation after they’d headed out. After dropping Moku off at school, I’d spent hours out on the water instead of in it. It had been a familiar rush, and a bittersweet one, to feel my board—the custom-made Brewer that had been a gift from my father—under my feet again.

“Well, you better be ready tomorrow morning, Cooha,”
Bach told me. “A storm’s supposed to hit around noon, so the waves will be going off until then.”