Waterborn (The Emerald Series Book 1) (16 page)

“If you tell me you grow a tail on the full moon I
will
totally freak out.” She laughed, a nervous tickle of sound, visibly bracing herself for my reply.

I was tempted to have some fun with her on this one. But I knew all too well she was on the verge of cracking, so afraid this was going to be true.

“I don’t grow a tail on the full moon or otherwise. And relax, you won’t either.” Technically, this was the absolute truth.

Her shoulders slumped in relief and the mattress dipped just a bit when she sat on the bed.

“But,” I added, “you’ll probably develop these.” I spread my toes, revealing a thin layer of translucent skin connecting each one.

“Wow. That’s reassuring,” she said. “That also makes me the most unobservant person on the planet.”

Only she didn’t look reassured: she looked scared and she had dark circles under her eyes like she hadn’t slept since the last time I’d seen her. I wanted to tell her there was nothing to worry about, nothing to be afraid of, but I guess if I were in her place, I’d be freaking out a little myself.

“Are you saying mermaids aren’t real?”

“I’m saying if they are, I’ve never seen one.” I put my hands behind my head. Her bed felt nice. It smelled like her. “Things okay with your dad?”

She narrowed her eyes at me. They looked liked cut diamonds, glittery and hard. Beautiful and lethal at the same time. So, the dad was not a good topic of conversation. Couldn’t blame her there either. I was still pissed at him too. Both of them.

She reached for a bottle of nail polish on the nightstand. “My feelings on the subject of
Patrick
have yet to be determined.”

I propped up on my elbow as the sharp smell of polish teased my nose, watching as she went to work with the brush, thinking it best to just stay quiet on the subject. If she asked me about her real father, I would tell her what I knew which even after the conversation with my mother, wasn’t much.

“He’s been lying to me forever. That can’t be okay, no matter how he claims it was because he loved my mother.” She paused to look up at me, the brush suspended over her big toe.

I took the bottle from her and patted my lap in invitation. She didn’t even hesitate. Her legs fell across my lap and I started painting, picking up where she’d left off.

“I know people do some crazy shit when they’re in love.”

She squirmed under the touch of my hand.

“Yeah, but lying to protect someone doesn’t make sense. If you love them you tell them the truth.” She didn’t sound so sure of her own words.

“Sometimes the truth does more harm than good and wouldn’t change anything anyway. I wouldn’t want to hurt someone I loved unnecessarily.” I tried not to sound like I was taking sides. She had to know I was on her side.

“So you would lie? To protect someone you love?” She leaned back, catching her weight on her hands.

I lifted the brush, leaving behind a bright pink stripe on her pinky toe. I looked into her eyes. She had breather eyes now. Sharper, brighter, more silver than gray. They reflected her charged emotions, the hurt she endured. Kind of made me heartsick looking at them.

“If I thought it was the only way, maybe.” I finished with the pinky toe on her right foot. “Next,” I said, then grabbed the heel of her left foot, placed it across my thigh and applied the small brush.

“Promise me you won’t lie to me, Noah.” I looked up at the rawness in her voice and watched the column of her throat work on a swallow. “I need someone to trust.”

“I won’t lie to you.” My gaze steadily held hers.

“About anything. About whether I’ll grow a tail, if my hair looks bad, if I have boogers in my nose. Anything. You’ll tell me.”

She was being deliberately silly, which meant she was dead serious. I’d learned that much about her. The bigger the deal, the lighter she made of it.

“I told you the truth about the tail. It’s not possible for your hair to look bad, and…” I leaned forward over her legs, my hand cupped around her knees and peered up her nose. “No bats in the cave.”

She laughed, the magical sound making my heart turn over. I wanted her to laugh more. “I’m serious, Noah.”

“Me too.” I could have sat there and looked at her forever, but the skin under my hand felt too warm and too soft. My fingers itched to travel farther up her leg. She started when my fingers tightened around her knee. I let her go. “All done.” I twisted the top back on the bottle then handed it to her.

“You have to admit that was weird.” She pulled her foot away and tucked her shirt under her legs.

“Nah,” I said. “I would have made a good girl.”

“I don’t think so.” She ducked her head, and I could tell by the fallen expression on her face she was about to retreat into some sad place. I could hear it too, the sudden change in her mood. I’d do anything to keep her from going to that place.

“I used to get mistaken for a girl all the time when I was younger.” I pasted on my most serious face. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m kind of pretty.”

She picked up a pillow and threw it at me. I caught it before it could smash into my face.

“Watch out. You’ll mess up your toes.” I tucked the pillow behind my back as though settling in for the night. I waited while she inspected the chipped paint on her fingernails.

“I don’t know what to do next.” Her hands fell into her lap. “I mean, what my dad told me, what I am, it changes everything. I just don’t know how. Tomorrow, do I get up and act like I’m the same person when I’m not sure who that is anymore?”

The way she looked at me, with complete and utter trust, pretty much scared the shit out of me.

“Who am I, Noah?”

I wanted to tell her she was the girl who brought me back from the Deep, the girl that called me home. The girl that was in the process of utterly shredding my heart. But what she was asking, I couldn’t answer. Only she could do that.

“I asked myself the same thing after Jamie…” I shuddered and forced the words off my tongue, words that had sat there so long unspoken. “After Jamie died. I didn’t have an answer, so I left. Buried myself in the Deep. It’s easy to do out there.”

“What’s it like being out there for so long?”

“Quiet. Peaceful, despite the dangers. She’ll seduce you, that’s for sure. At some point something primitive takes over, something more animal than human, and you just are.” I looked down at my hands, the faint trace of webs still evident. I splayed them so she could see. “I might still be out there if you hadn’t come.”

I’d like to think I’d have come back for my mom, but I wasn’t so sure. Maggie was right. I had been selfish. I had wanted to forget myself, forget who I was and I had almost done it. When I looked up, Caris was staring at me, wide eyes glistening. I hadn’t meant to confess that to her—that she’d called me home. And I sure as hell didn’t want her crying over me.

“What did you eat?” She blinked a few times and I breathed a huge sigh of relief—a question I could answer.

“Not much.” I snorted. “You saw me that day you gave me a ride. I was weak, practically a skeleton when I walked in my house that first time.” Fortunately, my mom’s cooking had taken care of that. Every time I walked through the house she was throwing food at me.

“Small fish when I could find them, but mostly you just subsist off the water itself. It heals, it nurtures.” I shrugged. Some things were unexplainable. “She takes care of us.”

Caris was looking at me like I was a total whack job.

“Why do you call the Deep a she? You talk like she’s a person.”

“Do you remember Maggie?” I waited for her to nod her head. “She’s kind of into magic stuff.”

“You mean she’s a witch.”

“Don’t call her that to her face, but yeah. She believes the Deep is a water spirit. I guess I believe it too. There’s something out there. I felt her. Heard her.”

“You make it sound like the Deep is a giant amniotic sack.”

“Gross but not a bad analogy. She sure sustained me for months.”

“Well she must hate me then. She tried to drown me the other day.” She scooted up the bed and lay down next to me.

“About that.” I turned over on my side and propped my head on my elbow. Caris had yawned about a dozen times in the last minute. She was fading fast and it was past time for me to go. “You up for meeting me at Ellie’s tank in the morning?”

“What do you have in mind? Breather training?” She offered me a sleepy smile, laying her head in the crook of her elbow.

“Something like that.” I slid off the bed when what I really wanted to do was snuggle under the covers with her.

“What time Dolphin Boy?” Her mouth opened wide around a yawn, distorting her words.

“Eight,” I said and reached for the door.

“Nine,” she countered.

Yeah, I knew that about her too. She wasn’t a morning person.

“Eight-thirty,” I relented. “And don’t call me Dolphin Boy.” I was out the door before I totally caved to her demands or totally caved to mine.

“Nine,” she yelled after me. “And leave the door open.”

I pushed the door open to the warm night air.

“Dolphin Boy,” I heard her whisper.

I
was late
—big surprise there. Noah’s Bronco sat in the parking lot. I locked up my bike and proceeded through the main entrance of the aquarium, expecting someone to stop me, but the place was practically empty. The gift shop door was locked, the shop itself dark behind the glass door. Thankfully the snack bar was up and running. I had avoided my own kitchen again this morning, not yet ready to confront my dad, mainly because I had nothing more to say. The thought of exchanging mundane pleasantries about how I’d slept—terrible by the way—after my whole world had been thrown into chaos seemed, well… I didn’t want to talk to my dad yet. Which meant I hadn’t had any coffee, and I really needed some.

I doled out the two bucks in exchange for a steaming cup of Joe. The guy inside the trailer offered me an egg and cheese burrito, but the cheeseburger Noah had brought me hadn’t sat well with me and I didn’t have much of an appetite.

Coffee in hand, I was in such a hurry to get to Ellie’s tank that I wasn’t really paying attention. When I turned around, I smacked into a large chest. My face hit the guys sternum so hard my eyes teared up. The plastic lid on my cup cracked under the force of the blow and hot liquid spilled all over his gray shirt.

“Oh my gosh. I’m so sorry.” My hand came up to check my nose for blood. He had me around both arms and was holding me away from him while coffee dripped from my cup to the ground between us, splattering on his bare feet.

“My bad,” he said as though he wasn’t the one dripping in scalding coffee. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah.” I shook my head. My nose felt about two sizes too big. “I think so.” When the stars flying around and my head cleared, I looked up into the most arresting blue eyes I had ever seen.

“Here, let me take that. I’ll get you another cup.” He relieved me of my damaged cup, impervious to the growing coffee stain on his shirt. “Another cup, Pete.”

His wheat-colored hair snaked all the way to the top of his butt and swayed in its fishtail braid as he walked. Prominent cheekbones, full rose-colored lips, and thick lashes—features that should have made him look overly pretty but somehow on him were ruggedly handsome. And he smelled yummy, a savory scent accentuated by a salty twang with a musky edge.

He was like Noah. He was like me and I couldn’t quit staring. Not because he was so stunning to look at, which he was, but he was the first breather I had met besides Noah. I didn’t count Sol and eel tattoo guy because I hadn’t known then what they were. I couldn’t help the thrill of excitement that coursed through me.

“What are you laughing at?” He held out my brand new cup of coffee, smiling down on me with a smile to rival the sun such as it was behind the layer of clouds.

“Are all of you so ridiculously gorgeous?” I observed with an eye roll. He upped the amp in his smile. Yeah, he was ridiculous and totally knew it. “Sorry about your shirt.”

The coffee had seeped into the fabric, which was sticking to his skin. His shirt had the same dolphin emblem on the right side of his chest that Erin’s had.

“Don’t worry about it. Plenty more where this one came from.” His eyes raked over me, blatantly curious.

I took a sip from my cup then tipped it at him. “Thanks for the coffee.” I kind of wanted to stay and talk, but I knew Noah was waiting and honestly, I was anxious to see him.

“I’m Jeb.” He fell into step beside me, white teeth gleaming in his tan face. “And you’re
her
.”

“Her who?” I stared at him sideways. He was tall, taller than Noah by an inch or two. Standard bare feet and a body that made the Olympic swim team look immature and underdeveloped in comparison. His shirt did little to hide the powerful being he was underneath.

“Noah’s girl.” His blue eyes flashed mischievously.

I almost spit out my coffee. “I wouldn’t go that far. We’re friends.”

And I was determined to keep it that way. Things were complicated enough as it was. Last night in my room had seemed so normal and I liked it that way. I was in no way ready to explore what our freaky connection might mean. I got the impression Noah felt the same way. So friends it was. Erin had warned me that Noah’s life was complicated. And now mine was. There had to be some mathematical equation about how two complicated lives didn’t equal a right.

“Well, that’s good to know.” Jeb watched me while we walked.

I got the impression I couldn’t take too much of what Jeb said seriously. I knew a player when I saw one, and Jeb was definitely a player.

“I’m not going to ask how you managed to stay away from here for so long. No doubt it required some serious magic and I’m more of a science guy. But welcome to the tribe.” He held out his big hand and I took it only to have him pull me into a bear hug, enveloping me in his musky scent.

“Tribe?” I stumbled out of his grasp.

“We don’t take a census or anything, but you’re part of the family now. You got a name?”

“Caris,” I said as we approached the gate to Ellie’s tank.

He reached for it first and held it open as I walked through. Noah was in the tank with Ellie, a flash of tan skin and white shorts under the surface of the water. As if he sensed we were there, he shot out of the water in an impossibly perfect high arch, landing sure-footed on the platform. It bobbed slightly under the impact. His eyes collided with mine, fierce, almost angry. The normalcy of the night before evaporated and we were back to being wary, unsure of where we stood with each another. We didn’t feel like friends today. We felt like adversaries. The thought made me sad and the coffee turned bitter on my tongue.

“Look who I bumped into.” Jeb laughed, totally unaware of the current of tension flowing between the two of us.

It took me a minute to realize it was because of me. I was calling him. I could almost see him bristling under the control I had over him, as though he were a wild animal that didn’t want to be caged. He had said he didn’t hate me, but how could he not? I made a conscious effort to turn it off, and I thought I succeeded to a degree. That night on the beach, I had sung to him on purpose. Surely it worked the other way around. Maybe there was a way to control it after all. I hoped for Noah’s sake there was because if he didn’t hate me yet, he would soon.

“You got a shirt back there?” Jeb didn’t wait for Noah to answer. He walked to the building behind the tank, stripping out of his shirt on the way.

“Yeah. It might not be clean though,” Noah said, never taking his eyes off me.

“Would you quit looking at me like you want to gouge my eyes out.” I crossed my arms in front of me and stared back.

“Sorry,” he mumbled, raking his hands over his wet hair, slinging drops of moisture.

When Jeb came back out, he had on a shirt similar to the one I’d spilled coffee on, the gray faded nearly white.

“I’ll catch up with you later,” Jeb said, bumping fists with Noah as he walked by, then Jeb gave me a playful slap on my butt. Noah tensed, his face a mask of stone.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” Jeb winked at me on his way out. “Nice to meet you, Caris. If this guy gives you any trouble, let me know and I’ll kick his scrawny ass for you.”

“Friend of yours?” I raised a questioning brow, letting my eyes rove over Noah’s “scrawny” frame. Not overblown big, he had just the right amount of lean bulk. Noah could be used in an anatomy class as a visual for the musculature of the human body; every muscle, big and small, clearly defined.

“Most of the time.” Noah shook his head and his mouth crooked in a lopsided smile.

“So what am I doing here? Are you going to teach me to swim?” It was wishful thinking on my part.

“No.” He took my coffee cup and nodded toward the Gulf, a flat sheet of glass, dull green under the cement clouds. “I’m going to teach you to breathe.”

T
he beach was relatively empty
. The overcast sky had kept most of the tourists away and sent them to the shopping malls and outlet centers. The breeze was so light it was almost nonexistent. Noah had contemplated staying at Ellie’s tank but decided with the Gulf so smooth and calm, it was a good chance for me to get “back on the horse,” so to speak. It was time to prove I could really be this creature I’d been told I was born to be.

What if it didn’t work? What if I was stuck forever in this in-between state of not merely human but not able to claim my true nature either?

I threw my cover-up onto one of the vacant chairs, and Noah lifted a hand to the guy manning the canopy that rented out the chairs and water toys. He was the only person on the beach—an audience of one too many.

“Don’t worry, that’s just Daniel. And honestly he’s probably too stoned to pay us any attention.”

Daniel was sprawled out in his chair, his light brown hair tucked behind his ears. He had earphones in and moved his head in time to a silent beat.

It was always the eyes that gave them away. Daniel’s were amber colored. I wondered if people noticed, people not like us. Or maybe we were only able to recognize each other.

“Part of the tribe?” I would never fit in with these guys. They were all prettier than me. I was almost scared to see what the girls looked like.

“Yeah. His family pretty much runs the beach services from P.C. to Destin. Bike rental shops. You name it, they rent it.” Noah took my hand, wrapping it firmly in his fingers. He led me to the shoreline where the water lapped over the sand in tiny licks. It was warm on my toes and walking into it felt like slipping on a fitted, buttery-soft body glove. I never wanted to take it off.

We waded out past a trough and stood on a sand bar. Small silver fish no bigger than my hand darted around my feet, which were now perfectly stuck by invisible hands shackling me to the sandy bottom. The water wasn’t deep. If I sat down, my head would still be above the surface. I felt safe enough. Safe enough to ask for a demonstration. I needed to know what he was out here, what I was supposed to be. I needed to see it with my own eyes in the clear light of day.

“All right. Show me what you can do Dolphin Boy,” I teased. I had seen Noah in a pool, watched him rise from the surf in the dark of night, but never in the broad light of day in the open water.

His cheek creased with a sly lopsided grin. “You’ll be okay?”

“I’m not going anywhere.” I pointed to the anchors of my feet.

He sank until the water covered his head, green eyes peering at me. He waved and I laughed as he started moving, a slow undulation of lean torso and long legs. He might not have a tail, but his lower body moved like one, a ripple of raw power that sped him faster and faster. The water was so clear I could follow his movements. It was like watching the train on a rollercoaster, the cuts and turns so smooth and quick. At one point he torpedoed straight outward through the endless Deep, so fast I lost sight of him. My eyes searched the flat line of the horizon where gray clouds met the shiny pewter surface of the Gulf. If I hadn’t been looking for him, I would have missed him. He jumped in the distance in a series of arcs, each one higher than the last. I sucked in an awed breath and before I let it out he surfaced in front of me, green eyes sparkling with excitement, hair plastered around his face and shoulders. I was breathing harder than he was. I doubted I would ever be able to move like that. Oh, but I wanted to.

“So you’re more like an otter,” I said, prompting a full-throated laugh and if his voice held magic, then his laugh was like drinking pure sunshine. I could hardly tell him what I really thought. That all I saw was a beautiful, mythical creature, and I was totally mesmerized by him. And I wanted him to see me the same way. Not what I was now—broken. Ellie and I had that in common. Somehow Noah had taken it upon himself to fix us. I hoped he could.

“I’ve got to ask though.” I desperately wanted to break the spell he cast over me just by being here, just by laughing and smiling at me with those eyes. “How do you breathe?”

“The same way you’re going to.” He turned his head, presenting me with the left side of his face. He gathered his hair in his hand and tilted his chin forward at an angle. “See them, behind my ear?”

At first I saw nothing, then my eyes focused on a crescent-shaped patch of pale skin that hugged the ridge of his ear—three rows of skin, pale pink and so fine it was almost translucent. It looked suspiciously like gills.

I sucked in a breath and held it there. “I don’t have those.”

He dropped his hair and turned mischievous eyes on me. “Yeah, I suspect you do.” He reached for me and gathered my hair at the back of my neck. Leaning close, he blew a warm breath behind my ear. A shiver stole over my neck and ran all the way down my spine to my toes. “You feel that?”

For a moment I wasn’t capable of responding. “Yes.”

His fingers found mine and guided them to my ear. “Careful,” he said. “They can be sensitive. And they tear easily.”

“Oh, God.” I traced the layers of skin with the tip of my finger. “Where have these babies been all my life?”

“That stint in the water went a long way in weakening the charm. The more you’re exposed, the weaker it gets.”

Our fingers laced and he pulled me deeper into the water until I could no longer touch the bottom and his hands slipped up, gripping my arms.

“This might be kind of unnerving. You’re going to have to trust me. Can you do that?”

“I guess so.” I tried to ignore the pull of the bottom, encouraged that it didn’t feel as strong as it had two days ago.

“No, Caris, this is important. It will feel like you’re drowning, and it’ll be easy to panic. Can you trust me?”

“Yes,” I said with more conviction. At this point Noah was the only person I did trust.

“Good. I need you to concentrate on not breathing. We want your gills to do the work. The first few times the transition can be hard, maybe even painful. If I think it’s not going to work, I’ll bring you back out.”

“Yeah. I got it.” I refused to acknowledge this might not work, that I might not work.

“When you’re ready I’m going to let you go. I’ll be right beside you.”

“I’m ready.”

His fingers loosened and he sank with me, hair floating in silky strands around his head. It wasn’t that deep, maybe eight feet. It may as well have been eight miles. I thought that maybe he made it sound bad on purpose, until my lungs started to burn. After another minute, bright spots danced in front of my eyes. My finger pointed upward. Noah shook his head and that fast panic gripped me. He didn’t understand. He could breathe down here. I couldn’t. I couldn’t even get myself out when I needed to. The bright spots turned dark. The top of my head tingled. I was on the verge of passing out. A giant fist squeezed my heart. I grabbed Noah’s arm, nails biting into his skin. His face loomed close to mine. My whole body started to fight, and I thrashed about, trying to pull Noah’s arms upward. My mind screamed,
Get me out.
One thrust of Noah’s powerful legs had us shooting for the surface.