Waterborn (The Emerald Series Book 1) (20 page)

“Maggie made some ice cream. Banana, your favorite.” She was definitely nervous, stumbling over her words. Sometimes Maggie put some strange shit in her ice cream, but it smelled like plain old banana to me.

“Yeah. Why is he here?” I jerked my head at Marshall. He had put his feet down and was eyeing me with those freaky eyes of his. When I saw Marshall all I could think about was that last day I’d seen Jamie. I’d begged to go with him. I’d insisted it didn’t matter that I wasn’t eighteen. What difference would a week make? I was ready. Jamie had slapped me on the shoulder and said, “I’ll see you when I see you.” The same words our dad used when he had to leave. His way of avoiding goodbye. Except I hadn’t seen him again.

And here sat Marshall, in my kitchen, looking at my mom like he wanted…

“Noah. There’s no reason to be like that.” My mom started spooning out a bowl of ice cream I assumed was for me. Did she really expect me to eat a bowl of ice cream with him here? Like nothing had happened? Like nobody had died?

“Isn’t there?” I swung my gaze around and met her reprimand. I knew I should bite my tongue, but the words tumbled out anyway because letting Levi kick the shit out of me hadn’t been enough. I was still stewing for a fight and I wanted it to be with Marshall. “Are you sleeping with Marshall?”

“Noah!” Maggie’s voice cut with warning.

I watched my mom’s face fall and congeal in an expression of utter and total disappointment. That’s the look I had been waiting for since I’d gotten back, the one I’d been expecting. The one I deserved. I barreled over a chair and grabbed Marshall by the neck of his collared shirt. He smelled like bananas and beer, and I had never wanted to hit someone so bad in my life.

“Stop it, Noah.”

I heard my mom’s voice but it was like a voice on the TV or the radio, too far away to ever stop me.

“Leave my mom alone, you son of a bitch.” I shoved him away from me. Spit ran over my chin. He fell against the wall and held his hands up, rolling over like some sorry-ass dog. Coward. For all that he was, some kind of Special Forces has-been, he was still only human. It was so fleeting, but I saw it, the tiniest hint of his fear. The only way he could stop me was if he pulled that gun out of its holster. My chest swelled with satisfaction before it was drowned out by self-loathing. This was all so wrong. What I was doing was so wrong, but my dad blowing to bits on some oilrig was all wrong. Jamie dying for some worthless intel was all wrong. Somewhere in the far-off background my mom was telling me to back off.

“Noah, son. I know…”

I grabbed Marshall with both fists. “I’m not your son. You are not my dad. You can’t come in here and take his place. I won’t let you.” It felt good when my fist smashed into his face. I saw my mom move out of the corner of my eye, but it was too late. I had already cocked my arm back to hit Marshall again and my elbow smacked right into her face, slamming into her cheek. The impact of it shocked my arm and knocked her to the floor.

“Noah!” Maggie’s shrill scream paralyzed me.

Before I could even turn around, Marshall was on me. He had me bent over the kitchen table, arm twisted behind my back at an angle that would have snapped an ordinary human’s arm in two. I couldn’t move. I didn’t even try. I was in shock. My head was plastered to the table, cheek digging into the wood. I stared at my mom through the curtain of hair that had fallen over my face.

“Lara, are you all right?” Maggie bent over and helped my mom off the floor.

My mom held her hand over her cheek, glaring at me with my brother’s eyes. Marshall hauled me up and shoved me across the kitchen away from my mom, then planted himself between us as though I would actually hurt her on purpose. I looked past him. He didn’t matter anymore. My mom’s cheek was bright red where I had hit her. I thought I might be sick.

“You better get your shit together, Noah,” Marshall spat, pointing his finger at me.

My head felt heavy as I shook it back and forth in silent denial. I zeroed in on the tip of his finger in a surreal moment of disbelief. I had hurt my mom. I couldn’t find the door fast enough. I made it to the beach before I doubled over and puked in the sand.

What the hell was wrong with me? It must be raining. Something wet ran down my face.

“Noah?”

I squeezed my eyes shut when I heard my mom say my name, as though she was the sorry one, as though she was the one falling apart. Why wouldn’t she yell at me? Why wouldn’t she strike out at me? Why couldn’t I have died instead of Jamie? He would have been better for her. He could have taken care of her.

“What is this about, Noah? Do you want me to tell you to go? Send you back to the Deep? Let her have you once and for all?”

“No.” I paced back and forth through the sand, my hands cradled at the back of my head, eyes toward the sky. My chest burned, my lungs burned, each breath like breathing fire.

“Well, that’s good. Because I won’t give you up too. We’ve lost too much. I’ve lost too much. You can push me away and Maggie and even Marshall, but none of us are going anywhere. Least of all me. You’re all I’ve got left.”

A strange sound came out of my throat, a strangled denial. Why couldn’t she have stayed away? Why couldn’t she have left me to the Deep?

“You have to let go of all this anger, Noah. It won’t bring them back. And it’s taking you away from me.”

“I can’t.” I’d held on to it for so long, I didn’t know how to make myself let go.

“Why? Because then you’ll have to deal with the guilt?”

I cringed when I looked at her. The right side of her face was red and starting to swell. Her green eyes brimmed with the same despair I felt. The same despair I had been running from. That I was still running from. For the first time, she was giving me a glimpse of her own pain. I was a selfish bastard.

“You think I haven’t questioned myself a thousand times? If I could have done anything, said anything differently that would bring them back?”

I fell to the ground. The sand, usually so soft, was gritty under my knees. “I couldn’t find him, Mom,” I choked out the words.

She knelt down beside me and laid a cool hand on my shoulder. “Of course you couldn’t. He’s gone.”

“I’m sorry. I couldn’t find him.” I reared back, face to the clouds and howled my rage like some wild animal. The sound tore from my chest until all my breath was gone and I was gasping and every seagull and sandpiper had taken flight.

“You have nothing to be sorry for. Jamie loved you. Your dad loved you. They would both be so proud of you, just like I am.”

I laughed at her words, at the lie they were.

“No they wouldn’t. I left you here by yourself. Dad made us promise a thousand times if something ever happened to him we would take care of you. I got scared and I let you down. I let Dad down.”

“No, Noah. That’s just not true.”

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” I couldn’t have stopped it if I wanted to. Grief wracked my shoulders until I fell over on my hands and knees, sobbing, uncontrollable and ugly. I could hear my mom crooning words I didn’t understand, her hand light on my back.

I heard them fall, dropping into the sand like so much baggage. Finally, I was empty, totally spent, with a half a dozen pearls dotting the sand beneath me. I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye and heard a startled gasp. I looked up to see Caris standing some twenty yards away, hand held over her mouth.

“I’m… I’m sorry,” she stammered, already retreating.

Heat stole up my neck and shame licked at my festering wounds. No matter what I did, this girl always caught me at my worst. And now she’d heard me wailing in grief, seen me crying like a damn baby, a trail of it bright green in the white sand. I knew my face was tear-streaked and snot dribbled from my nose. I wiped it with the back of my hand and watched as Caris backpedaled the way she had come, head shaking back and forth. Then she turned around and ran. Ran from me and the mess that I was.

“Caris, wait,” my mom called after her. I didn’t stick around to see if she stopped. I couldn’t face her, not yet.

Then I ran too. From my mom and what I had done to her. From the disgusted look on Caris’s face. From Marshall and Maggie and their unwarranted pity, pity that I didn’t want and I didn’t need.

The Deep took me. She always took me.

T
he Deep led me here
, to the beach behind Caris’s house. The sun made its slow descent, staining the sky pink. Hours of me stewing in self pity and shame. I wondered if I would ever find peace. My mom had somehow found it. So had Erin. What the hell was wrong with me? Was I that weak?

“Noah, how long have you been out here?” Caris’s feet squeaked through the sand. I didn’t turn around as she approached.

“I don’t know.” I kicked at the sand and dug a trench with my toes, afraid to look at her.

“I’m sorry about earlier. I didn’t mean to intrude. Your mom probably thinks I’m a total weirdo, running off like that. That was her, wasn’t it?” She sat down next to me, leaving a small space between us that felt like a chasm.

“Yeah. And no she doesn’t.” She thought she was the weird one when it was me howling at the sky, sprouting jewels in my grief.

“Are you all right?”

“I hit my mom.” Accident or not, I had been angry, seeing nothing but red. I braced myself and waited for her to recoil from me. Instead she scooted closer.

“What happened?”

As if I could explain this need I had to blow up every time I saw Marshall. Like a shark scenting blood, I always saw red when I saw Marshall over something I knew deep down wasn’t his fault.

“It was an accident. I didn’t mean to. But still, I hurt her.” I flinched at the touch of her hand, warm, soft flesh on my shoulder. It settled there like it belonged and something deep in my gut responded, struggling to get out just as hard as I fought to suppress it.

“I know you didn’t. She knows you didn’t.” Her eyes traced the lines of my face and dropped to the pearl at my neck.

I swallowed the rise of humiliation. I had nothing left to hide from her. I wanted to tell her that the times when I heard her voice in my head were the only times lately I felt whole, that I felt right. She laid her head on my shoulder, her sigh nothing I could interpret. I only knew it washed over me in a gentle wave, a precursor of what was to come. Of what I hoped was coming. What I had come to crave.

And then it came, a Song so sweet and so pure, as if she knew without me asking what I wanted. What I needed. I closed my eyes as her Song sank deep under my skin, drawing out that one sore spot that nothing else could touch. I wanted it gone. I’d purged on the beach with my mom, but the seed of it was still there, the weight of it always there. Her Song coaxed it right out of me like drawing a bucket from deep inside a well.

The single tear rolled off my cheek in a hot trail and plopped in the sand between us. I thought now that it was fully uprooted, I’d feel a sense of relief. Funny, I just felt empty. My shame and grief coming out of me in bits and pieces for all the world to see. Caris’s eyes were glued to my face and she lifted her finger and followed the path of the tear, the tip of it stained green.

“Noah?” Her eyes drifted down the smear I knew was on my face, then rested on the pearl in the sand. Her hand hovered over it like she was afraid to touch it.

“Go ahead.”

She lifted it between her fingers, reverent in her handling. “This is beautiful.”

We stared at the pearl she held. I liked the way it looked in her palm, against her skin. Then our eyes met and I knew I could never be just her friend. Not with the way her Song played in my head, telling me more than she probably wanted me to know about her. Not with the pearl she’d sung right out of me, cradled in her palm, resulting in a sense of quiet I hadn’t experienced in months.

“This,” I indicated the pearl with a dip of my chin, “contrary to what you witnessed, is kind of a rare thing. You know the old saying the eyes are mirrors to the soul?”

She nodded in encouragement, her eyes still focused on her hand.

“Well, I’ve cried plenty of times…” I bit my tongue. Could I make myself sound any more like a wuss? “Not plenty of times, a couple of times.” I laughed and Caris smiled when my eyes finally met hers. They were light with teasing, full of acceptance, and instantly put me at ease. She’d seen me at my worst, and yet, here she was, the warmth of her body pressed to mine, and the eagerness in her expression reassuring, and the relief of it felt so damn good.

“I get it Noah, you’re a cry baby.” She bumped my shoulder with hers.

“Most of the time they’re regular tears, but if there’s intense emotion behind them they turn into pearls. It’s very personal. Like creating a solid piece of your soul.”

“So the one on your neck? It came from you?” She reached up and traced the cord that held it, making my heart skitter in response.

“Yes.” I lifted my wrist and separated Jamie’s bracelet from the others I wore. “And this was Jamie’s.”

Our eyes met and held for an endless moment and I couldn’t even breathe. In just a few short weeks this girl had managed to completely own me.

“You know, you’re amazing.” She ducked her head, suddenly shy.

I wanted to argue but decided to take the compliment. A few well-meaning words, a heart-stopping look, and the urge to do what I promised not to was back in full force. Amazing, huh? I could work with amazing.

She tucked her hand in mine, holding the pearl between us, then laid her head on my shoulder. We sat quietly and watched the sunset until the sky turned pewter and the feathery clouds faded from purple to gray.

“Caris?” Erin’s voice echoed over the low rise of dunes.

The second Caris raised her head from my shoulder I felt the absence. She pulled her hand from mine and I let go.

“I’ve got a date with the girls tonight.” She jumped up and brushed the sand off the back of her shorts, looking between me and Erin like we each had her by an arm and were pulling her in different directions.

“So I’ve heard.” I waved at Erin and stood as I closed my hand around the pearl. I knew exactly what I was going to do with it. “You’ll like the band. I’ve heard them before.”