Page 39 of Stranded With the Grumpy Mermaid

“We need a rope,” I say. “The net.”

Rafe nods, his expression stern, his face set in serious lines I’ve never seen on him before. We move.

The run back to the cottage and down again leaves both of us gasping. We come back with the keeper’s heaviest coiled line and the salvaged headrope from the net. Rafe chooses the stronger line and knots it every arm-span for grip, his hands flying through bends and hitches. Then he feeds it around a granite horn several yards back from the edge and leans his whole weight into it, once, twice.

It holds.

Then we have our first fight. It’s short, because we don’t have time for a long one, and it’s quiet, because we’re both out of breath.

“I’m going down,” he says, reaching for the line. “You anchor. If I time the surges—”

“No.”

“Neri, it’s too dangerous and we don’t have time to argue. I’m going.”

“Look at me.” I take the rope out of his hands and I have to jerk it out of his grip. “You’re stronger than me, you can haul me back up. If you go down and get stuck, I can’t do the same for you.”

I point to the side of my neck, at the seams where my gills are.

“If I get dragged under, I can breathe. I’m the only person on this island the sea can’t drown. You helped me recover what I am on a beach three days ago. This is what it’s for.”

His jaw locks. His hands flex once at his sides.

“You can’t drown,” he says, low and harsh, with a fierceness I never suspected in him. “Okay. But that slot can break your arm against the wall. It can open your scalp and knock you unconscious. It can pin your leg under that chockstone and keep pounding you against the rock.”

His hands come up, frame my face for one hard second, and there’s no sunshine or Golden Retriever guy anywhere, just the man under it. And that man cares for me.

“Drowning is the only thing you’re immune to. Don’t act like you’re immune to the rest.”

“I know I’m not. But I know how to read the ocean.”

“Swear it.”

“Sharp eyes, soft body, ride the water, never fight the rock.” The mer proverbs come up out of some sealed vault inside my mind, spoken inside my head with my mother’s voice. “My mom used to say it. Mermaid rules.”

Something shifts in his face. Not a nod, but something lighter. A doubt, just a small one, but I’ll take it.

“I trust you,” I say softly. “You’ll pull me up. I know you will.”

Rafe leans in and places a kiss on my lips, hard and ardent. Then he braces his forehead against mine and nods. He ties me in himself, bowline at my waist, checks it twice. His hands are dead steady and he checks the rope, but his eyes are full of terror. Terror for me.

“Three tugs, coming up.” He sets his boots against the granite horn, wraps the line, and becomes an anchor. “Neri, you come back with or without that box. There are other ways to get rescued. There’s no other you.”

I nod with more assurance than I feel, then I go down the throat of the gulch on the sucked-out cycle, when the water drops and the walls stream white. The rock is every color wet granite gets, black and rose and steel, polished mirror-slick along the waterline. Barnacles above. Dead smooth below.

I keep both hands and one foot on the rock whenever I move. My heart hammers so hard in my chest that my ribs hurt and the sound of the water crashing against the rock swallows the entire world as I go down, inch by inch. The rope stays tight above me, Rafe holding just enough tension that I can feel him there.

I feel the next surge before I see it. The rock trembles faintly beneath my palms and the roar builds below me. I wedge myself into a narrow crack and flatten against the granite as the water comes up. It hits my legs, my hips, my shoulders, filling the gulch with white and hauling at my body.

Cold. Cold as the wreck night.

My gills snap open inside the surge. Water punches past my face, fills them, and the panic my body should be having simply... doesn’t.

I can breathe.

The strangest calm settles over me in the middle of all that noise. The sea is trying to kill me and I am equipped. Both halves, working one problem. What a thing.

The water drops. I move down again.