Page 41 of Stranded With the Grumpy Mermaid

“One’s enough. One is plenty. You wait, one night there’ll be lights out there, a dragger, a cruiser, somebody, and we put this right over their bow. Then, we can take a hot shower so long the state of Maine sends someone to check on us.”

He lays the flare carefully on a dry patch of rock and points toward the meadow bluff.

“We take turns watching,” he goes on.

And watching him, the cold arrives from some dark place deep between my ribs. Not the cold from the gulch. This is quieter. It slips in on the words when we’re back, on the grin he can’t contain, on how completely he already believes it.

He’s home in his head before we’ve even left the rock. Hot water. Clean clothes. People who know him. The life that has been waiting for him this whole time. He says when we’re back like he already knows exactly where he belongs.

And me?

I can see the questions waiting for us. The looks. The way people will turn what happened here into a story. Out here, nobody is watching. Nobody gets an opinion.

Back home, they will.

Maybe this only works because the rest of the world isn’t here. Maybe once it comes rushing back, there won’t be room for whatever we became on this island.

Maybe I’m the woman he survived this place with.

Maybe that’s all.

Rafe reaches for the flare gun, then stops when he notices I haven’t moved.

“Hey.” His smile fades a little. “Where’d you go?”

“Nowhere.”

He watches me.

The lie hangs there long enough that I make it worse.

“You know everything changes when we go back, right?”

His head comes up.

“You’re the department Chair,” I say. My voice sounds strange even to me. “I’m one of your postdocs. We can’t pretend like this won’t be a problem.”

I leave out the part where it will be a problem for me. Where I’m the one who will be cast in a bad light.

The mermaid who slept her way to the top.

His expression goes still. Not blank. Just suddenly, completely focused on me.

“Neri, it doesn’t have to be this way.”

I can already see him getting ready to argue, and I can’t bear to hear whatever he’s about to say. Not while the flare is lying between us and he’s still half-smiling about hot showers and home.

“We should get the gun dried out.” I stand before he can say anything else and take the case. My shoulder protests hard enough to catch my breath, but I keep moving. “You’re right about watching from the bluff. We should start tonight.”

I walk up the warm granite toward the cottage with the flare rattling inside the case.

Rafe follows a few steps behind.

I keep my eyes on the cottage and don’t look back.

Chapter 16

Rafe