by Lena North
His godfather had received some calls? As in; the godfather who also was the president of our country? That was pretty impressive, and it seemed Sebastian had some difficult times ahead of him.
“What do you want me to do?”
“We’ll show everyone how great we are together. My father will make everything else go away.”
I stared at him, wondering what had happened to him. The first date he took me on had been amazing. We’d talked and laughed, and as he walked me home, he’d asked quietly if he could hold my hand. I’d said yes, wondering what this handsome man could see in someone like me. I had few friends, and I wasn’t ugly, but I wasn’t stunning like the women I figured someone looking like him would go out with. He’d been so funny in the beginning, and he’d spoiled me. The jealousy came later, creeping up on me slowly, so I didn’t even notice at first. And then he hit me. I broke up with him then.
“People know we’re not together, Sebastian,” I said and regretted the words immediately. I should have humored him. Once we were in Prosper, there would be a way to get away from him, so I should agree with whatever he said. “I thought you broke up with me?” I asked, hoping his crazy mind would see it like that.
He gave me an ugly look and turned forward. Slowly, I raised my hand and took hold of the small white shell I had in a leather strap around my neck. Joao had picked it out of the ocean, and it had waited for me next to my plate when I finally got out of bed that first morning I woke up with him. It was the only thing I had to hold on to right then, so I did, praying I’d get out of this unharmed.
We were more than an hour away from Croxier when the boat slowed down suddenly, and I jolted when I heard Sebastian next to me.
“The mainland is shielding us now, so the waves are lower,” he said hoarsely, and I recognized that voice. “I’ve locked the steering wheel.”
“Oh,” I said and moved back.
He took hold of my arms and yanked them down. The leather strap snapped, but I held on to the shell. Please, I thought. Please don’t let him try to rape me on a small boat in the middle of the ocean.
“We didn’t break up, Lottie. We’ll just tell everyone we’ve been apart for a while. Now we’re together again, and I’ve missed you.” He let go of my arms and slid one hand up behind my neck and the other around to my side.
“Seb, not here,” I said.
“Yes, here. I’ve missed you.”
His hand moved inside my tight tee, and I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t let him touch me.
I tried to push him away, but he pulled me closer again. Sebastian wasn’t much taller than me, and I fought him with everything I had in me, but he was a lot stronger. He worked out five times a week, and I didn’t have a chance. The boat rolled with the waves, and I yelled at him to stop. He moved forward, making me stumble and grab hold of one of the chairs. I pushed the shell down behind the seat, thinking that someone might find it if he killed me and threw me into the ocean. Since I didn’t have my hands to protect me, he slammed a fist into the side of my head. I started falling and tried to catch the railing, knowing that if he got me down on the floor, he could almost certainly do whatever he wanted to me. He reached for me, but the boat jerked again, and he fell too but away from me.
“I’d rather die.”
The words echoed in my mind as I got a good grip of the railing with one hand, and then the other. Without thinking, I pushed off with my feet and threw myself up over the side of the boat. I tried to grab the lifebuoy but couldn’t get a good grip, and one of my hands got twisted around, so I slammed my shoulder into the boat on my way down. Then I fell headfirst into the cold water, and turned around immediately to search for the boat. My tee was black, and so was my short skirt, so unless he came right at me, he wouldn’t find me. Joao had taught me how to float so I should manage for a little while at least.
“Help!” I called out silently to my friends, knowing there wouldn’t be any dolphins this far away from the Islands, but still hoping a pod had decided to venture out from their usual home. “Please help!”
There was no reply, and then I heard the boat. It came right toward me, so I dove, hoping he wouldn’t see me. For a few seconds, I thought he’d drive right into me, and I went even further down.
When I came back up to the surface again, I could hear the boat, and I also heard Sebastian.
“Lottie! I’m sorry! Lottie!”
He kept calling out the name that wasn’t mine anymore, and I waited, treading water and focusing on breathing slowly. Finally, he stopped shouting for me to forgive him, and the boat roared louder, but it was moving away from me. I went to my back and started moving my arms slowly, breathing in deeply in the way Joao had shown me. There was a dull thumping ache in my head, and my shoulder hurt where I’d hit the boat, but I tried to stay calm as I lay there, watching the stars, and calling out every now and then.
“Can anyone hear me?”
I got no reply.
Then I started counting the seconds. When I’d floated for what I thought was half an hour, I was getting tired and dizzy, and I knew what it meant. I was losing body temperature.
I lasted another thirty minutes and then I went under the first time.
“Please! Help me!” I called out, and waited, hoping one of their gentle voices would break the awful silence.
When I sank the fifth time, I couldn’t get up to the surface again. I clawed with my hands toward the moonlight, screaming out for help in my mind, but it didn’t help. My body felt like lead, and I stopped moving.
I was going to die.
“Joao, I love you.”
Everything around me was dark, and I let go, knowing this was the end.
“Help,” I whispered one last time.
“Charlie!”
I forced myself to raise my heavy lids and moved a hand. Tingles darted up and down my body, but I couldn’t see the dolphin that had called out to me. Then there were voices all around me, but they were faint and sounded like a weak echo.
“Take off your clothes, Charlie.”
“We’re too far away. Take off your clothes.”
“Fight.”
“Fight, Charlie.”
Fight. It felt a little like a dream, but I heard the dolphins shouting at me to fight for my life, so I made my hands tug off the skirt, and then my panties. The tee was torn on the shoulder, so it slid off me easily.
“Change!”
They were all shouting at me, and I wondered what they meant.
“Change?” I thought.
And then I did. The tingles along my legs intensified, and my whole body was suddenly heating up from the inside. Suddenly, I wasn’t desperate for air anymore. The water caressed me like soft feathers, and my vision changed. The darkness which only seconds earlier had been so frightening suddenly felt like soft, comforting velvet.
At first, I didn’t move. Had I died? Was this what it felt like? Then I moved my arms, and my shoulder hurt. Surely one shouldn’t feel pain after death? When I moved my legs, I realized I didn’t have any. I had a tail. I wiggled it slowly which made me move forward, so I wiggled it a bit harder, and suddenly, I had my head above the surface.
I sucked in air, but it was mostly because I wanted to and not because of a desperate need for oxygen. When I turned my head around, it hit me that I knew where home was. I knew which way to go to reach the Islands and in what direction the mainland was located. All sounds seemed amplified, but not louder. It was as if they were clearer somehow. Cleaner. I tilted my head back and looked at the stars, smiling wider and wider until I laughed. I was a goddamned bona fide mermaid. Then I screamed at the top of my lungs, “Thank you!”
I didn’t know who I thanked, but I was grateful, and I wanted the world to know it.
Then I started swimming, and it wasn’t fast because my shoulder hurt and the tail wasn’t as easy to maneuver as Joao had made it seem, but I moved toward the Islands. I wouldn’t drow
n, and I’d find my way back home.
The darkness was shifting to dawn when the first dolphin reached me.
“Charlie,” she said. “You changed.”
“You told me to.”
I grinned at her, and they always looked happy, but her bubbly giggle told me she was laughing with me.
“There’s land straight ahead. Small island. We’ll tell the others to meet you there.”
“The others?”
“Watermen everywhere. Dolphins too. Searching for you. Joao is coming from the mainland.”
I stared at her in shock.
“In a boat?” I asked although I knew that wasn’t what she meant.
“Swimming, hard and fast,” she confirmed.
“Can we swim that distance?”
“No one has ever done it before, but he will.”
Oh, God. Joao.
“Hold on to us, we’ll take you to the island.”
I was tired and really wanted to feel firm ground under my feet again, so I held on to the fins of two big males and let them tow me. The island was suddenly there, right in front of me and I was happy that I had them to hold on to because there was a strong current flowing out from a narrow gap to the next island. It would have been nearly impossible for me to swim on my own, but they took me through the current and to the side where rocks were surrounding a small stretch of beach.
“Thank you,” I whispered and let go.
“We are one with the Waterfolk,” the female said. “No thanks needed.”
Waterfolk. That’s what Joao had said we’d been called a long time ago, I thought as I slowly made my way to the beach. Then I realized I should change back, and I had no clue how to do it.
“Change back?” I thought.
And I did.
“Huh,” I muttered to myself.
That had been easy. It seemed both Roark and Dupree had been pretty accurate when they used the word poof.
I crawled up on the beach, crying as I made my exhausted body take me out of the water and up on the shore. Thanking every deity I could think of for making me what I was. For saving me.
“Charlie!”
A man’s voice called out, and it was close to me. And I was naked.
I scrambled further up on the beach and hid behind a few big rocks to the side.
“Over here,” I called out. “You need to stay away.”
I heard several voices and how they were moving toward me.
“Are you okay?”
“You have to stay away,” I repeated. “I’m naked.”
“Shit,” someone said, and I recognized my cousin Mauro’s voice.
Before I could call out to them, he spoke again.
“Joao is on his way. Just sit tight and wait and he’ll come for you. We’re getting a boat out here too.”
“Okay,” I said, not sure if they heard me and not really caring either.
They spread out in a half circle and then we waited. I pulled my legs up to my chest, wrapped my arms around them and leaned my heavy head on my knees. Then I closed my eyes, and must have dozed off because there were suddenly several voices shouting at Joao that I was here. I crawled away from the rocks, and there he was, coming out of the waves with the sun in his face. Water was running down his big body, and I’d never seen anything as beautiful as he was in that moment. His face was lined and he looked tired, but his eyes were focused on me. I tried to smile, but it all crashed down on me, and I felt my lips wobble.
He came straight up to me and went down in the sand, pulling me into his lap.
“Sunshine,” he rasped out hoarsely.
“I almost died,” I pressed out.
“What did he do to you?” he asked quietly.
“He hit me in the head and tried to rape me. I hurt my shoulder when I jumped off the boat,” I said.
He raised his head and looked at me.
“But why are you naked?”
“They didn’t tell you?” I asked.
“Who?”
“The dolphins.”
“They told me you were alive and where you were. I didn’t spend energy on listening to anything else they were talking about.”
I felt a small smile spread on my lips and his brows went up.
“Charlie?”
“It turns out you weren’t the only merslut in this relationship.”
“What?”
I sucked in air, and then I told him about drowning and how the dolphins had been too far away. There was pain on his face, and I held on to him, as I explained how they shouted at me to take off my clothes.
“They told me to change, so I did,” I said.
“You changed?”
I hadn’t believed it myself when it happened, so his disbelief wasn’t strange.
“Yes,” I said.
“You’re sure?”
I just looked at him.
“Jesus,” he said. “It’s… I don’t even know what to say.”
“Surprised me too,” I told him.
His face suddenly softened, and then he laughed weakly, shaking his head.
“Joao, the boat is here,” someone shouted.
He got up with me in his arms, turned toward the men on the beach, and made another abrupt turn to shield me from their eyes.
“Everyone will stand still and close their eyes,” he ordered, and then he moved.
I twisted my head around as he carried me through a crowd of naked men who stood like statues with their eyes closed. A small giggle made its way up my throat, and his arms twitched when several of the men chuckled.
“Close your eyes, Charlie,” he ordered softly.
The way his voice vibrated sent shivers down my spine, and I tilted my head back to grin up at him.
“Why would I do that when there’s so much handsomeness on display?”
The chuckles around us turned into soft laughter.
“Close your eyes,” he ordered again, a little more forceful but also with a smile in his voice.
I shuddered, and my lids drooped.
“Okay,” I whispered and closed my eyes.
I hadn’t looked at the men anyway, or at least, not much.
***
Papi was waiting for us when the boat arrived at Croxier harbor, sitting on the edge of the dock flanked by Ban and Lippy. Tina was hovering behind them, and she got sour rejections of her offer to help from all three men when they moved to get up. They looked like shit, though.
Dupree was moving slowly, and I could see how he coughed. Bananas had a big bandage around his head and Lippy one on his shoulder.
The smiles on their faces were broad and happy, and I started crying. My crazy father and his friends had broken out of the hospital to come and meet me.
I went straight into my father’s arms.
“Hey, Papi,” I whispered.
“I’ll kill him.”
“Okay,” I said. Since it seemed like he’d go off on a rant, I added hastily, “I have some news.”
“What?” he growled and squeezed me so hard it hurt my bruised shoulder.
“I have your genes,” I said and made a movement with my hand to imitate a fin moving through water.
Since there were others on the dock, I couldn’t speak plainly, but I figured my gesture would be clear enough. Except it wasn’t.
“I know,” he said. “Amazing that you could float for so many hours in cold –”
“Your genes,” I insisted and made the movement slightly bigger.
He stepped back and frowned.
“Did you hit your head on something?”
I put my palms together in front of my chest and wiggled them from side to side.
He stared at me. Then he stared at Joao. Ban started laughing, and Lippy did too which turned into a groan. I leaned in close to Dupree and put my mouth by his ear.
“It turned out I was excellent at floating,” I shared in a whisper. “
Like a friggin’ mermaid, if you believe in that sort of thing.”
His jerked back with wide eyes, and his gaze took in the white shirt I was wearing, which clearly wasn’t mine.
“Holy shit,” he wheezed out and started coughing.
Chapter Nineteen
Buns of steel
Charlie
“Sunshine,” a voice murmured, and I felt Joao’s hand on my cheek. “Wake up, baby.”
“Go away,” I muttered, mind foggy with sleep.
“Charlie, sweetie, wake up,” he said, and I heard laughter in his voice.
“Shut up,” I snapped, the words muffled in my pillow.
His dreads tickled my shoulder, and then he kissed me there.
“Wake up, sweetie, it’s almost dinnertime. Let’s go for a swim.”
“Nooo,” I groaned and moved my face deeper into the pillow.
He started laughing and then I was suddenly in his lap, and just as suddenly, kissed soundly. There was no way to stay angry when his mouth was on mine, so I didn’t even try. When he raised his head, I looked up at him, a little dazed from the kiss and a lot happy.
We’d slept the whole day in his house on the bluff. The windows and doors were open, and the evening breeze swept the scent of the ocean and a soft, happy chorus of giggles through the room.
“I’m a mermaid,” I whispered.
“Yeah,” he said.
He didn’t look happy and didn’t protest about my choice of word.
“Are you angry?”
“I love you.”
Warmth spread through me, but I frowned because he still didn’t look happy.
“I love you too,” I whispered. “What’s wrong?”
“You almost died last night.”
“Almost, but I didn’t.”
He swallowed and leaned his forehead on mine.
“I know,” he said quietly.
“I didn’t,” I repeated. “I’m right here with the man I love, and I don’t plan on dying for a very, very long time, so I’ll be unhappy if you go back to being a pus –”
His mouth cut off the rest of the word and I felt him smiling into the kiss.
“I love you, Sunshine,” he said when we broke the kiss. “I’ll try to not mollycoddle you.”
