by James, Ella
She gives a little squeal and drops my hand so she can clap hers. “Bravo, you! I couldn’t be more surprised.”
I laugh. “Should I be insulted?”
“Absolutely you should not. I’m impressed. What woman doesn’t love a man who quotes romantic poetry?”
I watch her face twist up in horror as she realizes her faux pas. She blushes tomato red as she covers her eyes with her hands.
“Pardon me.” She stops walking. “I can’t walk with my face covered.”
I step in front of her, laughing as I try to pull her hands down. She fights me, so I let her leave them…but I pull her up against me. “I can’t see your face now,” I murmur, wrapping an arm around her soft back.
“Don’t be embarrassed,” I whisper against her hair. It smells like flowers. “The verdict is in, and apparently I’m pretty loveable.”
She shoves me. “You’re a clod.” Her face is still tipped down, but I can see she’s smiling.
I laugh. “What’s a clod?”
“A stupid person.”
That makes me laugh…which makes her laugh.
“Your cheeks are red,” I tease.
“Because I’m the clod.” She strides ahead of me, but I lunge forward and catch her hand. “Finley.” I lace my fingers through hers. “You’re not a clod.”
“I’m inexperienced and awkward.” Her words are whisper-hisses. She’s glancing down at just the right angle so I can see a teardrop in the corner of one of her eyes.
Shock moves through me, making my hands shake a little. Then my chest goes warm and heavy. I squeeze her hand. “Hey now. Let me tell you something. Experience is overrated.”
“Is it?” She peeks up at me, and it takes some effort not to pull her up against my chest again. To keep my tone light, like I don’t want to fucking hug her.
“Oh yeah. If I could get a redo, I’d go somewhere just like this. Appreciate the everyday shit. One type of gum. Mail runs every third month. You know everybody. Everybody looking out for each other.”
“Is that what you think it would be like?” I can hear the censure in her soft tone.
“I don’t know.” I rub my forehead. I know there wouldn’t be any covert trips to Mass Avenue. I know I’d never swerve around some fucker sprawled out in the middle of the road and foaming from the mouth—because even though I’ve got Narcan in my glove box and I’m certified at CPR, I can’t stop for him. Homer Carnegie isn’t supposed to be there with a bundle of smack at 4 a.m. on a fucking Tuesday.
I feel the heavy shaking start in my shoulders and vibrate down my arms. Her fingers squeeze mine as we walk toward a rocky ridge.
“You didn’t tell me you were mute.”
It’s the next thought that crosses my mind, and it falls out of my mouth with no forethought, surprising me and stopping Finley in her tracks. I feel her hand slacken in mine as her gaze snaps to my face.
“Who told you?”
I rub my forehead. Shit—my heart is fucking pounding. I can feel it right behind my eyes. I try to keep my voice steady as I say, “One of the guys digging. Asked what you were like, said he’d never heard you talk.”
“Who was it?” Finley’s tone is impassive, but she’s gone ghost pale.
“Mark Glass.”
Fuck. I feel like shit for blurting that out like I did—and even more so when one corner of her mouth quivers and she presses her lips together.
“He heard me at your ball game,” she says tightly.
“This was before.”
She blinks at the sloping field beside us, her chin raised, her face statuesque.
“Shit. I’m sorry, Finley. I wish I hadn’t said that.”
Her eyes shift to my face. She gives me a stoic look that makes my queasy stomach knot up.
“Quite all right.” She blinks down at her boots before locking her focus on me. “Not untrue,” she says softly. “I didn’t speak for ten years…after. I’m aware that I omitted this fact from my tale of woe back in the burrow. But who’s to say you wanted to know? Even if you had,” she murmurs, “I suppose I didn’t want to tell you.”
“Why?”
She tugs her eyes away from mine and starts to walk again, her arms rigid at her sides and her gaze set on the trail. I follow her for a long minute, hating myself for how bad my hands are shaking, for how hard it is to breathe. My heart pounds like a fucking drum, and I feel like my chest is empty. Like I’m only half here.
“To this day I’m—on occasion—” She shakes her head. Her eyes dart my way as she picks up her pace. “I’m referred to as ‘the mute.’ I suppose there are those like Mark who’ve never heard me speak. Even though it’s been years since that time.” She steps around a stone in the path, not looking back as I hang half a pace behind her.
“No one here before me ever stopped speaking.” Her words are forceful, almost harsh. “Some assumed the stint at sea had ruined my mind, but those who cared to realized that I wasn’t daft. I would write a note at odd times…although mostly I got on through nods and other methods. And still…”
She folds her arms across her chest as we walk through a blanket of fog. “Some treated me as if I couldn’t hear either. I’ve been privy to more secrets than you can imagine. Like a priest a bit in that way.”
Our path slants down into a grassy valley at the base of the peak, which looks large and dark, mostly in shadow. Her strides lengthen. So do mine.
“There are others who assume I’m simple,” she continues. “Some don’t speak to me, because for years they felt there was no point in doing so. They’ve checked the box beside my name that says non-entity.”
She looks over her shoulder at me. “Do you want to know the truth, Declan? The truth is no one ever courted me. I was never kissed under the arches. Others got sent off to university, but never me. I’m a fixture on this island but I’m never truly seen. I haven’t been since Mummy was alive and never will be again. It doesn’t matter how much pottery I sell and ship out or how often I bandage a mashed finger. When I’m buried I’ll be most known for lacking my voice—because someone like Mark Glass has failed to notice when I use it.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Finley
I tell myself to slow down, but my legs rebel. Perhaps because of my confinement to the boat for those days, I’ve become a runner of the worst sort. When I’m emotional, I flee. This is worse than usual, because I’m fleeing him.
The more my own words echo through my mind—the more I picture him on my heels, his handsome face contorted in shock and dismay—the more I feel I simply must keep moving.
I dart up the packed-dirt path as it tilts at the foot of the peak. My harsh steps startle a bird. I can feel mud spitting off my shoes.
The trail’s not marked because we locals know it, and we don’t allow the visitors to summit alone. So it’s possible that I might lose him if I’m speedy enough.
I duck under some vines that hang over the trail and dash around a wide rock. When I hear footfall, I move faster.
Now he’ll know how mad I really am. Not merely some unknown girl, but the island’s wretched outcast. I’m assuaged by a feeling of loss—the loss of something I can’t name. A sort of twisted hope, I suppose. Hope that sprung forth anew when I realized a bit earlier he doesn’t know my darkest secret yet. He hasn’t heard.
Still, I flee him like I should have fled the moment we escaped the burrow. Like someone who’s got everything to lose, whose life is altered each time she gets near him. My pack bumps atop my back, and my heart hammers.
If he turns back, that will be the end of things, and I can move forward on my life’s track…however desolate that may be. I could even go to him a bit before he’s due to leave and spill my own secret…and ask for help. A voice inside me screams “no” at that prospect.
My chest feels tighter than a rubber band, my throat a vice clamp as my poor, unfeeling body rushes up the cool slope. When I’m above the wind-bent grass and scattered stones, when the
path before me has gone stark with elevation, I hear him. I feel him.
And then his footfall is too close, and his thick arm captures my shoulders, locking my back against his chest. My eyes close, and I feel the heat of him, the bulk of his thick body. I can smell him—the slightly spicy, uniquely Declan scent that stirs some sleeping dragon in me.
“Siren.” It’s an exhalation.
He turns me around to face him, and I do so like a good doll. I look at his face, his indecipherable face. His handsome features are impassive, but he always fails to lock away the feeling in his eyes. I hate his eyes the most—the kindness I see there, the concern.
“I don’t need your pity, you know. I’m pretty like you, and though I’m not absurdly wealthy, I am talented and clever.”
I watch as his face transforms, its hard lines bending as he grins, then gives a low chuckle. It’s a rich and husky sound that warms my bones.
I close my eyes and bow my head and pray perhaps he’ll just jog off and leave me be. But I have no such luck.
His hand captures my chin, his long fingers curving around my jaw. “C’mon, Finley. Look at me.”
“I can’t,” I whisper.
“Why not?”
Against my will, my lips quiver. I press them together.
“I’m looking pretty strung out for someone clean. You scared to look at me, Siren?”
I peek up at him, my gaze drawn to the dark circles beneath his eyes. “Don’t be moronic.”
His jaw hardens. “Finley, do you think I give a fuck about your past? That I would judge you for it? Me?” His eyes are so angry, my heart lurches a bit.
I freeze as he scoops me up and sets me on a nearby boulder, at the edge so that my legs hang off the side. He wraps his hands around my elbows and stands so close, my knees are forced to part around his waist.
He blows a breath out, strokes his warm hands down my shoulders. “Jesus, Finley.” He leans closer, wraps an arm around me. “Think of who you’re talking to.” He holds me fast against him as his hand crawls up my back, stroking over my nape into my hair. I feel him inhale as he tucks my head against his shoulder.
“I know who,” I whisper. “Homer Carnegie.”
It’s a catty thing to say, I know, but I can’t seem to help myself.
I feel his diaphragm expand on a deep breath. He steps slightly away, so that a cool breeze twists between us. When I look up at him, I find his face hard. “Have I ever said that’s my name? Homer?”
I look down, and his hand cups the side of my face. “C’mon, Finley,” he groans. “You don’t know the half of it with me.” I feel a tremor move through him. “I’ve been trying to outrun myself since I was fucking thirteen years old.”
I blink down at the space between us: a swatch of dirt where an ant hauls a bit of leaf atop its back. My eyes well with relief at his desperate tone. I’m not the only damaged one for once.
Tell me more. Please, Sailor. I send a prayer up to that effect, but as I watch his shoes and feel him breathing, he says nothing. Finally he leans in closer, smoothing his hand down the back of my hair, caressing the nape of my neck.
“Don’t ever worry, Finley. Not with me.”
Something moves through me, a sort of dark force. I’d like to lash out at him, shove him away. What I’d really like to say is “you’ll soon be gone.” But I do none of that. I feel like a statue in a snow globe as I hear myself say, “All right, then.”
He lifts me off the rock and sets me back on the ground. Even now, when I’m so agitated, standing near him makes me feel like a lamb near its shepherd. I steal a glance at his face. I’m tired of resisting him. But when our eyes catch, his blue orbs are remote, as if he’s locked himself away a bit.
Something throbs below my throat—a sort of tightening sensation. Because I want to know—I feel I even need to know—about him. I feel like sand at low tide as I walk beside him: thirsty.
For his part, his strides are long and slightly brisk. His handsome face is perfectly impassive. He seems focused on the path ahead, which tilts more vertically as misty rain drifts over us. For not the first time in his presence, I don’t feel quite real as I trod near him. I need his eyes, his hands on me to be corporeal.
Finally, as the path cuts leftward in a zigzag toward the summit, he looks over his shoulder. Now his face is clearer…perhaps calmer. He reaches for my hand, his fingers catching mine and lacing with them as if nothing heated passed between us. We walk on, and I think oddly of the animals in Noah’s Ark. Two of each kind…
“Tell me something,” he says, low.
“What sort of something?”
His mouth is solemn, but it curves a bit as his warm eyes reach for mine. “What’s your favorite color?”
I can’t help a small laugh. “What?”
“Tell me all your favorites, Siren. Tell me everything.”
My body warms from scalp to soles as I smile at him. “Everything? I’m not sure there’s so much to me.” I feel my cheeks burn, and I hate that I can blush at my age.
“Everybody has a favorite color.” His brows waggle. “Mine is gray.”
“Gray?” I snort. “It can’t be gray. That’s not a color!”
He grins. “Tell that to the good folks at Crayola.”
“It’s a color, but it’s…”
“Gray.” He tilts his head.
“It’s flat and sad.”
He smiles with dimples. “Not to me.”
“It can’t be your favorite. Choose another.”
“Gray.”
“A runner up of sorts.”
“Dark blue.”
“The color of a dark sea? I’ll accept that.”
He smirks. “What about you, Siren? I gave you two, now I want two.”
“That’s easy, and you’ll see that mine are valid. Green and purple.”
“Favorite food?”
Our path veers rightward, running flat as we traverse the peak’s significant width. Frost gleams on the vegetation. Out to our right, sprawling past the fog-dappled valley, we can see the ocean stretching on for eons.
“That’s a bit of a tough call. Perhaps a York Peppermint Patty. That’s my favorite thing I eat consistently. As well as apples, I suppose. And yourself?”
I feel a tremor in his hand and squeeze it slightly. “I guess maybe tacos.”
“We don’t eat that here really.”
He blinks down at me. “Someday.”
“What does that mean…someday?”
“Someday I’ll come get you in a plane and take you to get tacos.”
I laugh. “You can’t land a plane here. There’s no air strip.”
“Not all planes need landing strips.”
“That’s not what I’ve heard.”
He smiles. “Trust me on this, Siren. Planes are my hobby.”
I file that bit away, meaning to ask more later. For now, I stick to topic. “Where would you take me to get a taco? Mexico?”
“New York.”
I laugh, and he looks abashed. “I know it doesn’t sound authentic, but New York City’s got the best taco place. It’s not in Mexico, but the owners are from down there. Now I want some,” he says, husky.
“What have you been eating here?”
I feel his shoulder lift on a shrug. “Different stuff.”
“What’s been your favorite?”
“I don’t know. It was all pretty good.”
I rub my finger up along the side of his wrist, where I can always see a bone protruding. His body is so different than my own, even his wrists and hands. “I worry you should eat more.”
He laughs at that, and lifts one dark brow at me. “Wasting away, huh?”
“Well, of course not. But I worry for you. I’m a worrier, I suppose.”
“I’m good.”
Our arms bump lightly as the path curves in its zigzag, headed back the other way now.
“Are you really, though?” I stroke his knuckles with my fingertips and feel hi
s fingers tremble.
“Yeah.” He gives me a tight smile, and my heart aches a bit.
“Tell me more about Declan-not-Homer,” I say. “What’s your favorite book? Do you re-read the ones you really like, or is that just for those of us without a reliable connection to the world wide web? What were your favorite parts of your life back home?”
He chuckles. “That’s a lot of questions.”
“You answer first, then I will.”
* * *
Declan
I smile down at her. I’m always smiling at her—all the fucking time, until my face hurts. With my free hand, I rub at my aching cheek, trying not to let my smile turn into laughing. Trying to breathe deeper so my hands will stop shaking.
I’m kind of surprised I can handle her holding my hand when shit’s like this, but the truth is…I like it. I don’t know why it’s different with Finley. I guess because of how we met—that time inside the burrow.
Despite what she said back there, she doesn’t know me as “Homer.” She can’t imagine what my life is like back home. She doesn’t know who I’m supposed to be. And she doesn’t treat me differently—not like an addict and definitely not like a celebrity.
“I’m gonna have to go with something that’s kind of embarrassing.”
She grins up at me. “Yes?”
“It’s not a board book,” I warn.
She giggles. “But it is a kids’ book. I can sense it.”
“Bullshit. How can you sense it?”
“You’re blushing.” She waves at my face.
I roll my eyes. “Guys don’t blush.” I jab her ribs. “But I know someone who does.”
“Sod off.”
I chuckle.
“Out with it.”
I shake my head and swallow my pride. “I’d really like to say something like The Odyssey. Or Marcel Proust.”
“But…” She’s grinning. Little witch.
I sigh for effect. “But…it’s Harry Fucking Potter.” I watch her face as a gorgeous smile spreads over it.
“Of course it is. They are the best books of our time. It should be on the list with Shakespeare. What house? That’s what I really need to know.”
