“Sirena.” Rick laid his hand over mine; the warmth seeped into my skin and seemed to chase the cold tendrils of fear snaking through me away. “You okay?”
I nodded. “We had an early morning charter. I think I am just tired.”
“Are you taking my sister and her girlfriends out tomorrow?”
“Sunrise charter.”
“Yeah, well our sunrise and Roxy’s sunrise are two different things. You’re good until mid-morning.” Rick pulled his hand back, finished off his drink, and then stood. “Still, you should probably get some rest. Accidents happen when you’re tired.” Rick extended his hand. “I’ll walk you back to the marina.”
I had to look like a squid, staring at his hand like it was going to consume me the minute I touched him.
“I won’t bite. I promise.” When I still did not take his hand, he pulled it back, taking a piece of me with him.
“Sorry,” I whispered.
“No. My fault.” He folded his arms across the wide expanse of his chest. His shirt pulled at the buttons and strained at the arms. “Your first encounter with me was less than gentlemanly.”
I stared up at him, watching the blush stain his cheeks.
“I’m not normally such a Neanderthal, but…” His words trailed off along with his thoughts. “I would still like to see you back safely to the marina. Fend off any other men who’d want to spin you up on your toes and give you an earful.”
I giggled.
“Although”—he winced—“I think you handled yourself pretty well.”
Rick placed his hand on the small of my back, and the heat seeped past my clothing and nearly branded me his. We walked in silence along the grounds of the hotel. Warm wind whistled through the trees, and the crickets sang along the path. He was a gentleman, opening gates and holding them for me to pass through first, just like my father had done. Every now and again, I would catch him stealing a glance in my direction, and my pulse would pick up. The warmth in my cheeks would spread. Rick was barely conscience the first time I met him, and given my reaction to him that was probably a good thing. I would not have had the gumption to swim away from his gaze. I did not know if it were the sea gods or fate, but this was the second time Rick swam into my world, and for a second time, he altered it.
He altered me.
5
Rick
“Do you know where your sister and her friends are?”
I started at the melodic voice, covering my eyes from the sudden burst of light. Rays of sun shined through the swaying palm trees fashioning a … crown around Sirena’s head. My heart dropped as Sirena took off her sunglasses. I hadn’t dreamed it. Irritation and ire swam in the most beautiful chestnut eyes.
“What are you doing here?”
“Waiting on your sister and her friends for their overnight charter.”
I adjusted into the shadow she cast on the lounge chair, loving the rhythm of her accent. I’d planned on spending the entire day waiting here for my sister to get back from her one night of clubbing, before I hauled her back to Texas and strapped a GPS bracelet on her ankle. Last night, I thought we’d had an understanding: complete honesty. She’d kissed me on the cheek, batted her baby blues, and promised to be back at a reasonable hour. Silly me, I’d assumed a reasonable hour would have meant sometime the same day.
“Rick?”
Sirena shifted on her heel, hip popping out and a huff of exasperation rolling through her lips. “Your sister scheduled an early morning charter.” She shuffled through her paperwork muttering, “An overnight charter with an early pick up of assholes who can’t tell the sun in the sky means you’re late, apparently.”
“I tried to warn you last night.” I stifled a grin into my palm. “Wait, overnight charter?”
“This is funny to you?” Her knuckles turned white she gripped the clipboard so hard. I couldn’t be certain she wouldn’t be chucking it at my head. “Pendejo,” she muttered again.
God, this girl was a breath of fresh air.
“If you’re gonna go for calling a dude and asshole, then really let him have it. Don’t hide it behind a hushed breath.”
She blushed, and I couldn’t help but rest my hands behind my head, knowing my casual manner would irritate the shit out of her.
“Pendejo doesn’t mean asshole.”
“Does where I come from.”
“Where’s that, again?”
“Texas.” I pushed my sunglasses on top of my head, waiting for the refreshing way she’d come back. No gloves. No don’t hurt his feelings he just suffered the worst loss of his life. Instead, a tidal wave of ohmygods washed through the fancy open-aired lobby, sucking up all the available oxygen and our attention.
“Excuse me.” I stood and stormed over to Roxy, not sure if I was madder at my sister for staying out all night or that she interrupted my time with Sirena. Roxy skipped down the marble entryway, turning in time to bounce off my chest. Her eyes went so wide even her sunglasses couldn’t hide the shock.
“Morning, little sister.” I grabbed her arms before she fell butt first on the floor and hauled her up on her tiptoes like I’d wanted to last night. “Where’ve you been all night?”
Beth and her blonde messy bun ruffled to life. “You do realize we are all adults.”
I scoffed. “Beth, your mom wants you to check in. She’s a little confused why I didn’t know what hotel you were at, seeing how you all told your parents I was chaperoning this adventure.”
Eight sets of terror-filled eyes stared back at me. They all knew Beth’s mom lived for a crisis that required her to activate their sacred phone tree. My call had most certainly qualified as a crisis, which meant all the moms knew what they’d done. And all these scheming girls had better enjoy their last days of freedom.
“Ladies, I’d make those calls before you decide to jump on an overnight charter boat.”
“Yacht,” Sirena corrected under her breath.
Roxy’s eyes widened. In two seconds this was all about to be my fault.
Two…
One…
“How could you?” she exploded. “You sold out my friends. So … So …”
“Adult of me?”
Roxy narrowed her eyes. “Uncool.”
“No, uncool is ditching your brother.” I pressed a finger to my little sister’s lips, careful to make sure she couldn’t bite me. “Ditching me at the Dairy Queen is one thing. Ditching me and going to another state and then lying to me about where you really are, Rox, that’s—” Laid out like that, the deception punched me in the gut. “This wasn’t how Mom raised us.”
I watched my sentence damage my sister. The fierceness drained out of her eyes in a single teardrop.
Roxy hung her head.
Eight wide-eyed Kewpie-dolled faces stared at me, but it was the hard look from Sirena that floored me. I’d been too hard on Rox, but damn it, she needed to be set straight. Regret wedged its way into my gut. Part of me knew it was because of Roxy, but another part couldn’t understand why it was also because of Sirena … and that look of disappointment in her eyes.
During our very private conversation, the girl who had yet to see me at my finest saw me at my very worst. I’d only known Sirena less than twenty-four hours, but for some reason—some very surreal, unexplainable reason—her opinion mattered.
I liked her, and it didn’t have anything to do with the fact that she looked like the girl I’d been dreaming of since I was a kid.
I liked … her.
Sirena cleared her throat, slipping her sunglasses back on her face. “Señoritas, are you diving or passing?”
Roxy and the rest of the girls looked at me. “I’d get at least one more excursion in. I have a feeling half of you have messages waiting on your dead cellphones to get your butts home.” I turned my gaze to my little sister. “You included.”
“If you wouldn’t mind, Sirena, could you give us a minute?”
Sirena nodded, pulling the walkie-talkie from her wai
st. “I’ll notify the crew.”
Roxy turned her attention back on me, and the tilted little smile made my stomach clench. “I’ll go home, no questions or complaints—stop shaking your heard—but you have to dive with me.”
“No.”
Roxy folded her arms. “Yes.”
“Rox, we can do this all day, but I’m not stepping a foot on another dive boat.”
That tilted smile of hers blossomed.
“I’m serious.”
“I’m sure you are.” My little sister turned on her heels. “Be down in fifteen, Sirena. You want me to grab your bag, or you good with beach bum casual?”
“I’m not going, Roxanne.”
Salted sea air whipped across my face, doing nothing to cool down my temper.
“You know I really thought you made a good stand back at the hotel.” Sirena sat down next to me at the bow of the yacht. “Does she always get her way?” the girl with copper hair continued when I didn’t answer.
How could I when there were so many emotions churning inside me? Fear, anger, confusion, frustration, and—I stole a sideways look at the girl in the yellow bikini top—something else.
I kicked my legs up on the metal railings of the two-story dive yacht and did what came natural to me; I avoided the conversation.
“Who named your boat?”
“Yacht,” Sirena corrected me. “Tiki is an imbécil for calling things by their proper name.”
“Sounds like you’ve learned that from personal experience.”
Her auburn ponytail bounced back and forth.
“So, the name?”
“Yo no se? I don’t know?” She kicked her feet up on the railing, wiggling her painted toes. “Why?”
“Iara.” A pain cut straight through my heart. “That’s my mother’s name. Was.”
The soft playful look on Sirena’s face fell a little. “I didn’t know.”
“How would you?”
She shook her head. “Sorry, I meant I didn’t know you’d lost your mother.”
I sucked in a deep breath, hoping to vanquish the burn in my gut. I hadn’t talked about losing my mother. Had barely said her name in the last year, but like everything when it came to Sirena, she had a way of shining a light into the darkest caves of me.
“Yeah, well…”
“Is that why you haven’t been in the ocean?”
I tried to recall when I’d told her that.
“One of the girls said something about you and the water on the dock.” She pulled her knees to her chest. “She said you were an avid diver.”
I nodded.
“That’s rare.”
“I assume you’d cross paths with hundreds of avid divers in your line of work.”
Her lips pursed, and I instantly wanted to smooth that skin. “Not humble ones.”
“You think I’m humble?”
“You’re up here, watching the ocean and not telling me how you conquered it one dive at a time.”
“That’s not humility, that’s fear.”
“Fear?”
My heart stopped. This was the most I’d spoken of Mom, her passing, or why I really hadn’t dipped so much as a toe in the ocean in over a year.
How was she doing this?
Even Roxy couldn’t pry her way past the wall I’d erected around this topic.
Like Sirena could sense my realization, she stood, wrapping the arms of her dry suit into a knot around her waist. “I better go help.”
She turned and headed for the staircase, and I couldn’t help but follow her movement even when her knuckles went white as she grasped the railing.
“Iara was the goddess of the waters. It’d be a shame for her son to never feel the ocean on his skin again.”
“My mother was no goddess.”
Sirena’s shoulders stiffened, the soft lines around her eyes hardened, and a look I’d bet many a man had seen sliced through me before she took the stairs two at a time to get away from me.
Her words stayed with me, haunting me the remainder of the three-hour trip out to sea. Her recollection of Mom’s name reminded me of a bedtime story Mom would tell me when I was being difficult. She’d spin a story about Iara and her legion of mermaids tasked by Poseidon to protect the lost city of Atlantis.
Maybe it was the lost city of Atlantis that made me block out the memory or not make the connection.
Maybe it was the pain of stepping foot on a dive boat bearing Mom’s name, but without Mom.
Christ, it was probably the sheer terror of watching my sister slip below the surface and never resurfacing. Whatever it was, when I was with Sirena, all that fear and denial went away, and I hated that pull, however slight, the ocean still had on my soul.
I listened to the cackle of four girls getting ready to take on the ocean. Five of Roxy’s cohorts had been ordered back to Texas or else. Anywhere else in the world that or else would’ve been cautionary, but in Texas, it was deadly. I leaned over the edge, catching glares from both Roxy and Sirena. They were so alike, and I didn’t mean just the coloring of their hair. Head strong and sharp-tongued, both girls could cut me with a few syllables.
“Rick?” Roxy called from below, the boat slowing so I could hear my sister’s voice. “Are you coming?”
I shook my head and watched the smile fall from her lips. She was as sneaky as a siren, Mom would say.
I never knew how right Mom was.
Beth and Amy scuba-dived all day. Roxy and her snorkel watched from above. She hated the fact that her lungs kept her tethered to the surface, but I was never more thankful for my sister’s severe asthma than I was at that very moment. Roxy kept her face and snorkel planted in the water all day. Despite everything, the three musketeers didn’t seem phased at all. In fact, each time one would surface—their smiles so bright, eyes filled with wonder—not even their masks could contain their glee. A hand would break the water, raised triumphantly with some treasure or trinket they’d plucked from the bottom of the ocean. I knew the thrill that shot through you when you unearthed a piece of history. It was a connection to the past at its rawest form. I also knew what it was like when the ocean turned on you and took back everything you’d pilfered from its floor. The ocean was a greedy bitch, and she would always settle her accounts. The trick was quitting before she called your debt due.
Tiki sounded the dive siren, signaling the end of the day. And like always, Roxy was the last one to finally climb out of the water. For the first time that day, air rushed into my lungs, relieved she had.
I closed my eyes, finally able to appreciate the cool breeze and the warm sun on my face. Every muscle in my body screamed, even my jaw ached, from the tension they were under. What used to be my sanctuary had now become my purgatory, and my little sister took great joy in diving between both worlds.
“You’re really not going to go in?” Roxy called out.
I peeled open an eyelid and watched her climb the last of the stairs to the observation deck. “I told you I wasn’t.”
“Then why’d you come?”
“To keep an eye on you.”
She recoiled, hands stilling in her hair where she’d been wringing out the ocean. “What do you think I was going to do? Run off with a Muirgeilt?”
I raised my eyebrows. “You ran off to a different state without telling me. A merman wouldn’t be too far—”
“You knew I was coming to Florida, so not a different state.” She cut me off, taking out her frustration on her hair. “Different city, yes.”
“There’s a difference?”
“Yes.”
“Fine.”
Roxy wrapped the arms of her wetsuit around her stomach, tying them in a knot much like Sirena had done earlier in the morning, before she rounded the bench seat and plopped down next to me. “How long do I have to pay for my transgression?”
“It wasn’t a transgression, Rox. It was a lie. It was something we swore we’d never do after Mom …” The words still stuck in my throat. “A
nd over the course of two days, you’ve lied twice.”
Roxy’s confident shoulders took the brunt of my accusation as the silence crept in around us. Guilt trickled into my gut with each rise and fall of the Iara. It would be easy to let her off the hook. Christ, I’d done the exact same thing to Mom when I was about Roxy’s age.
But maybe if I hadn’t.
Maybe if she hadn’t wasted the time plucking me from the Keys, we would have made our dive, found our treasure, and been long gone before the attack. It was two days by boat to Puerto Rico. Two days was a ton of time for a dive and an eternity of regret.
I ran my fingers through my hair, hoping to pull out the memory and not my follicles. It was a thought I very rarely entertained. The thought that somehow my lie had cost me my mother. The thought that we were ambushed by beings that could only be described as … mermaids.
“Sorry,” Roxy whispered, throwing me a lifeline from my mental abyss.
She eased herself down next to me. The plink-plink of ocean water bounced off the deck, landing on my bare foot—each drop like acid on my skin. Then she looked up at me with those big blue eyes, the ones that got me to sneak her dessert after she’d been banished to her room, the ones that got me to cover for her late-night sneak outs, the ones that would ultimately bring me around to forgiving her.
I wrapped my arm around her neck, pulling her cold body into my sun-soaked side. We were as different as our body temperatures these days. Roxy wanted answers, would search until the sea gave them up. Me, I ran as far as I could from those very same questions.
We were both searching for the why.
“Listen.” She nudged my rib. “I promise—like, legit pinky-swear promise—I won’t ever pull another disappearance stunt, ‘k?”
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