“Are you ready to jump?” Finn asked, peering over the edge. His expression hardened as he leaned back to place his chin atop my head. The wind I hadn’t felt much of before whipped at us, due to the increased speed at which we were now moving through the ocean. “Scratch that plan. I can’t jump wide enough to clear his tentacles.”
I glimpsed over the side, swallowing the bile that rose as the stars showed me just enough of the nightmare to keep me in the boat. Underneath us were tentacles thick as roads, winding like blacktop through the water, and stretching out too far around us for us to jump free and land in the ocean. “So this is it? This is how we die?” It wasn’t despair; it was stating a grim fact.
Finn sat down carefully in the boat as the monster moved us far faster through the water than we could ever hope to go on our own. He pulled me into his arms, bracing us against the wind that made me shiver against him. “If it is, then we die together.”
A tear rolled down my cheek, but that was the most I allowed myself to carry on. The moisture was immediately whipped away by the wind, for which I was grateful. “I never got to finish the Mer books I was translating. How does it end? Does Lissima end up with Ricardo?”
Finn cupped my face with one hand to shield me from my wildly flying hair. He stared into my eyes, looking at me like I was something special, like I was worth getting swallowed whole by a sea monster if it meant we were together. He slowly shook his head. “I’m not spoiling the ending for you. We’re going to get out of this somehow. There’ll be no giving up, no saying goodbye. It’s a bump in the road.” He motioned to the space below us. “Bakunawa’s not tearing us apart. He’s saving us, taking us somewhere.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“It’s supposed to make you not give up. He’s a sea serpent, which means he’s got a lair. No one knows where, but I assume he’s taking us there to add us to his collection of bodies.”
Finn was right, but it hadn’t occurred to me that the fact that we were still alive meant that the sea snake had a purpose for us still. Something dinged in my mind. “You said snake, but it looks like he’s got lots of tentacles, like an octopus. Are you sure it’s the right sea monster? Not that it matters. I mean, if you’re being abducted by a sea monster, does it matter which one it is?”
Finn had the wherewithal to chuckle, which either meant he’d gone insane, or the situation wasn’t as dire as I was making it out to be. “He’s got a head like a sigbin, a body like a snake, but his tail’s split into sixteen tentacles.”
“Precious.”
“I’ll get us out of this,” Finn promised, though both of us knew he had no idea how. His eyes searched the ocean for possibilities, but there was nothing in any direction – just the void of the dark swallowed by the ocean.
“I’m sorry, Finn. This was all my bright idea. I just wanted it to be over! I wanted Sama gone, and I didn’t stop to ask if there were any heinous sea monsters before I dragged you into the ocean.” I buried my face in his chest. “I’m so sorry.”
“You came to me. You could’ve gone to Kabayo. You know he loves breaking the rules and pissing off the council. He might’ve taken you.”
“I know! And you’re the person I want to save, not the one I want drowning in the middle of the ocean!”
“You wanted to be with me. Maybe not in all the ways I need, but some part of you knew I’d be good for you. You left your fiancé in the dead of night to come to me. You crossed worlds to get to me, but you still can’t admit that you’re in love with me? That it’s me you should be with?”
I kept my face fixed firmly to the side, my cheek buried in his chest so he couldn’t see my guilty expression. “We’re about to die, Finn. This is hardly the time for all that.”
His arm around my back tightened. “This is the only time left for it! This might be all we have, and you’re still lying to yourself? Admit when we’re inches from death that it was worth it! Admit that you needed to see me.”
“Shut up, Finn! This isn’t helping anything.”
His anger rose to a shout. “You might want to marry him, but you want me, too. Admit that I’m about to die because you couldn’t live without me!”
“Stop it! Stop saying it!” I wriggled free of his grip, venturing a few inches further toward the helm, regretting the distance between us the second it made itself known.
“October!” he shouted, his voice booming above the wind that whipped at my hair as I turned to look at him over my shoulder.
My heart pounded for too many reasons, and I knew that whatever I did or didn’t do, I would regret it. The boat shifted, and I lost my footing, tipping toward the helm and smacking my chin on the seat. Tears sprang to my eyes, and I knew I was on the edge of losing my mind into the depths below. My hand was shaking as I gripped the side of the boat, needing something sturdy to hold onto so I didn’t fall apart into a million emotional pieces I’d never be able to stuff back inside.
Before I shattered, Finn was on all fours behind me. With steadier hands than mine, he slid me onto the floor of the rowboat, shielding me from the wind as he rolled me onto my back. His body caged mine in, his eyes holding my fearful gaze as he leaned down to lay atop me and let the boat shield us both from the elements. “Easy now,” he warned, brushing the tangles back from my face. “I’m here.” I don’t know how he found the strength to be tender, but when his knuckle dragged down my cheek, a layer of calm brushed over me, taking my panic down a notch. “No place I’d rather be.”
I reached up and held his face in my hands, tracing the prominent features. They could look deadly in a breath, but always melted into softness for me. “Take me someplace other than this,” I pleaded, tilting my throbbing chin so my lips brushed against his. I wanted to be anywhere that wasn’t here, even if that meant admitting things I wasn’t ready to examine.
“Beg me.”
“What?”
“Beg me to kiss you.”
My lower lip quivered uncertainly, but finally, after all my fighting, my weakness for him won out. “Please, Finn. Please. Take me away from here.”
Finn palmed the back of my hand that rested on his cheek and exhaled a brief smile. “I know just the place.”
With that, I kissed Finn. During what was most certainly our last moments, I chose to leave reality and escape into beauty – however imperfect that paradise might turn out to be.
Twenty-Five.
A Home for the Bird and the Fish
We tumbled onto a tropical-looking beach, surrounded by green and silver that danced around us, painting our bodies and sparkling on the pure white sand. I felt Finn all around me, pressing on top of me and beckoning me to mold around him as only my body knew how to do. His shirt came off – I’m not even sure which one of us tore it and threw it at the hollowed log that sat at the peaceful ocean’s shore.
“Tell me you see it,” Finn begged between kisses. His movements were a mixture of fluid and frantic, tugging on my lower lip and even biting it when his passion grew to be too much for a normal makeout to contain.
I slowed the kiss enough to look around, taking in the sparkling beach, the palm trees that had been brushed with a hue of purple on the trunks, the blue ocean that looked so clear, it had to be fake, and the green – oh the glittering green of the palms and the swirls of the luscious color dancing through the sky. What drew my eyes and drew out a gasp was the cottage sitting on the edge of the ocean. The siding was a cheery yellow with white shudders framing the windows, which were open to the gentle breeze. “Whose house is that?”
Finn stopped kissing me abruptly, hovering above my body with a look that suggested I’d said something shocking. “You see it? You’re not going to disappear now that we’re not kissing?”
My eyes grew to saucers when the implications of my choices and the things that felt out of my control slammed into me, punishing me with the scarlet letter “A” I knew I’d well deserved. “No! But I can’t be in love with you! I love
Von! I love Von!” I said the words that cut him over and over, willing them to take me away from the tropical paradise I had no right to be part of.
Finn palmed my chin in that controlling way he had, his mouth set in a tight line just inches from mine. His thumb and forefinger gripped my jaw, turning my head to the side as he leaned down to whisper through clenched teeth. “I knew you loved me. So you love Von too. I already knew that. But I want to hear you say it. Admit that you loved me this whole time.” His fingers dug so hard into my face; I was certain he’d leave marks. His passion mixed with anger as he started slowly dragging his lips down the side of my neck. My spine twitched and my body reacted in ways I hadn’t meant it to. My legs parted and Finn settled between them as if he belonged there, as if we belonged here. “Say it,” he growled. “After everything, I deserve to hear it.”
I didn’t want to say it out loud, though the evidence surrounding us was incontrovertible. I swallowed, and then let a whisper birth from somewhere inside of me that I’d tried so very hard to gag and stuff in a trunk. “I love you, Finn.”
A tear escaped the corner of my eye, trailing down the side of my face and landing on Finn’s hand. He swiped at the tear, and then stuck the finger into my mouth, moaning as I sucked on the tip. It tasted like sorrow, shame and too much admiration for a man who I knew couldn’t stay mine. When I released his finger with a pop, he slid the hoodie over my head, gasping at the nightgown I hadn’t worn for him. His lips touched down on my sternum, slowly teasing me and drawing out the pang of need that never seemed to go away.
“Not here,” I insisted, holding my nightgown firmly to my chest. “Not here, and not now.”
“How about in our house?” Finn offered, his chin jerking toward the cottage.
“Huh?”
Finn rolled off of me and gave me his hand to help me up. Our fingers linked together as he led me to the cottage, not bothering to knock as he walked over the threshold. “This is our house. In our dreams, this is where we stay. Our kiss takes us here.” He paused, looking over his shoulder to find me frozen on the wooden porch that fed into the ocean off a long dock. “You said there wasn’t a place for us to live. I’m a fish, and you can’t swim. But here? We can be together in our secret place. We can have a whole life in a world designed just for us.”
I just stood there, fist clutching my white lacy nightgown as my eyes poured over the details of the life I hadn’t expected to manifest before my eyes. It was a modern looking cottage, but not too flashy. The inside was done up with enough Topsider conveniences that I could see through the open door – a fridge, stove and a couch. There was a touch of Finn’s world too – a lantern hanging on a hook on the wall, a hammock off to the side of the living room in front of the picture window.
The backs of my hands started to itch, and I couldn’t figure out why or how I got here, staring down the barrel of a life I’d convinced myself wasn’t possible.
Finn moved to stand before me, his feet firmly planted inside the cottage, claiming the territory in the name of our future. “Let me show you the bedroom.”
I couldn’t hide the fear in my expression, nor the overwhelming feeling that I didn’t belong here. My gaze fell on a picture frame that rested atop the end table next to the beige couch. “Is that me?” My feet finally moved inside, shuffling over the smooth wood and tracking sand onto the brown and lavender rug in the center of the living room. I fingered the frame, holding it up to make sure I hadn’t gone insane. With this many lives, it was getting harder and harder to be sure.
“It’s us,” Finn explained, standing beside me and smiling down at the picture. There we were, barefoot and grinning at each other like two lucky SOBs who weren’t about to get eaten by a giant sea monster. We were holding hands and walking on the beach, not a care in the world.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d smiled like that. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d smiled. I conjured up a good representation to try and match the photo, but I knew my staged one fell flat. I knew my fake smiles, and the one in the photo was no fraud. I was genuinely happy there.
“This... This isn’t real,” I explained, placing the frame back on the end table.
“It’s real enough.” Finn linked his fingers through mine and led me into the kitchen, pulling a coconut from the fruit basket on the counter. He took his knife from his boot and gave the side a good whack that made me jump. “Try it. You’ll like it. Came from the trees right outside.”
The water dribbled down the furry sides of the fruit’s shell. “I’ve never had coconut water before. At least, not straight from the source.” I took the half a shell he handed to me and tipped it to my lips, swallowing the bland, yet somewhat sweetened liquid that was both thicker and thinner than I anticipated. A few sips dribbled down my chin. My wince announced that no matter what world I was in, I wouldn’t be too fond of spills. “Oh, that tastes good, but I’m a mess now.”
Finn’s gaze locked in on mine, not blinking as he slid the shell from my hands and placed it in the sink. Our sink. He didn’t say a word, though I knew he could’ve said any number of cheesy things about helping me take my clothes off. Instead, he cleared the space between us, lifting me up in his arms and pressing my back to the wooden wall. His lips crashed into mine, tasting the coconut and savoring the flavor of me.
He didn’t ask me to come to the bedroom with him, he simply took me there. Green and silver twinkled around us like spots of overexposed light popping in our vision. I scarcely took in the details of the bed that was all ours – not mine, and not his, but ours. We tumbled onto the red sheets, tangling our legs and twisting our fingers in each other’s hair to get a better hold on the life that felt too real to be so. I didn’t want to think. I didn’t want to analyze. I didn’t want anything but more of this. It muted the pain that came with having a defective conscience. I tried to rationalize the tryst away by telling myself that this wasn’t real. I wasn’t actually in a bed with Finn; we were still in the boat.
But part of me knew. I was only kissing him here because we’d been kissing in the boat. This bliss was tainted with the stink of betrayal. As Finn’s hands lifted my nightgown and his lips kissed a hot line up my midsection, I was betraying Von, who thought I was cuddled up next to him in our bed. He was willing to share our bed with Mason as often as reaping demanded it of us. He was happy to stand by my side and wait until we were married to bed me in real life.
He was happy, and I would make us both miserable for reasons that were only selfish. I wanted, so I took. I was no better than Philip. My body betrayed me, twisting and writhing for Finn. I heard guttural noises birth from my lips as Finn made himself at home in my curves. He was a mixture of kissing, sucking and biting, and I was a blaze of firing neurons and oversensitive nerve endings that did exactly as he commanded.
I loved Finn.
I loved him, and I hated myself for the crime.
I hated myself, but some days I was all I had, despite the beautiful beach, the cottage and the man who’d brought me here. I couldn’t come here again, and I knew I had to get out if I didn’t want another spontaneous psychic pregnancy on my hands.
My hands fumbled on the buckle of Finn’s pants, holding the button closed. “We can’t. This isn’t real, and I’m not yours.”
Finn opened his mouth, his face contorted in frustration, but before he could tell me exactly what he thought about that, the green and the silver were ripped away from us. The wind found us again as the sea monster’s tentacle dumped our boat unceremoniously out into the ocean.
Twenty-Six.
Honey, I’m Home
I’d never been skydiving before, and something tells me that even with the comfort of a parachute, I wouldn’t enjoy the weightless out of control feeling that rushed through my body. I could scarcely put together my surroundings in the proper order before I realized I was heading straight for the shore that hadn’t been there when we’d started our kiss.
My scream scared m
e, as I had no knowledge of when I’d started making the awful sound. My body sliced through the air like a well-aimed missile, cresting and coming down with a hard splash into the water.
I was so close to the shore, but the water was too deep for my feet to find purchase in the murky sand beneath the green-tinged water. To almost make it, and then drown in the last ten yards felt like the punch in the gut I deserved. I should die in obscurity, drown in the cold ocean that had somehow turned muddy and sickly, and then have my remains be eaten by the sea monster so Von couldn’t find me.
If he didn’t find the note I left in Ezra’s pocket, would he think I’d ditched him? When Finn turned up missing too, would he assume we’d run away together?
My arms punched through the water, fighting for breath so I could explain things to Von. I had to go back to the real home I had with him instead of living in a fantasy – if he’d still have me.
My lungs burned and my disoriented body flailed until a strong hand closed over mine, yanking me up the few feet I needed to break the surface. I could barely see, even though the dawn was doing its best to alert me to my surroundings. My body was hefted out of the water when my lifeguard finally reached shallow enough ground. I was Baywatched out of the depths, my legs dangling as I clung to my hero.
“I feared you were lost, so I sent my servant to find you.”
My body froze when my vision cleared. I coughed into the shirt of the man who was certainly not Finn. I was smack in the arms of Philip. It was so shocking to see him in real life that I merely gawked up at him while he carried me toward the shore.
“I admit I forgot about your inability to swim. Apologies for the way Bakunawa brought you to safety. His body’s too large to get too close to the shore.”
My heart pounded in my chest, and the blood flowing through me felt like ice. I didn’t have my knife on me, and struggled to put the pieces of the plan together in my mind. I wanted to get it all over with, but I was so cold and inundated with holy-crap-I-almost-drowned that I couldn’t bring my muscles to reason. “My guide!” I protested, wriggling to get down and find Finn. My small effort of struggle was ignored, and Philip carried me to the very same hut he’d taken me to in my last dream.
Trap Page 13
