Chapter 12
Ariel
“Breathe,” I tell myself, palms flat against the cool wallpaper outside the dining room. “Just breathe.”
Inside, I hear the tinkle of laughter, the chink of champagne glasses, and my name passed around on silver tongues. Outside, I’m a lonely heartbeat that tries to escape my chest.
Kara and Everett promised they’d tell everyone the truth. That the fake engagement is a fantasy their parents are still writing. They’ll do it. They will.
Right?
I wait until my pulse stops galloping and my eyes aren’t full to the brim, then turn to slip back in—only to stop dead. Everett’s father strides toward me like a storm with a sneer.
A string quartet swells in the dining room. He glances over his shoulder to check the hallway is empty before grabbing my elbow in an iron grip and steering me into a paneled office that smells like leather and manipulation.
“Now, little miss spy,” he says as he shuts the door behind us and moves to his desk, “the wide-eyed innocent act may have worked on my son, but it doesn’t fool me. What’s it going to take to get rid of you?”
“Pardon?” I sink into the chair opposite because my knees think I’ve been shot.
“You’re not as na?ve as you pretend.” He settles behind his desk and flips open a small rectangular book. His pen rasps. He tears out a paper and flicks it at me. “That’s ten grand. Take it or leave it.”
I don’t touch it, folding my hands under my arms. “If it’s money, I don’t want it.”
“Damn you, stop playing games!” He slams his fists on the desk, his face turning purple.
“I don’t know what you’re after, but you’re not wrecking this merger.
My son may have fucked you, but that doesn’t mean he’ll ruin decades of planning.
Everett will marry Kara. I care about one thing: keeping our families and our business running smoothly.
If you care for my son, you’ll take the money and disappear. ”
“I don’t just care for your son… I love him.” The truth leaves my mouth before I can cage it.
His eyes flare dangerously. “Listen to me, girl.” He leans across the desk, breath sour with gin. “I’ve been watching. I don’t know what your little fascination is with Starfall Lake, but if you don’t leave him alone, I’ll destroy it piece by piece.”
My eyes widen, unsure I heard him right. “You… what?”
“Algae, dead fish, reeds rotting on the banks,” he says, counting them off like items on a menu. “I’ll pay the right crews to dump, buy the silence of the inspectors, and make sure anyone who tries to clean it up finds their permits delayed or their boats mysteriously wrecked.”
He lets the words hang deliberately. “You think I’m bluffing? I own the people who make a mess and the people who look the other way. Walk away, or I’ll ensure the lake you love is a memory.”
The room tilts. My mouth goes dry. The words slide under my skin and root there, cold and real. He means it. I see it in the smug certainty on his face, the itch to push the button just to prove he can. He’d salt the earth and call it landscaping.
Because—oh, Gods—he makes the mess. He poisons the water, then cleans it just enough to sell salvation.
My hands shake in my lap. I press them together to stop it. I see the places I know and love shutter and go dark in my head. “You’d kill the lake,” I whisper.
He smiles. “It’s called business.”
The air feels too thin to breathe. I realize with cold clarity that the danger isn’t only to me. If I stay, he’ll bleed the lake until it’s lifeless. Every inlet I learned to read, every child who’s ever swum in the shallows, every reed and swan—it will all rot.
I want to scream. Instead, I stand. My voice is small but steady. “You won’t win.”
He laughs softly, smug and sure. “Everyone says that before they drown.”
Something hardens inside me even as my legs shake. I know I’m not worldly and sophisticated—not above the water, at least. But I cherish the world I left behind, despite being banished by my own flesh and blood. I can’t leave them to this fate.
My choices are limited: lose the man I love… or lose everyone—everything—else I’ve ever loved.
There’s no version where I get to keep both.
I swallow the bile in my throat and taste the truth of it.
“Dad? Have you seen Ariel?” Everett appears in the doorway, his expression concerned. “What’s going on? Ariel, are you okay?”
I reach deep for the strength I didn’t know I possessed and paste on a smile. “Of course. Your father was just… telling me about the lake and his plans.” True—diabolically so. “I’m not feeling well, Everett. Could you take me home?”
“Of course.” His fingers lace with mine, steadying me, grounding me. He looks at his father, jaw tight. “We’ll talk later.”
We find Kara in the entry as if she sensed my tension and need to escape. “Meet you at your place?” she asks, eyes flicking from my face to Everett’s and back again.
“Yeah,” Everett says, guiding me to the car.
On the drive, he vents about audacity, about manipulation, about heirloom rings and being railroaded and how he’s done being his father’s puppet. I nod and make the right noises. Thank the gods he’s too angry and distracted to notice how quiet I am.
I don’t tell him the part he doesn’t know: that his father threatened to poison my whole world if I don’t disappear. That the choice I can live with might be the one that breaks me.
Back at Everett’s, the house feels too quiet, like it’s holding its breath as my heart cracks.
“Can I go home with you tonight, Kara?” I blurt when she arrives, the need for space rising like panic.
Kara’s gaze narrows, then softens. “Any time, Ariel. You know that.”
Everett goes still. “I’m sorry, Ariel. I know you’re upset about what my father said.”
My blood turns to ice. He heard?
“But tonight was all optics,” he continues quickly, voice tight. “My father directing the show. Nothing but a performance with heirloom props.”
I nod, releasing a shaky breath, barely able to absorb his words. My heart is too busy breaking.
His throat works as if he’s trying to swallow everything he wants to say. “You can stay here.”
“I just… need quiet,” I whisper. “Tonight was… a lot.”
When I look at him, the war is right there in his eyes—want tangled with worry, need tangled with the urge to give me space. He looks like he’s holding himself together by sheer force of will. Every line of him says stay, but his hands remain fisted at his sides.
He nods abruptly. “Right. Space. Of course.” His gaze dips to my mouth, then jerks away. He turns to Kara. “Text me when you get there.”
She gives him a small smile. “I will.”
For one breath too long, neither of us moves. I want nothing more than to step into his arms, let his warmth drown out the cold that’s been crawling up my spine since his father threatened the world I was banished from. But if I do, I’ll never leave.
So I rise on unsteady toes and press a quick kiss to his mouth, a whisper of what I wish I could give him.
I step back before my resolve breaks and turn to Kara. “I’m ready.”
At her apartment, the air smells like beeswax and safety.
“Your room’s ready,” she says gently. She captures my hand as I turn away. “Tomorrow, we’re telling our families that we’re not getting married. Period. Don’t be upset with Everett. He really cares about you. I’ve never seen him like this.”
“I know.” I twist my fingers, human nerves making human knots. “It’s not that. I just… don’t have a home here. Not really. I don’t have the papers everyone keeps asking me for. I need to figure things out. Be… legitimate.” I make a helpless little gesture. “An upstanding citizen.”
“None of that matters to him,” she says firmly. “Or to me. You’re a good person, Ariel. You two have a connection that makes even me believe in soulmates, and I’m a hardened cynic with a rechargeable BOB.”
I frown. “BOB?”
Kara waves a hand. “Conversation for another time.”
Tears sting my eyes as I pull her into a hug. “Thank you. I’ve never had a sister, but if I did, I would choose you. I don’t know what I’d have done without you.”
Kara blinks back tears. “Sleep,” she says, smoothing my hair like I’m made of something precious. “We’ll sort it out tomorrow.”
“Okay,” I lie, because the plan blooming in my chest isn’t sleep. It’s escape.
In the spare room, I set the alarm the way she taught me the first night—tiny buttons, tiny beeps, tiny future—and sit on the bed until the outlines of my choices sharpen like barbed wire.
Maybe I’ll go back to the water’s edge and wait. Maybe I’ll find a mermaid daring the boundary and beg her to take a message to my father: I’m sorry. Please can I come home? Maybe he’ll listen. Maybe he’ll send for me, and the magic will forgive me.
And if not? Do I try to swim down anyway, lungs burning, legs useless, hope heavier than stone? Or do I vanish into the forest and become a rumor with red hair?
Without Everett, the human world feels like a map with all the names scraped off. With him, it feels like a future. But if staying with him means our lake dies, my people sicken, and the old songs are sung for the last time, then loving him is the most selfish thing I could do.
Changing into soft cotton pajamas that smell like roses, I slide under crisp sheets. Tears soak the pillow as I pull it over my head to hide the sobs my heart insists on making.
The tear-stained pillowcase will wash. The ache won’t.