Chapter 3
CORA
The bonfire is already in full swing by the time Rex and I arrive. I’ve missed the part where people are still sober enough to pretend they have boundaries.
Rex is already unloading the platform from his truck bed when I pull up in my water taxi. He’s got the thing half-assembled by the time I tie off at the Snack Hut dock, because of course he does. Were-shark efficiency extends to carpentry, apparently.
“Need help?” I call, grabbing my guitar case.
“I’ve got it. You just look pretty and tune your guitar.”
“Sexist.”
“Accurate.” He grins at me over his shoulder, hefting the platform into place near the fire pit. “Besides, you’re the talent. I’m just the roadie.”
“There she is!” Mateo calls from the fire pit, waving me over with the enthusiasm of someone who has been waiting for this exact moment. “Harmony Glen’s favorite siren!”
“Sirena,” I correct automatically, weaving through the crowd. “Different mythology.”
“Same beautiful voice that makes grown men weep!” He’s grinning like he knows something. Given the Bennett sisters have had six hours to work, he does.
I’m wearing my bonfire dress. Less a garment, more a state of mind: something flowy that won’t get smoke smell permanently embedded, something I can move in, something that says I am here to perform, not to answer personal questions about my love life.
It is, I realize immediately, doing none of those things.
“Cora! Rex!” The younger Bennett sister materializes with two glasses of something that smells like rum and conspiracy. “We were just talking about you two.”
“I’m sure you were,” Rex says easily, accepting both glasses and handing one to me.
“It’s just so wonderful,” the older sister says. “We always thought you had a spark.”
I take the rum drink because if I’m going to survive this conversation I’m going to need help. Rex’s hand finds the small of my back, warm and steady, and I lean into it without thinking.
“We like to think so,” Rex says with that easy charm that makes everyone love him.
I’m saved from having to add anything by Mateo clapping his hands and announcing it’s time for music. Time for me to stop navigating my fake relationship and start doing the thing I came here to do.
Rex gives my back a gentle pat before stepping away to finish securing the platform.
I take my spot on it, guitar already there and tuned because Mateo is efficient like that.
The crowd settles into that expectant hush that always happens right before a performance, faces turned toward me in the firelight, and I take a breath.
“Evening, Harmony Glen,” I say, and my voice carries the way it’s meant to. Warm and clear and just threaded enough with sirena resonance that people lean in without knowing why. “Thanks for coming out. I’ve got a few songs for you tonight, and if you’re very good, I might even take requests.”
Someone whoops. Someone else whistles. I catch sight of Finnbar near the back, raising his beer in salute, and Mr. Calloway settled into a camp chair with the satisfied air of someone who has seen this show before and knows it’s good.
I start with something easy and familiar. An old folk song that everyone knows the chorus to. By the second verse, half the crowd is singing along, and I let myself relax into it. This part is easy. This part I know how to do.
It’s the other part that’s the problem.
Because eighty percent of my brain is not focused on the music. Eighty percent of my brain is scanning the tree line at the edge of the firelight, looking for a silhouette I have no business looking for, waiting for someone who has no reason to be here and every reason to stay away.
He’s back in town, I think, fingers moving through the chord progression on autopilot. He could be anywhere.
He could be here.
I finish the first song to enthusiastic applause and move into the second without pausing. If I pause I’ll have to think. Thinking is not on tonight’s agenda.
“This one’s for anyone who’s ever made a questionable decision and then had to live with it,” I announce. Gets a laugh because everyone in Harmony Glen has made at least three questionable decisions, and most of them were about real estate.
Halfway through the second song, someone calls out, “Play something for Rex!”
My fingers stumble. Just for a second, just enough that I have to recover the chord, but it’s there.
“Rex,” I say, with as much dignity as I can muster, “does not need me to dedicate songs to him. He knows how I feel.”
This is the right answer, because people aww like I’ve just said something heartwarming instead of desperately evasive.
I play the third song. Something slower, something that lets me use my voice the way it’s meant to be used, threading sirena magic through the melody until the whole crowd is swaying and silent and caught.
It’s the kind of song that makes people feel things they didn’t know they were carrying, and when I finish, the silence holds for three full seconds before the applause starts.
“Beautiful,” someone says.
“She’s so talented,” someone else murmurs.
I set my guitar down and step off the platform. Rex is there immediately, offering his hand to help me down even though I don’t need it. I take it anyway because we’re supposed to be selling this.
People drift over to thank me, to compliment the performance, to ask about upcoming tour dates. The questions are mercifully focused on the music and the business, and I’m grateful for it.
The whole time I’m scanning the edges of the gathering, stupidly looking for someone who isn’t there.
Someone who left me without a word four years ago.
What the hell is wrong with me?
It’s a good thing he’s not here, I tell myself firmly. I didn’t want him here, anyway.
Except some traitorous part of me does want him here, wants to see his face when he realizes I’ve moved on, wants him to see me happy and settled and completely fine without him.
Objectively, the worst possible reason to want anything.
By the time we escape the bonfire, it’s past eleven and I’m exhausted in a way that has nothing to do with performing.
Rex helps me load the platform back into his truck while I gather my guitar. “You heading back?” he asks.
“Yeah. You?”
“I’ll drive around. See you at home.”
I nod and head for my water taxi, still tied at the Snack Hut dock.
The lake is dark and quiet as I push off, the bonfire lights fading behind me as I glide across the water toward our house on the other side.
My personal dock comes into view, the porch light I left on casting a warm glow across the water.
I tie the boat off and head up to the house.
I do not think about Muir Callaghan or about the fact that he’s somewhere in this town, breathing the same air, walking the same streets, seeing the same stars.
By seven o’clock in the morning, I’m on the porch with coffee, wrapped in my blanket as I watch the mist come off the lake.
Rex’s truck is already in the driveway where he parked it last night, but I know he’s been up for hours.
He left the house before dawn to get his laps in, swimming as a shark in the pre-dawn darkness the way he does most mornings.
I was awake at six-thirty and the house was already quiet, his bedroom door open, his running shoes by the door undisturbed.
He appears now, walking up from our personal dock, hair still damp, carrying two paper bags that smell like heaven and Liana’s kitchen.
She’d texted him last night asking if he wanted pandesal for the morning, because the Harmony Glen gossip network operates at speeds that would make telecommunications companies weep with envy.
“You’re out and about early,” I say by way of greeting.
Rex takes the other porch chair, sets one of the bags on my knee, and opens his own. A were-shark intent on circling its prey for hours. He knows the inevitable.
“Fresh baked bread calls for early. Besides, I wanted to get some laps in before the day gets too full.”
Of course. Training before carbs. Should’ve known.
I take a piece of pandesal without ceremony. Liana put pandan in this batch, and I will need to deliver my thanks to her when my brain has sufficiently defogged.
“So,” Rex says, after a moment.
“So,” I agree.
Somewhere in the shallows, something splashes. A fish, probably, or Phineas on his rounds, checking the water the way he does, quiet and green and cheerfully minding everyone’s business without seeming to mean it.
“We should probably talk about last night,” Rex says.
“I was going to suggest we never speak of it again.”
“That would be the other option.” He turns his head to look at me. “But the Bennett sisters called me this morning at seven.”
I put my coffee down carefully. “Both of them?”
“Together, on speaker. They wanted to know if we’d thought about couple’s kayaking for the summer. As a date activity. That we could offer tourists.” A beat. “As inspiration.”
I close my eyes. “How long do you think before the whole town knows?”
“Cora, the whole town already knows. That’s what happens when you tell the Bennett sisters anything.” He sounds more amused than anything else. Somehow both comforting and deeply irritating.
“It’s seven in the morning.”
“And the day is just getting started.”
I open my eyes and look at the pewter water and think, with great seriousness, about getting in it and not coming back out until August. Hell, maybe I can swim and keep swimming.
Like someone else I know.
“Rex,” I say. “I am genuinely sorry. You did not sign up for this.”
He shrugs, pulling a piece of bread apart with his big hands. “It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine. I put you in an absurd position. You were very quick to back me up and I’m grateful but you are in no way obligated to keep this charade up.”