Chapter 10
LEO’S NOTES
Place: Cornwall, England
Favorite quote: People often mistake pixies for fae, but they are an entirely different species. Unlike the fae, pixies are generally helpful to humans, especially when enticed by flowers, mirrors, and other sparkling delights.
Misc: Sold at auction to anonymous buyer
Pan sat in the bow facing away from Leo, like a cranky, sleepy-eyed figurehead. When he’d spotted her marching across the blueberry field, he’d leaped into action. He’d already been thinking about taking the boat out, that was true, but maybe not quite so early.
He was pleased that she was facing the other way, so he could stare at her. Wearing a red hoodie over black bicycle shorts and green rubber boots, looking fucking adorable with her bedhead hair and sleepy face.
Still, he didn’t quite understand this renewed infatuation with her.
Well, he understood a little—the pink of her tongue, the pink of her nipple, his heated, muddled memories of the two of them together as teenagers.
But not this hunger. He wanted more of her.
Plus, he loved the way her ass looked in those Lycra shorts.
And he finally understood why she broke up with him.
Back when they’d been teenagers, she’d blindsided him with her sudden anger. He hadn’t realized how much he’d hurt her. He’d been so sure that he’d never marry a normal, because of his mother, that he hadn’t considered how that would affect Pan.
She’d lived next door to his mom her whole childhood but he doubted that she really understood. He’d always kept that part of his life private, even from Pandora. He’d told himself it was for his mom, because she deserved privacy, but the truth was that he didn’t like thinking about it.
Plus, he’d been so sure that Pandora would get her gift. She was so magical even without it.
He watched her hair ruffle in the breeze and considered letting up the sail, but he didn’t want to end the moment.
They were so easily falling back into their old rhythm together.
Well. As long as he didn’t talk about her gift.
Maybe he’d work his way around to that. Explain why she should leave no stone unturned.
Instead, he rowed them away from the boathouse, enjoying the exercise and the sound of the oars dipping into the water.
“How’s it going being a music teacher?” he asked, a few minutes later.
Pan half-turned. “I love it. I don’t know. The pay is bad, nobody respects you, and every year you get one or two nightmare kids, but I love it. I guess because every year I also see the light go on in a few kids’ eyes.”
“You really don’t need a gift to be happy,” he said, though he still thought a gift would make her even happier.
“Yes! Thank you. I mean, I’m ready for a vacation by June, but my job makes me happy. Music’s been a central part of my life since I started playing flute in the fourth grade.”
“Nah.”
She fully turned to look at him. “What do you mean, ‘Nah’?”
“Music’s been a central part of your life since you sang that ‘Gingerbread Baby’ song in the first grade.”
Her laughter sounded like ripples of water lapping against the hull. “I can’t believe you remember that.”
“‘Can’t catch me, I’m the gingerbread baby,’” he sang, in his tuneless voice.
“I see why you need help with the musical scores,” she told him.
“You should sing to the ocean, Pan. Sing to the waves, like a”—he almost said fae princess but that sounded too gift-y—“siren.”
“A siren?” she said.
He cleared his throat. “Just don’t lure me to my death.”
“We’ll see,” she said, with a mischievous smile.
The oars creaked in their locks. His shoulders loosened and his palms warmed with a satisfying ache. The cormorants bobbed in the water. The boat glided across the quiet, slick sea as he rowed around the outside of the cove.
“Remember how we used to race the kayaks here?” Pan asked.
“You always cheated by splashing me.”
“It was my only chance of winning,” she cried. “You know I’ve always been the hare and you the tortoise.”
“Are you saying I’m slow?”
“Methodical,” she told him. “While I run around creating mess and drama and—”
“Fun,” he finished and appreciated the way she smiled at that.
The water turned choppier at the edge of the cove, and the wind rose, but Leo kept rowing. He didn’t want to ruin the mood with all the fuss required to set up the sail.
“Oh, look!” Pan pointed up ahead. “Harbor seals.”
Two chubby seals drowsed on a wide green buoy. One gazed at them with soft brown eyes, and seemed to raise a flipper in greeting. The flipper bobbed as the buoy rose and fell in the waves, and Pan waved back.
“Now that’s a gift,” she said.
“Lazing around, fat and happy in the sun?”
“I’d be a natural seal,” she said. “Do you think there are selkies?”
“A person who shape-shifts into a seal? Not anymore,” Leo told her. “And I wouldn’t want to run into a kelpie. In the oldest tales, they rise from the water looking like horses, and children clamber on hoping for rides, then get drowned and eaten.”
“That’s brutal,” Pan said. “Magic has become soft.”
“Good thing, too.”
“Oh, now you’re against eating children?”
He laughed. “I only want lobster.”
After the boat rounded the cove, Leo let them drift, carried by the waves. A few fishing boats caught the low morning sunlight, and beyond them was a view of the peninsula. Fields of lupine and Queen Anne’s lace wove together on Beane Isle’s hillside like a tapestry.
Pan smiled at the sight. “It doesn’t get better than this.”
“Yeah.”
Leo loved Boston, but this was home. He knew the coves here, he knew the butterflies that flitted through the summer flowers on the hill.
He’d walked and waded along every inch of coastline, and he felt the gentle magic that saturated the island.
He worried, along with everyone else, that without more business, the town would slowly fall apart.
A lot of locals were talking about moving away during the off-season.
“Wind’s not really picking up, is it?” Pan suddenly said.
“You should try singing,” he said. “Maybe that’ll summon a breeze.”
“Don’t you start with me!”
He raised his hands in surrender. “I just want to hear you sing, Pan.”
“Sure, you miss the gingerbread song.”
“Sing one of the old songs,” Leo suggested. “That way you can tell your parents to leave you alone for the rest of the summer. I’ll back you up, tell them you tried.”
“You’re so full of shit.”
“Yeah,” he said. “But I really do want to hear you sing.”
She sighed. “Fine.”
“Fine what?”
“I’ll try anything once,” she said.
The thought of her trying anything once distracted Leo, so he just watched dumbly while Pan kicked off her boots. She climbed barefoot onto the wooden bench and stood there, preparing to sing to the waves. She balanced for a moment and raised her hands like some glorious goddess.
When she started singing, her voice was sweet and dark, almost chocolatey as it rolled across the cove.
She left her lover lying there,
Lying there, lying there,
She left her lover lying there,
To steal the child a-sleeping.
She saw the waves crash the ship,
Crash the ship, crash the ship
She saw waves crash the ship,
She danced and she made merry.
She searched the island tarns and then,
Wandered through the silent glen,
She saw the mist upon the ben,
And begged a boon from the fae.
She begged a boon,
Begged a boon
She begged a boon
And gave the child to the fae.
Her voice faded, and Leo watched her in awe.
Slow seconds passed, or maybe minutes. He couldn’t tell.
He’d heard versions of that song before, a traditional faerie-kin supplication—or warning—but he’d never heard it so raw, so full of life, and he found himself struck silent. All he wanted to do was hold her.
Instead, he watched her—until a seal surfaced beside the boat and tried to heft itself aboard.
“No, no,” Leo blurted.
The seal barked a few times, pulled harder, failed to lift its bulk inside—and set the boat to wobbling. Pan lost her balance. She windmilled her arms and Leo stood and reached for her. Of course, his motion rocked the boat worse than the seal, and Pan shrieked and fell backward into his arms.
He caught her, and felt her shudder against him.
Crying. He held her closely, wanting—needing—to comfort her.
Despite what she pretended, she really did want a gift.
And she clearly mourned her inability to find one.
He opened his mouth to remind her that there was still time, to tell her not to give up, but thank the Dames he didn’t say anything before he realized that she wasn’t crying.
She was laughing. “Oh, Dames, that seal! Did you see how chubby? It was like being boarded by a bean bag chair!”
He kept holding her, because he couldn’t think of a single reason not to.
“And those barks! Tell me that didn’t sound like he was saying yadda yadda yadda.” She frowned at her foot. “Ow. I got a splinter.”
The way her tone changed in an instant almost made Leo smile. She’d never been good with pain. Dames, she was adorable. He lowered her onto the seat, this time facing him. Her face was scrunched in discomfort.
“Let me see,” he told her.
She propped her bare foot in his lap. “It’s in the big toe.”
He touched her ankle, then wiped some grit from the sole.
Something about touching her bare foot felt intimate.
Not in a creepy way but… well, maybe in a slightly creepy way.
Just a default male “she’s so soft and delicious” way.
Anyway. Pan pouted and he caught sight of the splinter, a sliver of wood long enough to grab with his fingertips.
“I’ve got it,” he said, and pulled the splinter from her toe.
“Ow!”
He rubbed her foot, and wanted to say something, but he didn’t know what. About magic, maybe, or about families. Maybe he’d been avoiding her, too, all these years, because he didn’t know what to say to her. He didn’t know what to do.
An osprey shrieked, and the seal’s glossy head broke the surface and barked once more before diving again.
“Sailing reminds me of being kids,” Pan said. “When everything was possible.”
“Plenty of things are still possible,” he told her.
She smiled wistfully, and looked toward the island. He followed her gaze. The waves splashed and rose against the jagged shore. Beyond the rocks, a stretch of weeds and wildflowers tumbled toward the dark green of pine trees.
“You can see Hattie’s house from here,” Pan said.
He squinted. “Where?”
“See Philip’s sculpture?” An egg-shaped piling of rocks sat among a swath of ivy, looking like an alien capsule. “It’s straight up from there.”
“Oh, right. Albert lives there, too.”
“And the Shrigleys.” Pan wrinkled her nose. “I’ll never get to see Philip juggle rocks again.”
“It’s pretty boring anyway.”
“Just like Philip,” they both said, and laughed.
Pan leaned her head against his shoulder. “I missed you.”
“You never should’ve stopped talking to me.”
“Well, I only did that because you turned out to be a dick.”
“Oh, now you don’t like dicks?”
Pan lifted her head. “Excuse me?”
“Not like that!” He thought for a second. “But, uh…”
“But what?”
“What if I want more than a friend?” Leo held his breath as he waited for her answer. He didn’t know what he was doing. He’d lived his life knowing that he’d never marry a person without a gift, but this was Pan. All his resolutions went out the window when it came to her.
She gave him a sly smile. “Even though I don’t have a gift?”
“Yet.”
“Hey! No. Bad. You’re supposed to say, ‘Who cares about a gift? You’re more than that.’”
“You are more than that,” Leo said, feeling the mood shift. “Of course you are! And I can’t stop thinking about you. In the boathouse.”
When she shook her head, her curls tickled his face. “You’re going back to Boston soon anyway.”
“You live in Boston.”
“Not in a two-million-dollar apartment overlooking the Charles River with gardens and a ballroom and footmen!”
“I don’t live in Bridgerton, Pan.” He touched her knee. “You’re only home for the summer, aren’t you? After that, we’ll both be in Boston.”
“Separately.”
“Is it because of Gabe?” He felt a sharp stab of jealousy.
“I don’t know what’s going on between me and Gabe.”
“Well, I don’t know what’s going between you and me. That’s no reason to stop.”
She shot him a severe look that only made her sexier. “Gabe and I got together last summer and when I came home we just picked up where we left off. He’s not in love with me.”
“Are you in love with him?”
“No.”
Leo’s heart loosened. “Sounds like there’s no future in it.”
“Yeah, but Gabe doesn’t have his gift, so…”
“So what?”
“So he doesn’t think he’s too good for me.”
“Pan,” Leo said. “It was never about that. You don’t understand. My mother—”
“Is adored by your dad and the faerie-kin community.”
“Yeah, but none of them lived with her. None of them grew up with a normal mom in a faerie-kin family.”
She pushed him away from her. “Oh, now you think I’m going to be a bad mother?”
“You know that’s not what I’m saying.”
“I think we should head back before someone gets shoved overboard.”
Leo stood to rig the sail. He felt sick, but he doubted Pan had changed. He knew from experience, if he pushed her too hard, she’d blow up. So he hoisted the sail and asked her to cleat the main halyard to the mast. They sailed back to the boathouse silently on sun-struck salty waters.