Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
“Hold it level,” Marina hissed.
Billionaire dragons, as it turned out, could not carry a tray to save their lives. She watched Alessandro navigate the Sweetwater Beach Club with the grace of a newborn giraffe. “Level. That means parallel to the floor.”
“I’m aware of what level means.”
“Then why are my crab puffs sliding toward certain death?”
Alessandro adjusted his grip. The tray tilted the other way. Three crab puffs made a break for it, tumbling onto the pristine sand below.
Marina rescued the tray before more casualties occurred. “Maybe just… stand somewhere and look decorative.”
“I don’t do decorative.”
“You do now. Go stand by the ice sculpture and intimidate anyone who tries to touch it.”
She left him there, glowering magnificently in his designer suit while mermaids in sequined sarongs swam circles around the club’s infinity pool.
The birthday girl, a sweet two-hundred-year-old named Coral who didn’t look a day over thirty, had specifically requested Marina’s honey lavender scones.
She’d also requested crab puffs, lobster tartlets, three kinds of bruschetta, and an elaborate tiered cake decorated with edible pearls and sugar seashells.
The order had kept Marina baking until midnight, her hands aching, her eyes burning, the kind of exhaustion that came from doing something that mattered.
Alessandro had stayed up with her. Not helping exactly, he remained useless with anything requiring delicacy, but keeping her company. Making coffee. Reading contracts while she measured flour.
She wasn’t sure when that had started feeling normal.
“Marina!” A familiar voice cut through the party chatter.
Mrs. Waverly, the selkie grandmother who ran the beach club’s sunset yoga classes, descended upon her with the determination of a small hurricane.
“Darling, the scones are divine. And your young man…” She nodded toward Alessandro, who was indeed standing by the ice sculpture looking like he wanted to set it on fire.
“Such a catch. Very handsome. Very… intense.”
“He’s not my—”
“Don’t be modest, dear. Everyone knows about the bond.” Mrs. Waverly patted her cheek. “Your grandmother would be so pleased. She always said you needed someone to crack that shell of yours.”
Marina blinked against the sudden sting in her eyes. “She did?”
“Oh yes. Many times. ‘Marina needs someone who’ll push back,’ she used to say. ‘Someone who won’t let her hide.’” Mrs. Waverly’s eyes crinkled. “Looks like the universe was listening.”
Before Marina could respond, the old selkie had swept away toward the champagne fountain.
A questioning pulse tugged behind her sternum. Alessandro, sensing her emotional turbulence. She waved him off. He ignored her and crossed the deck anyway.
“What happened?”
“Nothing.”
“That didn’t feel like nothing.” He stood too close, as he always did now. The fifty-foot limit had become habit, and habit had become proximity that neither of them quite needed. “You’re upset.”
“I’m working.”
“You’re upset and working. I can multitask my observations.”
She almost laughed. Almost.
“Mrs. Waverly mentioned my grandmother.” She looked out at the pool. “It’s fine. I just… I miss her.”
Alessandro was silent. She sensed him choosing his words carefully, something she’d learned he did when the topic actually mattered to him.
“I never met my grandmother,” he said. “She died before I was born. Lost everything to the curse and then just… faded. My father doesn’t talk about her.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It was a long time ago.” He paused. “But I understand missing someone you never got to say goodbye to properly.”
She looked at him, really looked, past the perfect suit and the unfairly sharp cheekbones and the arrogance that wore like armor. Underneath it, she saw exhaustion. Saw loneliness he’d learned to carry alone.
“Come help me with the dessert table,” she said. “You can carry napkins. Even you can’t destroy napkins.”
“That sounds like a challenge.”
The party stretched into the golden hours of late afternoon.
Marina worked the room with an ease that surprised even her. Here, among her grandmother’s friends and neighbors, she wasn’t shy. She knew these people. They’d watched her grow up, had cheered when she took over the bakery, had mourned with her when her grandmother died.
Alessandro’s surprise rippled across the connection, a slow dawning recognition that the quiet woman he’d been living with was not the whole picture.
She felt him watching her laugh with the mermaid contingent, joke with the selkie elders, charm a group of skeptical nixies into trying her salted caramel brownies.
Around six, when the party showed no signs of slowing down and Marina’s feet ached from hours of standing, Alessandro appeared at her elbow.
“Take a break.”
“I can’t. The cake hasn’t been served yet, and…”
“The cake is being handled by the mermaid grandmother who’s been eyeing it for the past hour. She seems competent.” He nodded toward the dock that stretched out into the harbor. “Come.”
She shouldn’t. She had work to do, guests to manage, a reputation to maintain.
She went anyway.
The dock was quiet, away from the party’s music and chatter.
The wood was warm from a day of sunlight, smooth under Marina’s palms as she settled at the end.
The harbor stretched before them, a handful of fishing boats bobbing at anchor, the lighthouse on the distant point already beginning to glow.
She kicked off her shoes and let her feet hang above the waves. The water was cold this time of year, too cold for most swimmers, but the chill felt good after hours in the crowded party.
Alessandro, after a moment’s hesitation that felt like a significant internal debate, removed his own shoes. His socks were designer. Of course they were. Probably cost more than her favorite mixing bowl.
“You’re different here,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“At the party. With your community.” He stared at the horizon. “You’re not hiding. You’re… present.”
“These are my people.” She pulled her knees up, wrapping her arms around them. “I’ve known most of them my whole life. It’s different when you’re with people who already know you.”
“I don’t have people like that.”
“No?”
“I have employees. Business associates. My brother, who I haven’t spoken to properly in months.
” He paused. “I had my grandfather, but he died when I was sixteen. And my father is…” Another pause, longer this time.
“My father is convinced that if we just work hard enough, the curse will somehow fix itself. He doesn’t talk about it.
Doesn’t acknowledge it. Just keeps losing money and pretending everything is fine. ”
His isolation settled into her bones. Years of carrying this alone. Years of watching his family crumble while being told not to mention it.
“When did you last relax?” she asked.
He actually laughed, a bitter, surprised sound. “I don’t remember. Possibly never.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
“It is.” He turned to look at her. “What about you? When did you last relax?”
“Before my grandmother died.” The admission came easier than she expected. “She was the only one who really knew me. After she was gone, I just… stopped. Stopped swimming. Stopped going to parties. Stopped doing anything that wasn’t the bakery.”
“Your pelt,” he said. “You mentioned you don’t shift anymore.”
“It’s in a trunk. In my closet. I haven’t touched it in two years.”
The sun dipped lower. The water turned copper and crimson.
“We’re quite a pair.” Alessandro’s gaze stayed on the water. “Two people who forgot how to stop.”
“Maybe that’s why the bond happened.” She didn’t quite believe it, but the words felt right anyway. “Universe’s way of forcing us to slow down.”
“The universe has a terrible sense of humor.”
“The worst.”
They sat in comfortable silence. The party noise drifted over the water, distant and dreamlike. Marina was acutely aware of how close they were sitting, shoulders almost touching, the warmth radiating from him like a banked fire.
She should move. Create distance. Maintain boundaries.
She stayed exactly where she was.
“Your grandmother,” Alessandro said after a while. “What was she like?”
“Fierce.” The word came out automatically, the first one that always came.
“Stubborn. Terrible at keeping secrets; she’d try to whisper gossip and the whole bakery would hear.
She could tell you someone’s life story from the way they ordered coffee, and she was usually right.
” Marina had to stop, swallow past the ache.
“She made the best honey cakes I’ve ever tasted, and I’ve never been able to replicate them exactly.
I think she left something out of the recipe on purpose, just to keep me trying. ”
A small laugh escaped her, watery but real.
“She believed in things,” Marina continued. “Magic and fate and true love. I thought she was naive. Now I’m not sure.”
“She sounds remarkable.”
“She was.” Marina looked at him. “What about you? What did your grandfather believe in?”
“Breaking the curse.” Alessandro’s voice was flat. “It consumed him. Consumed my father too. And now…” He stopped.
“Now it’s consuming you.”
He didn’t deny it.
“I’ve spent ten years searching for answers,” he said. “Every lead, every rumor, every whisper about curse-breaking magic. Nothing has worked. And the curse keeps accelerating, keeps taking more, and my father keeps pretending it isn’t happening—”
The next words barely held together. “I don’t know how to stop. If I stop, everything falls apart.”
His exhaustion folded over her like a wet blanket. Not just physical. The wearing kind that came from carrying too much for too long with no end in sight.
She didn’t have words. She didn’t have solutions.
She shifted closer until their shoulders touched.
Warmth bloomed in her chest: his surprise, and underneath it, gratitude. The simple relief of not being alone.
“We should get back,” she said eventually. “The cake.”
“The cake.”
Neither of them moved.
They returned to find the party in full swing and the cake already half-demolished by enthusiastic mermaids. Marina made her rounds, accepting compliments on the scones and promises to order for future events.
Alessandro trailed behind her, suffering through conversations with a patience that surprised her. Mrs. Waverly pinched his cheek and called him Marina’s “handsome catch” again. He endured it with only minimal teeth-grinding.
His discomfort radiated off him in waves, and so did his determination to endure it anyway. For her sake.
He’s trying, she realized. He’s actually trying.
At the bar, a siren in a silver dress had cornered Alessandro.
She was beautiful in the way sirens always were: otherworldly, untouchable, the kind of beauty that made ordinary people feel invisible.
Her hair cascaded down her back in waves that seemed to move on their own, catching the fairy lights strung across the deck.
Marina watched from across the party as the woman laughed too loudly, touched his arm too often, leaned in close enough that her perfume must have been overwhelming. Alessandro stood rigid, polite but clearly uncomfortable, his drink untouched in his hand.
She had no claim on him. The bond was temporary. In twenty-three days, they’d go their separate ways and never speak again.
But right now, watching this stranger flirt with him, Marina wanted to cross the deck and—
She felt Alessandro notice her jealousy.
Oh no.
His eyes found hers across the party. Surprise danced across his face. Or satisfaction.
He extricated himself from the siren with pointed politeness and crossed directly to Marina.
“The birthday girl’s mother asked me to help carry gifts to her car,” he said, as if nothing had happened. “I said I’d find you first.”
“I saw you talking to her.”
“She wanted to know if I was single.” He held her gaze. “I told her I wasn’t available.”
“That’s probably easier than explaining the bond,” Marina said.
“Probably.”
They didn’t look away from each other.
The party swirled around them, music and laughter and the crash of waves, but Marina barely noticed. She was too aware of Alessandro. The heat of him. The way the sunset light caught the gold flecks in his dark eyes.
Twenty-three days, she reminded herself. This ends in twenty-three days.
But right now, she couldn’t quite remember why that mattered.
The walk back to the bakery took longer than it should have.
Marina found herself slowing down, stretching the evening, reluctant to return to the apartment where Alessandro would go back to being her unwanted houseguest instead of…
whatever he’d been tonight. A companion.
A confidant. Someone who understood exhaustion and loneliness in the same language she did.
Halfway home, without thinking about it, she took his arm.
Alessandro glanced down at her hand on his sleeve. His surprise gave way to pleasure—not the performance kind, but the involuntary kind, the slight hitch in his breathing he couldn’t hide from the bond.
He didn’t pull away.
They walked the rest of the way in silence, her hand tucked into the crook of his arm, the stars coming out one by one above the harbor.
At the bakery door, Marina fumbled for her keys. Her fingers were clumsy. The lock stuck, as it always did when she was flustered.
“Here.” Alessandro took the keys from her, their fingers brushing. The contact sent a jolt through her, not unpleasant, just… intense. He unlocked the door and held it open.
“Thank you,” she said. “For tonight. For trying.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“You carried napkins without destroying them. That’s growth.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. Almost a smile.
“Goodnight, Marina.”
“Goodnight, Alessandro.”
She climbed the stairs to her apartment, hyperaware of him settling onto the couch below. She felt him removing his shoes, loosening his tie, exhaling slowly in the darkness.
She felt him not sleeping. The same way she wasn’t sleeping.
Sometime past midnight she reached for the alarm clock to check the date and stopped, hand hovering over the digits. The display blinked at her in a soft red countdown she could no longer remember the math of.
She turned it to face the wall.