Chapter 7
FREDDIE
Dove responds to my panicked text thread within thirty seconds, which either means she's between meetings or she sensed a disturbance in the witch force.
I've been typing under the table while Liam gets us refills, my thumbs flying.
So update: the shell might actually be right about me being his soulmate His sea witch ex is sending bad luck at me A flower pot almost killed me this morning But it stops when I'm near him Also the shell is getting more fragile the closer we bond and if it breaks his heart is gone FOREVER Dove.
I also need to live with him for the next three weeks apparently?
Three dots. Then the phone rings.
“Girl, what the hell is going on?”
“I don’t know,” I say, watching Liam sit back down across from me with two new fresh cortados, my heart already racing looking at it. “I just—”
“Listen, not that I don’t want to talk to you, but please put Liam on the phone. He’s there, right?”
I nod as if she’ll somehow see it, and then hand it over to him. “Dove wants to talk to you.”
I listen very intently with the smaller glass in-between my hands, my knee bouncing as Liam answers a few basic questions, covering what we just discussed.
Then I can faintly hear her talking on the other end, but don’t make out what’s being said.
At some point Liam agrees with something, and then hands it back to me.
“You there, Freddie? Alright… so as a witch, we study curses a lot. They have very strict structures, and knowing how to work within one is crucial magik. As much as I’d rarely recommend you just living with a stranger to you for three weeks, you’re probably safest living at Liam’s place.
His energy is the strongest counter to Thalassa and you're basically walking around with a target on your back without it. I don’t know if she’d actually, you know, kill you or something, but I also don’t trust her, and I do trust Liam. ”
I’m so taken aback as I stare at him, trying to process that I have to live with this man? “Dove, is this all real?” I ask, slightly adjusting in my seat so I give Liam my shoulder. “I’m kind of freaking out, honestly.”
Liam seems to lean over, like he’s about to offer me some comfort, but that’s as far as it goes.
“Not going to lie, girl, this isn’t great.
I wish I could come there. But Liam’s family is old and have a lot of power.
He’s safe, okay? Thalassa can’t risk actually bringing you serious harm, or she’ll get banned.
But she’s really upset, and her curse might backfire more than expected.
Please, it’s for your safety. I don’t like curses like these, which are steeped in bitterness. They’re messy at the edges.”
“Alright, please be as available as possible,” I say.
She laughs warmly on the other end. “Yeah, you call or text whenever, you hear?”
“Thanks, Dove.”
“And you know what, enjoy yourself. Liam is a catch.”
“Yeah he is.”
I glance at Liam, who perks a brow. I hang up the phone with a sigh, hitting the red button.
“What am I, exactly?” He playfully asks.
“Nosy.”
That’s when his lips spread wide to reveal rather nice teeth, and a handsome-ass smile. “I don’t think that’s what was said.”
I go quiet for a moment, because honestly, the more I look at him the more good looking he seems to become. “So, did she tell you that she recommends me living with you?”
He nods a few times. “Yeah, I don’t disagree with her, either. Are you okay with that?”
“I don’t think I have a choice.”
“It’s alright, Freddie. We can do this however makes you the most comfortable, alright?”
I nearly down the cortado in one go, the caffeine hitting my system quickly. “Okay… okay, fine. Let’s go get my things.”
We walk back to Dove's beach house together, and I notice immediately that nothing tries to kill me.
No rogue flower pots. No kamikaze seagulls.
No mystery puddles.The sun is warm and the breeze is salty and the worst thing that happens is the shell commenting on the way Liam's hair catches the light.
"It looks like liquid silver when the sun hits it. We should touch it."
“Are you wanting to touch my hair?” He asks, and there’s a play to his voice that has me both encouraged and worried for myself. I really like the way he flirts with me.
“I’m just noticing that it definitely doesn’t seem like normal human hair,” I reply, glancing at him while he walks beside me.
“It has a unique look when underwater, you know.”
“So you’re a real merman?”
“Yeah, one that spends way too much time on land.”
“Okay, I’ve been here a lot, but never really encountered a lot of, well, whatever you’d classify yourself as. A magical person?”
“That’s because we don’t usually live in the cove itself.”
I glance his way, some part of me registering that there’s a chance he might be my literal soulmate. Nope, still not able to accept that. “Why are you here, then?”
“The sea witch business. She makes being in the ocean unbearable.”
“Ah,” I reply, facing forward and spotting Dove’s cottage.
It’s a literal awkward in the silence, but more from the fact that we’re near each other for very specific reasons. Like what do we even talk about? Is he okay with the silence? Are we going to ever discuss the whole ‘we’re fated for each other’ thing?
I try to shake those thoughts away, entering the cottage.
It takes me me ten minutes to pack up because I never fully unpacked in the first place.
Liam waits in the living room, looking at Dove's bookshelf with his hands in his pockets, and I try not to think about the fact that this absurdly beautiful man is standing in my temporary living room while I shove underwear into a suitcase in the next room.
"She has a good book collection," he calls out. “Especially on Celtic lore.”
"Are you a mythology nerd? Is that a merman thing?"
"It's a ‘I’ve been mostly stuck on land for six years with nothing else to do’ thing."
I laugh so hard I drop a shoe, which feels dangerous in many ways. I haven’t felt something like this since Tommy. I grab my three suitcases, because yes I intended to be here for a while roll them into the living room. Liam looks at them. Looks at me.
"You packed for a while.”
I drop my hands to my side, then place them on my hips. “Yeah, I didn’t really want to go home any time soon.”
While his hands are still in his pockets, he faces me and takes a slow step forward. “Why not?”
“Oh, you don’t want to know.”
“I mean, I kind of do.”
There’s a hint of a blush in my cheeks, and this makes me realize how lonely I’ve been that even just a smallest hint of a hot man being nice to me is completely unwinding me.
“Well, my ex really broke my heart about a year ago. I’m basically over him, but I’m stuck in that in between where I’m not the new me. And I’m mostly here so I could maybe focus on my book and meet my deadline.”
Liam slowly removes his hands from his pockets, grabs the top of both of them. “I’ll take these to your car, and we can drive to my place.” His gaze then connects with mine, my heart fluttering a little. “Good to know you’re single.”
My stomach flips in a delicious way.
“Ooooh, yes!”
Liam starts laughing as he rolls the suitcases away. I want to ask if he’s single, but then realize that’s kind of why we’re in this mess. “I am going to bury that shell.”
“I kind of like it’s little commentary,” he says with his back to me.
I move quickly to open the door for him, and there’s a tightness in the air between us that tells me there’s definitely some kind of tension present.
It’s the way we partially make eye contact then awkwardly look away, or shimmy past the other like we don’t want to get too close because it might send a certain signal.
Especially when I can smell that cologne on him again.
I fumble for my keys, unlocking my silver Honda civic.
Liam lifts them with ease and places them into the trunk, and it’s now that I’m thanking baby Jesus for the fact that I decided to do a deep car clean before coming here.
Otherwise he might have seen a trainwreck of things I stash in my trunk.
I turn on the car just before he gets in, the vehicle slightly swaying with his new weight.
He leans back and spreads his legs slightly, his hands on his thighs.
“Some 90s alternative?” I ask with a slightly high-pitched voice, immediately turning that on through my phone, making sure it’s loud enough to drown out the silence. Or more specifically, a certain shell that might really make this all worse.
By the fates, I’m not prepared for this.
His place is not what I expected.
I expected a house. Maybe a cottage, like Dove's, or an apartment above the bar. Something normal with walls and a roof and a boring front door.
What I get is a structure that looks like it grew out of the cliff itself.
It's built into the rock face about a quarter mile past The Riptide, tucked into a cove that's partially hidden by a natural rock arch.
The front faces the ocean, like the house and the water are having a staring contest. It's made of weathered stone, dark wood, glass, so much glass, wide panels that let in the light, and most of them are open. It’s like the boundary between inside and outside barely exists.
There’s an actual channel of ocean water at the edge of his home, like a lazy river that goes right back to the ocean. "You have an ocean in your living room.”
He rolls my suitcases next to the gray couch, and I notice that he took car of all of that without me having to say a word. “I do actually need to soak in the ocean at least once a day, if I can. Otherwise it’s like a human being out in the dessert without water.”
I set my purse down on a stone counter that's smooth and cool under my fingers. "Can I see it sometime? The tail?"
A laugh spills out of him that he has to control. “Didn’t expect that… maybe one day. Can’t give that shell anymore reason to say the wild shit that it does.”
I grin at him—
“We would very much like to see it.”