Chapter 8
LIAM
That damn shell spoke in my voice.
In six years and thirteen matches, it has never once done that. It always yaps about surface-level attraction, someone’s curiosity, their fleeting interest in the silver-haired bartender with the sad story.
It never said what I felt.
And her ass? Couldn’t it have mentioned I like the way she tucks her hair behind her ears repeatedly, or how her lips quiver when she wants to really laugh? Now she probably thinks all I’m doing is staring at her ass, which is very nicely shaped.
Whenever I look at her and merge the consideration that she’s my actual soulmate, my body comes to life like a dormant beast. Like perhaps I’m permitted in wanting her, knowing I won’t have to say goodbye. To protect her, too. Because if she’s actually mine, Thalassa can fuck off with her curse.
I had truly accepted my fate with the sea witch until a romance author with a cracked phone case brought my shell to the bar, and with the rules changing on me.
I grip the steering wheel and keep my eyes on the road because looking at her right now feels dangerous.
She's in my passenger seat with her laptop bag and the shell that followed her like a stray.
Something about the way she named it “Shellie” makes something in my chest do a thing I can't explain.
I want to take care of her.
Not in the abstract way I've felt responsible for the others—the guilt of dragging another innocent person into Thalassa's orbit.
I want to make sure she eats breakfast. I want to know why she laughs that way when she drops things, like joy startles her.
I want to put myself between her and every flower pot and seagull and ounce of dark magic that Thalassa sends her way.
Damn, I forgot what it was like to want someone.
With the others, I kept my distance because wanting something I couldn't have felt like cruelty, to them and to me. I didn't let myself look too long or think too much, because what was the point? The shell would move on and so would they, and I'd go back to wiping down the bar and feeling nothing.
But the shell isn't moving on. It's getting louder. It spoke in my voice. And when Freddie grinned at me from the top of those stairs and said ‘that is fun to hear’, something in me unlocked that I didn't know was still there.
I glance at her for a moment. She's looking out the window, fidgeting with the strap of her bag, the shell pulsing softly between us.
Yeah. I'm not letting anything touch her.