Chapter 10
FREDDIE
It's been four days, and Dove was right that gossip spreads like a hurricane here.
Kira told a selkie. The selkie told her pod.
The pod told the mermaids. The mermaids told everyone.
By day two, the woman at the bakery handed me a free croissant with a wink, a man at the hardware store gave Liam a knowing nod, and Odessa sent me a handwritten note that simply said: Told you everything washes up eventually.
Dove has called me eleven times. I've answered five of them. The other eight I let go to voicemail because she keeps using the word "soulmate" and I'm not ready.
Because what if that’s seriously real? What if this hunk of a man is my actual soulmate? That’s so much bigger than any fake dating!
"The full moon gathering is in nineteen days," Liam reminds, setting a plate of eggs in front of me that I didn't ask for.
I stare at the fluffy, scrambled goodness, as if suddenly aware I’m in a dream as lucidity comes to me. “So, you know I make these nearly every morning for myself. Did I tell you that, or something?”
He pauses as he hovers the coffee pot over his mug, his head moving slightly as if he’s looking around for the answer. “I just figured it was an easy thing to make you.”
Right, right that has to be it. Not a soulmate thing or anything. So far all I’ve eaten were bagels because it felt like the least invasive breakfast option in his kitchen. “Well, thank you. You don’t have to make me breakfast, you know.”
“It’s called a polite gesture,” he teases.
I scoop up a decent bite of eggs, and admittedly… they’re really good. "Nineteen days," I repeat once I’m done chewing, wrapping both hands around my mug once I put the fork down. Of course, he uses a French press. “What happens again?” I ask, trying to get my bearings.
"At Silvertide Beach, the sea folk gather, there's food, music, the whole thing. And Thalassa will be there,” he says, sitting across from me at the table with his own breakfast slightly steaming in front of him. “We call it the Luminary. We do it four times a year.”
The morning light through the glass wall catches his hair, his jaw and the tattoos on his forearms, and I'm getting dangerously used to this view.
“And we’re just going to wing this entire thing? Show up as a couple?”
“The point is, we have to kiss under that moon. We don’t have to act like a couple if we don’t want to. That was just because of Brody at the bar, and you know, the fact you’re everywhere with me.”
“And what if… well, what if the kiss works?”
His gaze slowly raises to meet mine, and there’s an intensity in there I wasn’t quite expecting. Something extremely delicious, might I add. It’s a way that Tommy never looked at me, but I kind of always wanted him to. “Then we’ll be having a whole different conversation.”
I can’t stop the dirty thoughts from cycling through me, because if I kiss this merman and his curse breaks, then that means he’s my soulmate. So all mine, right? And if we’re kissing… well, I’m not going to stop any time soon.
I want to know just how much he likes my butt.
"So what does that mean, practically?" I ask with a high-pitch voice, clearing it.
“Like I said, Freddie, that’ll be a whole different conversation.”
His gaze doesn’t waver, and the longer we maintain this, the more heat that pools in my cheeks. “Okay," I say, exhaling. "Nineteen days."
Liam gently dips his head. “Nineteen days."
My heart rushes, but I want to so badly press with this next piece. Because the more I watch his mouth move, I just can’t take it anymore. “And then the kiss."
There’s a small moment where his gaze deepens, something more intense leaking out. For a brief moment, I’m aware that I caught a glimpse at a side of him that is very intimate, before he clearly shifts gears in his mind. “And then the kiss."
Here's the thing about living with someone—you learn their rhythms whether you want to or not.
By day six, I know that Liam wakes up before the sun. I know this because I hear him. It’s not that he’s obnoxiously loud or disruptive, if anything he's almost silent, but it’s the way his feet softly move across the floor.
I also know that he likes to be in the water around the time that the sun rises, and of course I’ve peeked out my window many times. He’s so ridiculously built that it honestly makes me step away, because there’s no way a man like him is going to indulge in me beyond whatever we’re doing.
To which I’m still very cautious with the soulmate stuff.
It doesn’t stop me from being nosy, though.
I know he drinks his coffee black and standing up, leaning against the counter, staring at the ocean through the glass like he's having a conversation with it. I know he reads before he opens the bar—mythology, mostly, thick books with worn spines that he handles carefully. Did I mention that I have a thing for hands? The manly type, the ones that look like they’ve seen and done a lot of work, with callouses and veins.
Especially to know watch him gently touch the pages…
It’s so hard not to let those thoughts cascade, because I also know that he works out.
Usually after he swims. I’ve left my window cracked open to let in the salty air, which of course means that I can hear movement, breathing, and the occasional low grunt that I am choosing to interpret as exertion and absolutely nothing else.
I have not gone downstairs during this time, despite being wide awake. I have remained in the loft, under the duvet if not looking out the window.
The shell is always telling me there are no boundaries. He’s supposed to be my soulmate, and fake dating would be so much easier if we actually touched each other. Maybe made out a few times. Clothes would even be optional.
Today, however, I need water.
I forgot to bring a glass up last night and my throat feels like sandpaper.
I tell myself this is as I pad barefoot down the stairs in my sleep shorts and an oversized T-shirt, hair a disaster, no bra, because it's six thirty in the morning and I assumed that whatever workout situation was still going on because I had heard him just start it.
My stomach drops as I see Liam in-between the space of his kitchen island and the wall cabinets, texting away on his phone as he leans against the island.
His shirt is off, his hair loose and damp with sweat, silver strands clinging to his neck and shoulders.
His back is to me, which means I have an unobstructed view of his muscles, his tattooed arm flexing slightly with his move of his fingers.
And did I mention I am weak for a man with ink?
It stretches from his forearms up over his biceps and across one side of his ribs, which look like waves and tide charts and something that looks like old script, all of it moving with him as he breathes.
I stop on the last stair.
I should go back up. I should absolutely turn around and go back up the stairs and wait until he's done and has put on a shirt and become a person I can look at without my brain shorting out.
"We're staring."
Liam glances up after Shellie speaks, then stands up straight as he quickly looks me over. "Morning," he says, like he's not standing there looking like that.
"Water," I say, which is not a greeting but is the only word my brain has available. “I’m just grabbing some water.”
“This is so embarrassing.” Awesome. Even the shell is embarrassed for me.
We both stare at each other, an awkward chuckled shared between us but we also don’t look away.
This is different from the other times. The banter, the shell's commentary, the laughing it off, that's been the usual pattern. He says something almost-flirty, the shell says something unhinged, I get embarrassed, we both pretend it's funny, we move on.
But the chuckle is behind us as we continue to stand here.
He's looking at me with those golden-brown eyes and they're not guarded.
They're not careful. They're open, in a way I haven't seen before, and I realize he's not putting the mask back on.
He's just standing there, breathing hard, sweaty and shirtless and looking at me like he's trying to memorize what I look like at six thirty in the morning with no makeup and bed hair.”
“His pupils are dilated and his breathing changed when he saw us."
Oh, that’s not good for me to hear. I admit… something electric fires off in my navel, especially as it’s now his turn to glare at the shell. So it’s not wrong, then?
"I need to get past you," I say quietly, clearing my throat, looking at the fridge behind him where the filtered water is. "To the kitchen."
"Yeah," he says, but doesn't move. Then he shakes his head slightly and bounces off from his lean, like he didn’t mean to get stuck in this. That kind, friendly expression returns, like the facade he wears for everyone else.
Then I remind myself that I look like hot garbage.
I step forward with that reminder, knowing that nothing is happening while I look like this, and he steps to the side. Same side. We do that terrible, cliché thing where you both try to go the same direction and end up closer than you started.
"Sorry—"
"No, I'll—"
I go left. He goes left. We both pause, our gazes connecting again as we realize how ridiculous this is. He's taller than me so I'm looking up.
"Just—"
"If you—"
Then that wall seems to come down from his gaze again, and that desire returns as he seems to just commit.
Liam places his hand on my hip.
Not a brush. Not an accident. His palm lands on the curve of my hip, firm and sure, and he holds me still.
Gently, but completely. Like he's placing me exactly where he needs me to be so he can pass.
His fingers press into the thin fabric of my sleep shorts, his thumb grazing the strip of bare skin between my shorts and my shirt, and my entire nervous system goes offline.
He moves past me. Smoothly. Like it was nothing.
It was not nothing.
“Do that again.”
His hand drags across my hip as he goes, lingering a half-second longer than it needs to, and then he's past me and heading for his room and I'm standing in the kitchen with the counter behind me and my hand on my hip where his hand just was.
“I’ll be back out in a moment to make breakfast,” he says over his shoulder, like a normal person saying a normal thing and not a man who just restructured my molecular composition with one touch.
I hear the shower turn on as I continue to stand there for an amount of time I'll never admit to. Then I get my water, drink the entire glass in one go, fill it again, drink that too, and lean against the counter, my belly slightly aching.
The shell glows on the countertop beside me. Warm. Pulsing. Almost tender.
"We're a goner.”
I’m almost surprised how soft and gentle the statement is, like it’s talking to itself more than to me.
How can I argue with that, though?