Chapter 12
FREDDIE
The cove that this merman takes me to a hidden behind a rock formation that you'd never find unless someone showed you. Liam leads me through a narrow gap in the cliff face, his hand hovering near my lower back but not quite touching, and then the passage opens up—
The water glows.
Bioluminescent blue-green, pulsing gently with the rhythm of the tide, turning the entire cove into something from a movie. It amazes me that these views are hidden from the non-magical communities, and yet they exist so openly here.
“This is… beautiful,” I state, feeling a little excitement in my chest at the insinuation.
He drops down onto the sand, his silver hair catches the bioluminescent glow and turns faintly blue at the edges, and he looks up at me with those golden-brown eyes and I realize he’s very aware of what this set up looks like. He brought me here because he wanted this to be beautiful.
What a twat. This is something straight from one of my novels.
I'm so screwed.
"So," I say, sitting down across from him because sitting next to him feels like too much right now. “Come here often?”
He laughs a little, the warm sound mixing with the ocean waves gently crashing.
“You’ll see a lot more magical life during the Luminary.
These are like the bioillumisence in the human world, but on a new moon they glow so bright they create full shadows.
It turns crystal clear, and you can even see edges of a coral reef. ”
I can’t deny that on some levels, I feel like this man brings a comfort that defies logic.
Like his presence is so familiar I can’t believe we’ve never met, and yet I’m reminded I have no idea who he actually is.
“So tell me all about this Luminary thing. Is it mandatory? Or like celebrating Labor Day? Do you always go to it? ”
He chuckles slightly, pulling one knee up, resting his arm across it.
“No, it’s not officially mandatory. It's a ritual that happens four times a year, first full moon of each season. The sea folk gather at Silvertide Beach, the water activates, and it creates a magic circle. It's a sacred celebration, and it's also where the curse has to break. It’s more like a family gathering that everyone will notice if you don’t attend.”
I listen carefully, caught between watching his mouth move and also learning more about this world. His world. “Wait, the curse really breaks there? Seems, I don’t know, a little too easy or something.”
He tilts his head like he hadn’t considered that.
“Yeah, it’s a bit obvious, if you look at it that way.
When Thalassa cursed me, her priority was to ensure that whatever the condition was to break the curse was the tightest option.
” There’s a tension in his jaw that makes me want to know so much more about him, like how he and her even got together in the first place.
"She saw that the only way to break it was a true soulmate's kiss inside the Luminary circle, and if that was the contingency, then the curse would be full-proof, essentially. So that's what she built."
I pull my knees to my chest, watching the glow of the water pulse like a slow heartbeat. "So how big is this circle?”
He motions with his hand. “It’s more like a massive circumference. You’ll see the borders with floating candle lights. At first I thought it was too easy, but that’s before I realized how the shell can often get it wrong.”
“Yeah, that part. About it always being wrong.”
He slowly faces me, the soft light of night reflecting against his eyes. My heart races faster at the intensity of the setting, of wondering if he’s looking at me like this might mean something more—
“I’m bound to get it right! I’m confident this time, too!”
Shellie appeared in my pocket as I walked out the front door this morning, and I’ve since learned to just let the shell do what it’s going to do.
There’s a moment where neither of us smiles, and rather I catch how his eyes widen slightly like he’s trying to read me in the same way I’m reading him.
Why is this so magnetic? Is it the fantasy of it all?
Of the way this came at just right time in my life?
Is it because it makes me forget about Tommy, or the looming deadline?
“I think it might be right this time,” Liam admits, almost quiet enough to blend into the ocean waves. “In fact, I’m pretty sure it is.”
My heart definitely skips more than one beat. Oh—I didn’t expect him to claim that.
I don't even have a response to that. Not witty remark, no deflective tone, not even something wrapped in sarcasm or humor or any of the armor I've been wearing since I got here.
He's sitting in glowing water light with his silver hair turning blue at the edges, telling me he thinks the shell is right about us, and I have absolutely nothing to hide behind.
"You don't have to say anything," he adds, reading my silence with that quiet precision of his. "I'm just being honest."
I throw a small handful of sand at him and he grins, a nice real one, wide and warm, and for a second the weight lifts. We're just two people on a beach, flirting badly, pretending the universe isn't holding its breath around us.
"Come here," he says, a hint of a command in there that makes me weak at the knees.
My lips curl upward, and I’m certain I’m blushing. “I’m right here."
"Closer."
My pulse picks up as I shift across the sand until our knees are almost touching. He's looking at me with those honeyed eyes, and the playfulness from a moment ago has faded into something steadier. Something that makes my stomach feel like it's free-falling.
"I want to try something," he says, his voice warmer at this proximity. "And I need you to tell me if it's too much."
Dear god, I’ve never written anything that made me feel this way. Is this real life for me?
He reaches forward and takes my hand. Turns it over in his, veins protruding, even visible through the ink. His thumb traces a slow line across my palm, following the crease, and the sensation travels all the way up my arm and into my chest.
"When I touch you," he says, watching his own thumb move across my skin, "I feel things I'm not supposed to be able to feel. Not full emotions. More like... the shape of them. The outline. Like hearing a song through a wall."
My anticipation deflates like a balloon being punctured. “Is that new?" I ask, trying to retain composure. I can’t let him know I basically just tripped and fell head over heels for a solid minute, hoping for a much more profound confession.
He raises his gaze to connect with me. “That's only with you."
Oh, nope, I’m right back to falling for this man—“His thumb on our palm is unreasonable… We want more.”
The air between us collapses.
He doesn't move immediately. He stays there, holding my hand, his jaw tight, his breathing deliberate, looking at me like he's standing at the edge of something and deciding.
I can almost see the war behind his eyes, the six years of keeping his distance, the thirteen times it went nowhere, the disciplined refusal to want things he can't have.
Then something in him shifts. I see the exact moment he stops fighting it.
He lets go of my hand. Both of his move to my face, one on my jaw, one sliding into my hair, and he pulls me to him. Not gently. Not politely. He pulls me to him like a man who just made a decision he can't take back.
I meet him halfway.
This kiss is full of heat and intention and the kind of urgency that makes you forget where you are. My hands grab the front of his shirt and I pull, and he lets me, before taking over.
His fingers tighten in my hair—not enough to hurt, enough to direct—and he tilts my head back to deepen the angle. A sound escapes me that I will absolutely deny later. He swallows it like he was waiting for it.
My back hits the sand.
I don't know how it happens. One second we're sitting, the next he's shifted and I'm lying back and he's braced above me on one arm, his silver hair falling around us like a curtain, and the warm softness of his mouth hasn't left mine through any of it.
The bioluminescent water glows beside us, the sand cool against my shoulders.
His body is so warm and heavy where it presses against mine, completely and irreversibly ruining me.
Especially as he re-positions so both of my legs are wrapped around him, his hips dropping all the way to press against me.
I don’t think anything can top making out with a hot merman on a beach.
He kisses my jaw. The spot below my ear.
The column of my neck, slow and deliberate, and I arch into it before I can stop myself.
My fingers find his hair and I grip it the way he gripped mine and the sound he makes against my throat—low, guttural, starving—sends something electric through my entire body.
"Freddie." My name in his mouth, against my skin, like he's tasting it.
"Yeah." It's barely a word.
He pulls back enough to look at me. The darkness of his pupils have eaten away at the brown, his expression is completely unguarded for the first time since I've known him. There's no mask. No careful control.
“We should possibly stop,” he says, and his voice is wrecked. “I haven’t felt… the curse stole a lot from me. Not that. That’s not what I mean—”
“Thank god.”
We both slow roll into a laugh, not even bothering to see where the shell is. Liam looks me over. “What I mean is, I don’t know if I can control myself with you.”
“Oh god please don’t.”
For once I’m so happy to have that shell, because that’s exactly what went through my mind as electric warmth utterly floods my system. I have my hands on his chest, on his shoulders, my fingers still threaded in his hair. “I agree with the shell.”
There’s a flash of deep hunger in his gaze. “If it’s ever too much, you stop me.”
“Only one way to find out.”