CHAPTER 20
She did everything she needed to do for the light and then headed back into the night.
She didn’t often go out at night, mostly because she was always hovering on the edge of sleep-deprived already and the last thing she needed was to sprain an ankle or something, but tonight the moon was so bright, she didn’t even need to bring a candle.
She wondered if Kallias’s eyes were better than hers in darkness and quickly decided they must be for he had to see not only at night but at night underwater.
He was already there waiting for her. The moon was almost full but not quite, and it was rising over the distant horizon, sparkling its pale beauty over the water of the cove below. It matched him so well, like he was a spirit of the moon, like he and it were one, like he belonged to it.
How utterly beautiful.
She hopped down to the water level and he turned to look at her. “I was almost worry you wouldn’t come,” he said. “After…” He couldn’t find the right word and honestly neither could she.
“Sorry,” she murmured. “I was out of line. The truth is”—she sighed heavily—“I, well, the truth is I’ve been alone a really long time and I’ve never had a true friend and…well, maybe I got carried away.”
“Carried away?”
“Well, uh, it means that I may have jumped ahead of myself.” She frowned. That was probably just another metaphor that wouldn’t make sense to him. “It means I got excited and maybe let my emotions—my heart—skip a few steps.” She gave a nervous laugh. “I’m still not making much sense, am I?”
“Yeah,” he admitted. “I still don’t understand.”
When she didn’t say anything he said, “I alone most my life too.”
His voice was so gentle, so tender and soft that she didn’t even bother to correct the grammar but instead gently touched his face again and he smiled at the touch.
“I like not alone,” he said.
She smiled warmly. “I like it too.”