Chapter 10
I turned and hightailed it back into the kitchen.
I kept going through the door that led to the private hallway that led to my bedroom.
Closing myself inside my room, I pressed my back against the door.
My heartbeat was racing, and my breaths were coming fast. Too fast. I was afraid I might be on the verge of a panic attack or worse. I had to get control.
To calm down, I tried to think of a rational explanation for what I’d just seen. Maybe I was still asleep, and this was all some bizarre nightmare. Maybe the tail was a costume—a really good costume—and Xander was playing a joke on me. Maybe, maybe, maybe…
But deep down, I knew these rationalizations were just as weak as the rationalizations I’d come up with to explain away Xander’s little oddities.
He wasn’t concussed.
He wasn’t an undocumented immigrant or a non-native English speaker.
In fact, he wasn’t human.
Omigod, omigod, omigod, I thought as I began to pace around the small room. How is this even possible?
But as soon as I asked myself the question, I knew it wasn’t just possible. It was true. I felt it down to my bone marrow.
Thinking back over our conversations, it all fit together and made a strange kind of sense.
Although he’d been evasive about some things, Xander had flat-out said he was from overseas.
From somewhere wet. He’d even told me water was his area of expertise.
Of course, there was no real way I could have added it all up to mean he was part man, part fish.
But in retrospect, it was like he’d been dangling the truth right in front of me all along, seeing if I’d bite.
And okay, maybe he’d never technically lied to me. But had he been toying with me this whole time? Laughing at me behind my back?
No.
No, I didn’t really believe that. I couldn’t. Despite everything, I still trusted my instincts about Xander. Maybe he had actual scales, but that didn’t mean he was slimy.
Casey was watching me, his eyes tracking me while I was well on my way to wearing a groove in the bedroom floor.
With a sigh, I stopped pacing and sank down onto my bed, and the dog crawled over and put his head in my lap.
His warm, furry presence was like a soothing salve, and finally, my heart rate slowed down. My breathing slowed down.
My mind slowed down.
Absently, I scratched Casey behind his ears and took stock of what I knew.
Or what I thought I knew. I went back to the beginning, back to when I’d first come upon Xander lying on the sand, fully exposed, every inch of him looking like the perfect specimen of a man.
But he hadn’t been a man, not really. And, well…
he hadn’t been perfect either. He’d been through some kind of genuine ordeal, that much was clear.
Drew could make insinuations about scammers and con artists all he wanted, but as someone who’d once fought for her life and lived to tell the tale—
Wait.
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
Something in my brain clicked. It was as if I’d just lifted the couch cushions and found a handful of long-lost puzzle pieces, and I could finally use them to fill in the holes in my spotty memory.
The thing was, I didn’t tell the tale of my near drowning. Mostly, I avoided the topic. And when I couldn’t sidestep the subject completely, I at least ducked questions about the details and stuck to the same basic facts.
Went swimming in the ocean.
Got a leg cramp.
Blacked out.
Woke up on the beach.
Met those three women who called 911.
And over the last ten years, since I tried not to think about the incident ever, those bare-bones facts had become the whole story.
But now, I realized there was more to the story.
I remembered the sharpness of the pain, the pull of the rip current.
I remembered fighting. And flailing.
I remembered the exhaustion. And the fear.
I remembered thinking I was a goner.
And then, out of nowhere, there was a boy about my age. A beautiful teenage boy with a gaze as deep as the ocean. Long, blazing-red hair. A necklace made of seashells. And the lower body of a fish.
Oh, sure, I’d convinced myself I’d hallucinated him. And over time, I’d forced myself never to even think of him. But now, it looked like my Little Merman hadn’t been some teen fever dream or the wild imaginings of a desperate, drowning girl. He had been real.
Holy shit.
He had been Xander.
The memories came like waves now, crashing through me.
I recalled how the young merman—the young Xander—had grabbed me around the waist. Just like Xander had grabbed me last night to keep me from tripping over the leash.
No wonder I’d been such a jumble of emotions then.
Obviously, I’d been experiencing some kind of flashback.
My body must have recalled his touch, even if my mind only had the vaguest glimmer of recollection.
On some level, I remembered him saving me.
Oh, God.
Had he really saved me? Saved me from drowning?
I swallowed around the lump that was rapidly rising in my throat.
Back then, he hadn’t come at me with a life preserver or an oxygen tank.
There’d been no mouth-to-mouth, no CPR. He’d simply pushed my hair aside and taken off his necklace—and, hello?
Xander was wearing that same strand of shells and beads right now, wasn’t he?
How the hell had I not made the connection sooner?
I swallowed again and blinked back the tears that suddenly seemed to be brimming.
As a drowning girl, I’d thought it was strange when he’d put that necklace on me. But after that—miraculously—I’d been okay.
Then, he’d smiled at me—and oh, the way he’d smiled at me! It was that smile, of course. The one that kept making me think I’d met Xander before.
Now, I knew why I’d been having such major déjà vu. I had met him before.
Outside, there was a flash like lightning.
Next, I heard footsteps—footsteps—coming down the hall. I glanced at the clock, but it wasn’t even 6:00 a.m. yet. Too early for Maureen, the part-time housekeeper, to be here for her shift. Did that mean Xander had legs again?
There was a knock—tentative, but it made me jump anyway.
“Hannah?” called Xander’s voice through the door. “Are you in there?”
Casey sat up and gave a little bark in response, blowing our cover.
I swiped at my eyes and tried to compose myself. “I—I’m here,” I called back after a moment.
“Can we please…talk?” Xander asked.
I didn’t need to ask about what.
I stared at the closed door. Was I ready for this?
I wasn’t sure. I was calmer but still not calm.
The whole merman thing still had my head whirling like that teacup ride on the boardwalk that made me dizzy just to watch it.
And on top of that, ten years of pent-up feelings—feelings I’d never really dealt with and didn’t know what to do with—had my heart swelling to the size of a beach ball, my chest near to bursting.
But since I’d found Xander unconscious on the shore, I’d been waiting for him to talk to me, to tell me what was going on with him. And now, here he was, offering to do just that. Okay, so this wasn’t exactly the conversation I’d been expecting—but who the fuck could have expected this?
I rubbed at my eyes again. Took a deep breath. Let it out slowly.
If Xander had indeed once saved my life—my literal life…
And if he wanted to talk…
Didn’t I owe it to him to listen?
Slowly, I rose from the bed, walked over to the door, and opened it an inch or two.
Peering through the crack, I met Xander’s gaze.
His green-like-the-sea eyes were a storm of emotions.
His long, fire-red hair was messy, like he’d been running his fingers through it.
His usual smile was absent, his face creased with worry.
He was standing—standing—in the hallway, but I couldn’t help lowering my gaze anyway to see if his legs were back. They were. I had an excellent view of them, as well as the rest of his ultrabuff body, because all he was wearing was the towel I’d given him, precariously draped around his waist.
Desire tugged low in my belly.
I recognized it as the same desire I’d felt ten years ago, when neither my near-death experience nor his fish tail had quelled my raging teenage hormones one bit.
I wasn’t a hormone-addled teen anymore. But dear God, he sure made me feel like one.
If we’re going to talk, I thought, he’s going to need to cover up.
“Get dressed,” I told Xander a bit gruffly, dragging my gaze back up to his face. “I’ll meet you in the kitchen.”