Chapter 33
Xander took a sip of his wine, gathering his thoughts. “I don’t know where to begin,” he said.
“Might I recommend the beginning?” I suggested. I tried to sound helpful and supportive, like he had the other day, and not flippant. But this whole situation was making me tense, so I wasn’t sure I pulled it off.
“Okay,” he said. “I suppose the beginning was when you told me the history of your family’s business and how you’ve been struggling with your place in it.
” He paused, seeming to carefully weigh what he said next.
“You see,” he continued slowly, “I understand what you’ve been going through more than you realize.
Because…I’m part of a family business too. ”
Xander was part of a family business?
That surprised me. Given the way he’d described his kingdom, I’d been imagining an underwater paradise where the merpeople just sort of…
swam around. But in retrospect, I could see how that was probably a foolish assumption.
Insulting, even. Xander, after all, was intelligent, hardworking, and extremely good with people.
He’d slipped easily into our community, hadn’t he?
So, it made sense that he’d come from some similar societal structure.
I tried to shift my thinking to envision his home as more of an undersea metropolis.
Irrationally, I pictured SpongeBob SquarePants flipping Krabby Patties down at the Krusty Krab.
“Well, what kind of business is it?” I asked. “Do you—do you repair things?”
“In a manner of speaking,” he said. “We sometimes repair…relationships.”
“Oh,” I said. “Like therapists? Or mediators?”
“More like…ambassadors,” he said. “To other underwater realms.”
Other underwater realms? I thought. There are other underwater realms?
For a moment, I couldn’t say anything. Meanwhile, Xander squirmed on his stool. For someone who was normally so open and earnest, he suddenly seemed cagey.
“And,” he said reluctantly, “we…rule.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, moving the whole other-underwater-realms thing to the back burner in a big way. “Did you say you rule?”
“Yes,” he said, nodding.
“So, your family is in government?” I asked.
He squirmed again. “It’s more like my family is the government,” he said. “Or more to the point, the monarchy.”
Monarchy?
I knew what the word meant. But I was having trouble getting my mind around what it meant in this context.
“You mean like…royalty?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said.
“You’re royalty?” I asked.
He shrugged, and his pale cheeks pinked. “My father is the king,” he said.
“Your fa—” I stopped short, remembering something. “The merman on the slot machine…”
“Reminded me of my father, yes,” he said.
I took this in. “So, if your father is the king, then…”
“I’m the heir,” he said, finishing my sentence when I couldn’t.
The heir?
Oh. My. God.
I felt my own cheeks pink as I recalled that conversation he’d mentioned, the one about my family business.
Talk about embarrassing! I’d actually called myself the “heir apparent” to the Sunny Side.
Ha! As if being heir to eight guest rooms under a leaky roof was somehow the same as being heir to the throne of a magical underwater kingdom.
I picked up my fork, sliced off a good-sized chunk of the flourless chocolate cake, and shoved it into my mouth.
Xander watched me, frowning. He knew my coping mechanism too well.
I swallowed, barely tasting the rich dessert. “So, should I be curtsying or bowing or something?” I asked. “Do I call you Your Grace or Your Majesty or…Prince Xander?”
“Never,” he said forcefully. “Because you and I are equals in every way.” He leaned in closer, focusing the full intensity of his green-eyed gaze on me.
“If anything, I should be bowing down to you. You’re amazing, Hannah.
You’re caring and kind and generous. And the way you’ve organized your friends and inspired them to work together… You’re also a born leader.”
A born leader?
I knew he was talking to me. He’d said my name, after all. And he was staring straight at me. Only, the woman he’d just described sounded like someone else.
But then, since Xander had come back into my life, maybe I’d become someone else. Or…maybe I was finally becoming my true self. I was shedding those ten years of fear and reserve like a butterfly shedding its cocoon. And finally, I was ready to fly.
“You’re amazing too,” I said. Okay, so he was a prince. But what did that matter, really? He was my prince.
“I love you,” said Xander.
Now, I wasn’t just ready to fly. I was soaring—or my heart was, anyway. “I love you too.”
It just slipped out. But as soon as I said it, I knew it was true.
I loved Xander.
I wasn’t sure when it had happened. Maybe it had been happening all along, starting back when I was girl, when I was in the water. When I’d been so afraid.
I wasn’t afraid now.
“I love you too,” I repeated, more intentionally.
Xander reached across the wine-barrel table and took my hand in his. “I think we make such a good team,” he said.
“I do too,” I said.
“And we could accomplish so much together.”
“I agree.”
“So, you’ll come home with me?” he asked.
Home?
He must be suggesting we go back to the Sunny Side and continue our Valentine’s Day celebration there. His phrasing was a little awkward, yes, but that wasn’t so unusual. The translation charm wasn’t perfect.
Still, the fact that he’d said he had something to tell me and something to ask me made me want to clarify.
“You mean home as in home to the B and B,” I said. “Right?”
“No,” he said. “I mean home as in home to my world.”
I pulled my hand back from his, gaping at him. And gaping some more. “Excuse me?” I asked when I found my voice.
“For much of my life, like you, I wanted to avoid the pressures of my birthright,” he told me.
“It was part of the reason I began spending so much time on your side of the portal. Being here didn’t just feed my curiosity, it also provided an escape.
Although, after that first encounter with you, I confess, I kept venturing back here for another reason too.
I kept thinking about you, hoping I’d see you again.
” He paused, eyes shining at me. “And now that I’ve finally found you… I don’t want to lose you.”
Everything was moving fast. Way too fast.
“Well, I—I don’t want to lose you either,” I stammered.
“But I can’t keep ignoring my responsibilities,” he said. “If those hunters discover the location of the portal—”
“Hey, hey, hey,” I said, interrupting him. “You heard Drew. They haven’t discovered anything yet. It’s not even clear that they can.”
“But it’s a possibility,” he insisted. “A possibility I can’t ignore. If my people are in danger, I have a duty to warn them.”
“Isn’t there some magical charm for that?” I asked, hoping there was a seashell that could transmit some undersea version of the Bat-Signal.
He shook his head. “To perform my duty, I would need to go back. To my world.”
So, there it was.
“But you could come back here afterward, right?” I asked. “After you warned them.”
He shook his head again. “We have protocols. Just like you had for protecting the bed-and-breakfast from the storm. If there’s an imminent outside threat to our world, we seal off the portal.
” He took a deep breath and fixed me with a serious gaze.
“Actually, I seal the portal. From the inside.” He reached beneath the collar of his shirt, lifted his necklace, and indicated an iridescent shard of abalone. “With this.”
I stared at the—what was it? A portal-sealing charm? “So, you have to be the one to seal the portal?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said. “It’s one of the duties of my position.”
Suddenly, I felt like I was falling. It was as if a switch had been flipped, a trapdoor beneath me had slid open, and I was plummeting down into nothingness.
I grabbed at the edge of the wine-barrel table to try to slow things down and stop this nauseating feeling of free-falling.
I gripped so hard my knuckles went white.
“And if you did that, we’d never see each other again?” I rasped.
“We would if you came with me,” said Xander with his trademark smile.
“Oh, my God,” I blurted. “I can’t come with you.”
He blinked, and his smile evaporated. He sat back in his chair, studying me. Was he just now realizing that we might not be on the same page?
Same page? We weren’t even in the same book. Hell, we weren’t even in the same library.
“I’m sorry,” he said after a moment. “I should have expected your hesitation. I’m sure you never imagined yourself as part of the ruling family of an underwater world.”
“Exactly,” I said, pouncing on that. “I mean, I have the Sunny Side to worry about. I can’t just give up my family business for yours.”
He looked confounded by that. “But after everything you said the other day, I thought…” Letting his voice trail off, he narrowed his eyes at me, his gaze boring into me. “Do you even want your family’s business?” he asked.
I balked at the question. I used to be sure that I did. Then, I started to second-guess everything. But now…
“I don’t know,” I said a little defensively. I readjusted myself in my seat, trying to get comfortable. But my current discomfort had nothing to do with the stool. “Anyway, that’s not the point.”
“Then what is the point?” he asked. As if it wasn’t obvious.
Holy shit, I thought. Do I really need to spell it out?
“The point is,” I said, “you can live on land. I can’t live under the sea.”
Xander indicated his necklace again. “You can if you wear this,” he said.
“In your world, my magic has limits. My ability to live a full human life is hindered by my need to constantly replenish my strength. But in my world, the Sea Wizard’s magic has no bounds.
So, you won’t just be able to function. You’ll be able to thrive. And we can be together without worry.”
I stared at the strand of magical shells and whatnot. It was my ticket to a life in Xander’s world, and I knew it. The Sea Wizard’s charms had worked on me before. They were the reason I was still here today. I had no doubt they would work on me again.
But at just the thought of being underwater—being permanently underwater—my heart rate started to climb. My chest felt tight. My extremities tingled. And just like that, I was that scared little girl again. The girl who’d almost drowned.
“It would take some planning,” Xander was saying. Obviously, he’d already given this a great deal of thought. “We’d have to be sure that the hunters were distracted while we swam for the portal. And that no one else was following us. But maybe we could enlist the help of your friends again?”
I shook my head, trying to keep the oncoming panic attack at bay. “I don’t swim,” I said. “Not anymore.”
Xander crinkled his brow, seeming genuinely perplexed. “I don’t understand,” he said. “You said you wanted to get back on the horse.”
“Back on…what?” I asked. Then, remembering the reference, I shrugged. “It’s just a saying,” I said.
“But it doesn’t have to be,” he said. “You can get back on the horse. And you don’t have to do it alone. I can help you face your fear.”
I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I needed to get out of here. Immediately. “You know what? Maybe you should stick to the plumbing,” I said, shoving the stool out from under me and getting to my feet. “You don’t need to fix me.”