Swans Landing #1 - Surfacing (21 page)

“What did you—”

But before I could say anything else, Josh dashed past me, his clothes now lying tossed aside on the sand behind us. He headed straight into the frigid water, never pausing as the waves crashed around and then over him.

Chapter Twenty-Three

The water was too cold. He would drown. Go into shock, slip below the surface, and be gone forever when I’d only just found him.

It took me a moment to remember that I could save him. That breathing underwater was no longer a problem. I kicked off my shoes and peeled off everything but my shirt and bra before diving into the crashing waves behind him.

A sharp pain ripped through my lower body once I was fully immersed. I squeezed my eyes shut and screamed. My skin shredded as the scales emerged, pushing themselves into place, and my toes spread, the web of skin between them stretching into a tail fin.

Once the change was done, I could pull myself from the tight ball I had curled into and stop drifting uncontrollably. I broke the surface, blowing water and hair out of my eyes.

Josh had disappeared. I wasn’t as confident in the water as Dylan had been, so my movements were slower and my dive wasn’t as fluid. Swimming was difficult, my legs not getting the hang of working together as one instead of two separate entities. My panic only made it harder.

The water was murky and the current strong under the surface. I couldn’t see Josh anywhere. Could I speak underwater? Would anyone be able to hear me?

“Josh!” I called. Or tried to. A thousand bubbles erupted from my mouth instead. I spun around in a circle, searching the dark water around me for signs of life. I wasn’t sure which direction I now faced, but there was no time to waste. Josh could be drowning this very moment.

I dove deep, pushing through the current that fought back against me. I felt as if I wasn’t making any progress floundering there in the riptide. Just as I thought I had moved forward, the current pushed me back again, farther away from where I’d started.

Exhaustion crept over me. I couldn’t keep fighting like this.

“Josh,” I tried to say again. But even I couldn’t hear my voice over the sound of the water in my ears. The only thing still keeping me alive was the fact that I could breathe underwater.

A strong arm slipped around my waist and slick scales brushed against my own. A warm body pressed close, pulling me up toward the surface. I turned, wrapping my arms around his neck and burying my face in his shoulder. How had Dylan found me? And had he found Josh in time?

But when we broke the surface and the murky water cleared from my eyes, it wasn’t Dylan I found swimming next to me.

“Josh,” I gasped. I hugged him tight, running my hands over his slick back and shoulders to make sure it was him.

Then I pulled back, my mouth hanging open as I looked into his dark eyes. “You’re...?”

He nodded.

“But how?” I asked.

“I’m less finfolk than you are,” he told me. “My great-grandmother was finfolk. My grandfather could change, though he rarely did. My father couldn’t change at all. I only accidentally learned that I could as a child, after I fell into the water playing on that old pier. If I hadn’t been finfolk, I would have drowned.”

His tail brushed against mine in a light, delicate touch, sending shivers erupting up my body, all the way from tail fin to scalp. His arms still gripped me tight, holding me close to him as we bobbed along on the surface.

I reached up to smooth away the droplets of water from his hair. “No one knows?” I asked.

He shook his head. “My mother...She’s afraid of the finfolk. It would kill her if people knew.”

“Then why are you telling me?”

He didn’t answer. He pulled me so close that our bodies were pressed together, only my wet shirt serving as a thin curtain between us. He kissed me again like he had on the beach a few moments earlier, deep and hungry for more.

We slipped below the surface together, our tails tangled, our hands moving across wet skin and slippery scales. I leaned my head back, letting out a stream of bubbles from my mouth as Josh’s lips moved down my neck and over my collarbone. His hands traced trails along my back, at the edge of where my skin met the scales of my tail.

The ocean’s current pushed us farther out into the water, far from any prying eyes that may have been on shore. I tickled Josh’s tail with the tip of my fin, enjoying the delicate sensations that traveled through me at the slightest touch. My hair swirled around us as we twisted together in the water, the salty liquid moving between our mouths as we couldn’t stop kissing.

Later, when we had returned to the shore and lay breathless on the wet sand as the foam washed around us, our tails now legs again, I pressed my ear against Josh’s chest, listening to the steady sound of his heartbeat. I didn’t feel afraid with him. I didn’t feel as if being finfolk was the end of the life I’d always known. It felt natural, that we should be here, two people who never really fit anywhere except with each other.

I lifted my head and looked up at him. He gazed back at me, a contented smile on his face.

“Leave with me,” I told him.

Josh’s eyes snapped open. “Leave? Where are you going?”

“I can’t stay here,” I said. “I don’t belong on this island. I can’t live with Lake, not after all the lies.”

Josh’s fingers had been trailing up and down my arm, but they paused as I spoke. His smile had faded and he gazed up at the sky with a blank expression.

“Josh?” I prompted. “Come with me. I don’t know where we’ll go, but we’ll find some place together.”

“I can’t,” he said.

Now I pulled all the way from him, sitting up to stare down at him. “Why not?” I asked, fighting back the sob in my throat.

“I belong here,” he said. “I have to take care of my mom.”

His words shouldn’t have hurt the way they did. I turned away from him to face the water, crossing my arms tight over my chest. So that was it then. No one here had ever really cared about me. Not Lake, not Josh. In the end, the only person I could ever count on was myself.

Josh sat up, placing a hand on my shoulder. “You don’t understand,” he said softly. “My mom is sick. She’s not able to take care of herself. She needs me.”

“Don’t you think that maybe I need you?” I asked in a whisper.

At first, I wasn’t sure that he had even heard me. But after a moment, he moved forward, wrapping his arms around me and pressing my back into his chest.

“Stay,” he whispered in my ear. “Stay with me.”

I squeezed my eyes shut, fighting off a wave of tears. I couldn’t stay. I knew that I would never be happy here.

But I could delay my leaving a few days, until I could convince Josh to go with me.

Chapter Twenty-Four

“Pass me the gravy, Sailor,” Miss Gale said, prodding her granddaughter’s arm. Sailor hefted the blue porcelain bowl, full of thick gravy, toward Miss Gale with a scowl.

After she’d added more gravy on top of her own mashed potatoes as well as the fried chicken and oyster stuffing in her plate, Miss Gale offered the bowl to me. “Would you like some more gravy, sugar?”

I shook my head. “No, thank you. I have plenty.”

Miss Gale shook her head, as if she didn’t believe me. “You ain’t never going to get any meat on your bones eating like you do.”

Sailor glared at me across the table, as she had been doing for the entire meal up until this point. She had not been thrilled in the least when she opened the door earlier to find Lake and me on the front porch of her home. Dinner together had been Miss Gale’s idea, one she’d surprised me with when I had stopped by the Variety Store on my way home from Pirate’s Cove.

I was certain that she knew about my argument with Lake. Miss Gale seemed to know everything that went on around this island. Dinner was probably her way of trying to oversee the mending of Lake’s and my relationship.

The thing she didn’t understand was, Lake and I had never had a relationship of any kind, so there was nothing that could be mended. Not even fried chicken and gravy would help what we had.

Lake sat at the end of the table opposite Miss Gale, pushing food around on his plate without saying much. Miss Gale had gone all out with the meal. The table was laden with large helpings of golden fried chicken, oyster stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, okra and tomatoes, and a cucumber salad. Everything was heavily doused with salt, to suit the tastes of four finfolk.

“Well,” Miss Gale said, the only one of our grumpy dinner party that made an attempt at conversation, “ain’t this nice? I’m so glad that we can talk freely about everything now and there are no more secrets. Mara knows about the finfolk and now we can enjoy quiet nights like these together, can’t we?”

The light of the small flickering candles Miss Gale had set in the center of the table cast shadows on Sailor’s stormy expression. “It would be nice,” she grumbled, “if it were a
private
supper.” She glared pointedly at me.

“Be nice,” Miss Gale told her through clenched teeth, her smile never leaving her face. “So, Mara, have you thought any about helping your daddy out with his crab business? I’m sure he could use an extra hand to pull in the pots.” Her gaze slid to Lake and she stared at him until he looked up from his plate.

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “I could use some help. If you want to.”

“I don’t know anything about crabbing,” I said.

Sailor rolled her eyes. “You get in the water, pull up the pots, throw them in the boat, get the crabs out, bait the pots, and then throw them back in. It doesn’t take a genius to figure that out.”

“Not everyone can be as naturally talented at attracting crabs as you are,” I said, shooting her a fake smile.

The rest of the dinner went by at an excruciatingly slow pace. Miss Gale tried to get a pleasant conversation going, but none of us were in the mood for talking.

Finally, the plates were cleared away and Miss Gale ushered us into the living area. I sank into one of the plush blue-green couches in front of a roaring fire in the fireplace. Sailor curled herself into a large wicker chair with a high back. It made her look like a queen, sitting in her throne.

“I have something I want to show you, sugar,” Miss Gale told me. She walked over to a bookcase in the corner and knelt down to tug a thick photo album from the bottom shelf. “How would you like to see Swans Landing back in its heyday?”

She sat next to me on the couch, smiling as she ran her hand over the cracked leather cover of the photo album. “It wasn’t always so empty and run down as it is now,” she told me. “Back when I was a girl, Swansers were known for their fresh seafood that couldn’t be beat anywhere on the Carolina coast.”

“We still are,” Lake said. He had perched himself on the brick lip of the fireplace and he poked at the fire to make it burn brighter.

“Not like we used to be,” Miss Gale told me. She opened the book and I saw faded photographs of a busy Heron Avenue, full of people walking down the sidewalks and signs in front of every shop advertising their sales. “We’ve never been like those tourist traps on other beaches, but Swans Landing has always had its own charm. People used to pack our beaches during the summer. All year round, there were boats in our harbor picking up fresh fish and crabs and oysters to ship to other places.”

She turned through the pages slowly, commenting on the photos and telling me stories about the Swans Landing that had become only a memory. She told me about the history of the island, about the pirates that used to bury their treasure on the beaches and the finfolk that had come and gone over the last three centuries. Her voice was soothing and I could almost picture the world she spoke of.

Miss Gale turned the page and her voice fell silent, her hand paused in midair. I looked at her to see that her chin twitched a little.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

Miss Gale let out a slow breath and her eyes were bright with tears. “It’s all right, sugar. I just forget sometimes that these pictures are here.”

I looked at the page, which showed a woman that looked like Miss Gale long ago, back when she was a young woman with blonde hair and smooth, glowing skin. In her lap sat a little girl that grinned wide at the camera.

“Coral,” Miss Gale told me, pointing to the little girl. “Sailor’s mama.”

Sailor had been examining the end of her hair, as if she were bored with the trip down memory lane, but suddenly she leaped from her chair and dashed across the room. She ripped the photo album from Miss Gale’s lap and slammed it closed.

“Sailor!” Miss Gale exclaimed. “What has gotten into you?”

“You don’t get to show her these,” Sailor said in a tight voice, hugging the photo album to her chest. “You can talk about Swans Landing all you want, but these pictures are private.”

Miss Gale reached for the album, but Sailor backed away, protecting the album as if her life depended on it. “Stop acting so rude,” Miss Gale told her. “Mara was looking at those photos.”

“I don’t care,” Sailor said. “These are mine and she doesn’t get to see them.”

“Sailor—”