I headed down to meet her, figuring I’d help her and the guards with the supplies. But when one of the front windows opened, it wasn’t Mahina I saw crawl out of it into the water. It was a tall, muscular blond guy in blue board shorts and rash guard.
Even as I told myself it wasn’t possible, that I was seeing things, I started to run. I hit the edge of the water just as he turned and my knees nearly gave way.
I wasn’t seeing things. It was Mark. He was here.
Part Five
Aftershocks
“How inappropriate to call this planet Earth
when it is quite clearly Ocean.”
—Arthur C. Clarke
Chapter 23
“What are you doing here?” I screeched the second I found my voice. My knees were still wobbly, and I probably would have taken a header into the ocean if he hadn’t latched on to my arm to steady me.
“Give the boy a chance to explain, Tempest,” Mahina said quietly as she carried a box to shore.
“I think you need to explain. Why would you bring him here? How did you even find him? Why did you find him?”
“I found her.” Mark finally spoke up, his voice hoarse and a little ragged. When I turned back to him, I realized that for the first time since I’d known him, he looked like hell. Dark circles under his eyes, cheekbones a little more prominent than they had been the last time I’d seen him, board shorts baggier than usual. He looked lost, and I felt like a total bitch for doing this to him.
But that didn’t mean I could cave, even though every cell in my body was screaming with the need to throw myself at him, to press myself against him and hold so tight that nothing, no one, would ever be able to rip us apart again.
I hardened myself against the need. “You can’t be here,” I told him. “You need to leave.”
“What do you suggest I do?” He gestured to the wide swath of ocean that looped around the island. “Swim for it?”
“Mahina brought you here. She can take you back.”
My best friend, the traitor, said, “The subbloon’s out of fuel. I picked up what I needed to make more, but it will take a couple of days.”
Horror ripped through me. It was all I could do not to throw myself at Mark right then. There was no way I’d last a couple of hours, let alone a couple of days. Completely freaked out, I did the only thing I could in the situation. I ran like the sea witch herself was at my heels.
“Tempest! Tempest, wait!”
I heard Mark scrambling up the rocks behind me. If I had even an ounce of maturity, I would stop and deal with this like an adult. But if I did that, I’d be done. I’d forget all the reasons Mark and I couldn’t be together and we’d be right back where we started from—with Tiamat and her crew gunning for him.
I ran faster, trying to avoid the inevitable. But Mark had always been a faster runner than I was, and I’d barely made it halfway to my cave when he caught up to me.
“Come on, Tempest!” He grabbed on to my shoulder, pulled me to a halt. “Do you really hate me so much you have to run from me now?”
“You can’t be here,” I repeated, staring fixedly at the ground.
“I can’t be anywhere but here!”
“That’s not true. You don’t belong here.”
“Then where do I belong?” he demanded. “Do you think I really want to be on this island? Do you think I like chasing you halfway around the world when you’ve made it clear that you don’t want me anymore? When you’d rather run from me than listen to me? Or touch me?”
“It’s not like that!”
“It’s exactly like that! If I could be anywhere else, if I could just walk away, don’t you think I would? I can’t sleep without you. Can’t eat. Can’t think. I swear, I can’t breathe without you, Tempest.” He closed his eyes. Held his hands out in an appeal I would have to be heartless as well as desperate to ignore.
“Mark …”
“I know you love me. I saw it that night on the beach. I felt it. You don’t just turn that kind of feeling off and on, no matter how much you want to.” He reached out, hooked his fingers through the belly chain I hadn’t been able to take off since that night he’d refused to accept it back. “Please, Tempe, talk to me. Tell me what’s going on.”
“I can’t—”
“You have to. I can’t keep going on like this. We can’t keep going on like this.”
He tugged on the belly chain, and I stumbled closer despite my best intentions. “Don’t make me hurt you,” I whispered.
“You’re already hurting me. Can’t you see that? Without you, I’m dead inside.” He pulled me into his arms and I went—of course I went.
How could I not when he was saying everything I’d ever dreamed of hearing from him? More, really. I had his best interests at heart, his and my family’s, but standing here, listening to him tell me that he’d been as miserable without me as I’d been without him, I just couldn’t do it. Not again.
For long seconds, we simply stood there, his mouth hovering several inches above mine as we relished the relief of being in each other’s arms again. The abrupt cessation of pain that was joy in and of itself. Then he lowered his mouth to mine, and Tiamat, the island, Sabyn, and all my aches and pains simply ceased to exist.
When he finally pulled away, I looked at him searchingly. “What are you doing here?”
“I already told you—”
“No, I mean, how did you get here? How did you find me? It’s a huge ocean out there, and I didn’t tell you where I was going.”
“Actually, your dad’s girlfriend, Sabrina, helped a lot.”
“Sabrina?”
“Yeah.” He shrugged at my questioning look. “I don’t know how she knows as much as she does about the merclans, but when I ran into her on the beach two weeks ago, I commented that I was heading to the Sahul Shelf. I didn’t know where Coral Straits was, but I knew that you had been near the Sahul Shelf last year. It seemed as good a place as any to start.
“And then Sabrina told me about a group of merpeople who live down here. I didn’t ask her how she knew, just took her advice and the GPS coordinates. Except, when I reached the coordinates, nothing was there. No mermaids, no city, nothing. I probably should have turned around and gone home, but I’d come too far for that. So I hired a plane and started searching for you from one island to the next—telling everyone about the girl with the purple tattoos.
“When Mahina came in with her turquoise ones, someone called me about her. And when I saw Mahina, I knew that I’d finally found you. I have to admit I expected a little bit warmer of a reception.”
“It’s not that I don’t want you,” I whispered, pulling his face back down to mine and pressing kisses to his face and shoulders. Part of me was worrying over how Sabrina knew about mermaids—and if my father had told her—but I was too happy to see Mark to dwell on it the way I probably should have. After all, whatever her knowledge, it seemed she was keeping it to herself. Or at least not sharing it with the whole world.
“I want you too,” he told me fiercely, and all thoughts of Sabrina disappeared from my brain. “So it’s ridiculous that you’re insisting we need to be apart. We need to be together.”