By The Sea (3 page)

My focus on the dock, I swam. If I stopped, I’d lose any composure I clung to. Once I thrashed in the water, even a non-predator would react. My hand smacked against the wood of the pier. I grabbed for the support beam and pulled myself up, half-expecting something to come snapping at my feet. Nothing did. I backed away and sank down to the cypress planks of the dock. My arms and legs shook—not from the cold. I stared into the blackened water, waiting to see whatever slithered down there. Had it been in my imagination?

A sound drew my attention from the end of the pier where my bag and ballet flats still lay. I froze as someone climbed up from the waters, dark hair glistening under the moon’s rays.

The memories flooded through me, ones I’d tried suppressing all these years. The way Niall had swum by my side, as fluid as if he was born in the sea. How his blue eyes had illuminated with his smile and the hundreds of times he’d submerged from the water, his head popping up like some mischievous otter. How, when we’d swum at night, his hair had caught the light the same way.

Mason approached from the end of the pier to where I sat, jaw dropped like some hick. Tall, broad-shouldered, the exact looks Niall would’ve grown into had he stuck around. If he hadn’t left.

His bare chest shone pale in the moonlight, the shadows sharpening the crevices of his lithe muscles. He reached under the pier and pulled out a bag and a kelly-green hoodie. Mason had come this way to swim. Come to the same docks we used to swim under as kids. He had to be Niall. Nothing else made sense.

“Hey, Meg.” He sauntered toward me, a half-smile on his face, entirely unsurprised I was here. He might think I was crazy, but I was past the point where I could ignore the coincidences any longer.

“Hey, Niall.” I crossed my arms over my chest, bracing myself for his confusion. Some part of me needed him to be Niall, needed to know I wasn’t crazy and hadn’t imagined my best friend. The lack of response was agonizing as he walked the couple paces down the dock toward me. He sat in front of me, those blue eyes blank and unreadable. His vacant expression drove me nuts, like the silence burrowing under my skin. He leaned forward and reached for me. I tilted my head to the side as he lifted the conch shell from my chest.

“Took you long enough.” The slow smile overtaking his face combined with the deepness of his voice sent a rush through me. My cheeks flared up again and my jaw dropped. It really was him. The boy I’d fallen for as a kid, the one who didn’t exist and the first one to break my heart when he went away.

He sat there, grinning like an idiot and waiting for me to speak. My chest tightened, a maelstrom of suppressed emotions brewing. We’d never talked about his parents, like he was some underwater Peter Pan. So when he’d left, I’d had no one to contact and made the mistake of telling my parents. He’d left and let me believe he wasn’t real. I’d spent years in therapy under the jerk of a therapist who’d had me convinced I was delusional and
now
Niall waltzes into my life like nothing happened?

I shook my head. “You don’t get to do that.” My lower lip trembled, but I stayed strong. He wasn’t going to see how badly he’d hurt me. “You left with no word, no sign. Just vanished, making me believe you were some figment of my imagination. Not like anyone else had ever seen you. My therapist put me through hell during high school when I tried to forget you. And here you are again, in the flesh, yet all I can wonder is if I’m going crazy.” I blinked fast to keep away the tears.

His smile dropped and he watched me intently. The shadows creeping across his face left me wondering what was going through his mind. No question plagued me more than why—why he’d come back.

He reached over and pulled my hand off of my knees, enclosing it in his palms. “I am so sorry.” Those eyes burned into my own like a brand. “I never meant for any of that to happen to you.”

Still no answers. Still a complete mystery, except this time I wasn’t a kid anymore and wasn’t going to put up with it. If he’d showed up here to kill time, he could find someone else’s company. I tugged my hand away, cutting myself off from those bothersome feelings and making myself as wintry as the sea.

“I’ve got no right to keep you from this town, but unless you give me some answers, this isn’t going to happen again. I’m not going to spend time with you, get attached, and sit there wondering why when you disappear.” I hugged my knees closer to my chest for support. “So either let me in or please, please leave me alone.”

I waited, the silence between us weighted with the unknown. The tides rolled up to crash against the shore while we sat feet from one another with the remnants of all we’d left unsaid driving us apart. Niall sighed and ran a hand through his hair. I knew that motion and knew what followed: rejection.

“Look, I know you think you’re crazy, but you’re not. If I tell you why I disappeared that first time, you’re not going to believe me. But it’s the absolute truth. So unless you’re willing to open your mind, you’ll ask me to leave anyway.” He kept his gaze glued to the wooden boards of the pier.

“I’ll try,” I promised, unsure as to what would come next.

“You’ve noticed how I only met you by the water at night. That I’m beyond natural at swimming. It’s not because I’m that good. It’s because I was born in the water.” His mouth opened but the words paused on his lips. His hands balled into fists. “I’m a selkie, Megs.”

I blinked. Whatever I’d been expecting, it hadn’t been that. “A what?”

Niall scratched the nape of his neck, embarrassed. “Seal folk. I can take on the form of a seal. While I got to spend years with you, when the time came, I had to spend seven years as a seal—part of the rite of adulthood. Before you get the choice of water or land, you have to spend seven years in the sea, your birthplace.”

My mind was reeling, but I still couldn’t comprehend that the boy I’d known, that the man sitting before me, transformed into a seal. Maybe the child in me would’ve bought his tale but all those years of therapy had done a number on my sense of wonder. However, he’d asked I keep an open mind.

“So, you’re a selkie and had to disappear into the ocean for seven years.” I tried to hide the skepticism in my voice. “Why are you back, then?”

He fixed me with a look—he knew I wasn’t buying it. To his credit, he continued anyway. “The seven years were over and I planned on returning. However, the first couple of nights I spent in a hotel here, someone stole my pelt.”

I pressed my lips together, trying not to laugh. He looked so frustrated and perfectly serious, and yet here we were talking about his
missing seal pelt
. A snort flew past my lips. The floodgates burst and I hunched over, my shoulders shaking with laughter. He stared at me, annoyed.

“Sorry, I’m sorry.” I gasped for breath. “It’s just—the mental image of you shouldering a pelt, pretending to be a seal, was too much.”

He crossed his arms over his chest and waited for my laughter to die down. “It doesn’t work that way, you know.” He sniffed like a wounded puppy.

I took in several deep breaths and forced my composure. “How does it work?”

“Our pelt is how we transform back and forth. If we don’t have our pelts, we can never return to the sea—it’s a part of us forever gone. For those of us who choose to live on land, our pelts are something we never part with.”

The tide crashed all around us with the sway of the ocean like a lullaby. I slumped, letting go of my knees. Everything about him was honest, from his slight frown to the way his brows furrowed together. And yet, here he was, babbling about selkies, seals, and things that couldn’t exist. The same way my therapist had told me Niall didn’t exist. I drew in a deep breath. If this was how living free of delusions was going to be, doubting myself at every turn, skating on the surface and keeping people at a distance—I didn’t want it any more.

I wanted to believe in myself. I wanted that wonder and hope I’d had as a kid that something greater existed out there. Most of all, I wanted Niall to be real—so desperately my chest ached.

“You don’t believe a word I’m saying.” Niall said, wariness evident in his gaze. He traced circles on the wooden pier.

The choice lay out for me. Stay on land or plunge into the icy depths of the sea.

I always chose the sea.

“If your pelt’s missing, then I’ll help you find it.” I reached out and offered my hand so we could shake on it.

Bypassing the handshake, Niall threw his arms around me and pulled me close. We were both cold and wet but his arms pressing me tight to him filled my chest with so much warmth, I blazed. My face buried into his chest and I exhaled with relief at being close to him like this again. I thought it’d never be possible after he vanished. Strands of my wet hair clung to his skin, but neither of us moved. I didn’t want to let go. Neither this comfort nor this overwhelming sense of safeness. The only other time I felt blissful like this was when I dove into the ocean, surrounded by water on all sides.

This close, he smelled like salt and wind—like the sea. I could sit here forever with him, watching the tide roll in. The way we had when we were kids.

“Meg, you know I never really abandoned you, right?” He tilted my chin up with his fingers so I was lost in those blue eyes, unable to escape the view of how close those lips were. “You swam in the same waters I did for those seven years. I may have been tied to my seal form, but I never truly left.”

I swallowed, hard. This was Weymouth, right near the bay, and I’d seen plenty of seals around. Could he have been one of them? There the whole time, watching out for me while I swam? My lip trembled and I forced my head down, overwhelmed someone cared so deeply about me. Here in his arms felt right, like some part that had been missing in my life had returned.

Yet what would happen when he found his pelt and skipped town again? I broke out of the hug that had gone on long enough and ran my hands through my wet, tangled hair. The full moon illuminated our skin, bleaching his pearly white. God, he was gorgeous. Age had made him more masculine, filling out his chest, his arms, his legs, lengthening his jaw. The guys I’d dated had never compared, although how could they? He was some sort of meta-human, not on the same playing field.

I knew right then, when his gaze locked on mine, that I’d help him get his pelt back, even if he’d leave me again. Because I never could say no to that boy.

“So what are we going to do?” I asked.

He offered me his hand. “See what tomorrow brings.”

The next day, the birds chirped like they always did and sun streamed in through the windows. However, life had gotten complicated in the span of a night. Yet another day where I wasn’t working at Bobby’s, which meant a whole morning and afternoon open to helping Niall find his lost pelt. As if that didn’t sound
outrageous
.

A knock sounded on my door.

I sat up from my perch on the couch. Last night, I hadn’t given him my address. Was it someone else? I smoothed my long skirt and pulled up the bra strap hanging off my shoulder before heading over to open the door. He leaned against the frame, so tall he reached the top. Unlike last night, his hair had dried in glossy layers and he wasn’t half-naked with the water glistening off his muscles. I filed the thought away before a blush reached my cheeks.

“Welcome, I guess.” I gestured inside my apartment.

Having him here felt weird, like we were breaking some sacred rule. I guess that’s what happens when you’re only allowed to meet by the ocean. I thought I’d be over the awkwardness since I’d found out the mystery man was Niall, but a different kind of awkward buzzed in the corner of my mind. When we were younger, we’d shared more than the average amount of affection, bordering on something deeper. He’d understood me like no one else had and I’d never met anyone who’d compared.

Niall stepped in and took a seat on my couch like he lived here, resting his arms behind his head. I grabbed one of the wrought iron chairs from my kitchen and flipped it around, sitting to face him. I was not going to fall into the trap of nestling up next to him on the couch. That’d get way too uncomfortable.

“So do you have any suspects? Anyone who might know what a selkie is, who would steal your pelt? Anyone who’s big on collecting fur rugs?” I tucked a long strand of brown hair behind my ear, the motion drawing his eyes to my face.

“Most of the people here don’t know what a selkie is and have no clue about fae. The prime suspects would be anyone new, or anyone who’s either a habitual kleptomaniac or a collector.”

“Any luck on your interrogation of all the ladies coming to Safe Harbor?”

He snorted. “That obvious?”

I shook my head. “Nah, they flock around you. Granted, we don’t have a lot of young blood in this town anyway. Mostly old retirees.”

“What would you be, grandma?” he asked, shifting on my weathered black couch so he was lying down. His long legs hung over the side.

“The chump who waited.” I scratched the back of my head, realizing I let a little too much slip out there. His eyebrows scrunched together but before he could ask further, I cut him off. “Want a cup of tea while we start making this list?”

He caught my reluctance to continue. “Sure, surprise me.”

***

You’d think with two people and a town the size of a peanut, we’d be able to come up with some leads, right? Yeah, wasn’t happening. We’d scoured half the place and already we were back where we started, with the Dusty Rose Apartments sign rearing its tan and brown head in the distance.

Turned out, looking for someone who might have stolen a seal pelt, with no clue of the motive, in a town full of fishermen and trappers bordered on lunacy. We came up with a list of restaurants and shops and checked them all to see if the lodge up the street had a pelt on the wall or the local tanner had done something to it. No luck. Niall had already scoped out any other place in town himself, which left residential homes as our last targets.

And the whole time Niall cracked jokes, winked at me, and found excuses for our hands to touch or to grab my arm. All the more infuriating, knowing the second we found his pelt, he could dodge out again and leave me alone with my conch shell and memories.