Promise Bound (12 page)

Oh! Oh. I hoped I hadn’t given her the wrong idea. The curve of her shoulders emitted a purple glow that burned up her neck and colored her lips. If she thought that I meant to suggest anything inappropriate … “What are you thinking?” I asked. “You’re turning purple.”

“I guess I am a little chilly after all,” she said.

I took off my sweatshirt and gestured at her with my chin. She lifted her arms, and I gently, slowly drew the sweatshirt over her arms and head.

“Calder,” she said.

It was now or never. Well, realistically it was now or later,
but I couldn’t wait for later. I took her hands in mine and prepared to give her the ring. The potential for rejection was the only thing holding me back. Maybe Jason was right. Maybe this wasn’t something to surprise her with.

“You’re not purple because you’re cold,” I said. “Purple is planning. I don’t know what you’re up to, but two can play at that game.”

“Great,” she said, drawing the word out. “Do I want to know what you’ve been planning?”

I pulled the ring box out of my pocket. Her eyebrows shot up. “Our future. I want to ask you …”

O
h my gosh. Oh, this is so not happening. Why did he have to make this harder than it already was?

I put my finger to Calder’s lips, feeling the pulse in my fingertip beat against them. If I was going to send him away, we couldn’t talk about a future. Not yet. Not now.

But knowing what I was about to do fed my desperation to keep him close. I could hear the ticking of my heart’s clock, counting out each second before I said the words I had to say.

I was doing the right thing, but it was a leap of faith. No
matter what Calder thought he felt for me, how easy would it be for him to find that same happiness with someone else? Someone less pushy, less compulsive, less prone to visions of dead matriarchs?

Purple may be planning, but he didn’t know what I was planning to say. He couldn’t see the words that pushed against the back of my teeth. But he could see the anxious light fizzling around the corners of my mouth, radiating in my eyes. And I knew he wondered.

I also knew that I wanted something from him before I told him goodbye. He stood before me, dark swirls of hair falling into his green eyes, the sunlight glistening on his tanned face. I pulled his T-shirt up and off, taking in every line, scar, muscle, vein. I tried to memorize every inch of him as if he were a map and I was learning my way home, as if it were my last chance because I knew in my heart it might be just that.

“Um, Lily?” he asked, eyebrows raised.

Slowly, I sat down on the blanket and pulled him over me.

“Lily,” he said. “Hold up.”

I put my hand behind his neck and pulled his face to mine, kissing him once.

He put the box back in his pocket and laughed, saying, “Slow down. Can we talk?”

My fingers clenched at his hair. “We don’t have a lot of time,” I said. I hoped he didn’t hear my voice shaking.

“Time for what?”

Stomach muscles tight, I rose off the ground to meet him. I knew I was confusing him, but he kissed me back anyway. His lips burned against mine. I moved my hands to his chest, and he took them in his own.

He leaned into me, kissing my forehead, then my cheek. I kissed his mouth, lips smooth, parting, slipping his tongue past my teeth. I wished for his fingers to explore my body, but he held my hands fast, now arms stretched wide, securing me to the blanket like a butterfly pinned to corkboard.
Lepidoptera
, I thought.

I
let go of Lily’s hands and they were quick to find the small of my back. She pressed me into herself. The ferocity of it made it feel more like an attack than an embrace, but I rocked my hips against hers, watching the silver light in her eyes, the rose-colored glimmer at the corners of her mouth and the tips of her shoulders. I waited for her aura to tell me what she wouldn’t say: to stop. Or to keep going. Or to explain what the heck was going on, because this was nothing like what I had been expecting. After barely a word from Lily in two days, this person was a stranger. A beautiful, exciting stranger.

She rolled me off her, following the rotation with her own body until she was on top. She hitched her skirt above her thighs. Her long hair tumbled onto my face. I held it back and kissed her throat, the hollow of her collarbone.…

My stomach muscles relaxed, then tensed with each breath, as she sank lower onto me, bending her body to meet the contours of mine.

“You’re sure?” I asked.

“I’ll tell you tomorrow,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

I pulled away, ever so slightly. “Whoa. Wait. This was not my idea. We don’t have to do this.”

She shook her head and her long hair tickled my face. “That’s not what I meant. I only meant that I wish I knew what I was doing.”

“Well, I’d be very surprised if you did.”

“I’m glad one of us does,” she said, blood flooding into her cheeks.

“Actually,” I said, “you’re scaring me to death.”

Slowly—so slowly I almost didn’t notice—she slipped the metal button on my cargo shorts from its buttonhole. I held still, hoping she wouldn’t, hoping she would. I was caught in a net, seeing the way out but not smart enough to take it.

“Lily, I love you. Please know I’ve never said that to anyone else, and that will never change.”

She paused. A pale vibration of relief shone from her skin. “Good to know,” she said, shutting off my protests with a kiss.

I
took Calder’s hands and moved them higher up my rib cage, all the while muzzling my inner chaperone.
Oh my God, you’re about to have sex
. This went against everything I
believed in and all the advice I’d ever given my best friend, Jules. Why was I doing this? Maybe I wanted to give Calder a reason to come back. Maybe it was because, in my heart, I knew he wouldn’t. Maybe it was because this would be my only chance to love him like this.

I silently counted to ten, the very core of me molten. Calder slipped my T-shirt over my head, breath catching in his throat.

I
’ll count to ten
, I thought.
If she hasn’t stopped me by then …
But at seven Lily flash-burned with a pink fire I’d never seen before. I let out a low groan and gripped her waist, opening my mouth to hers.

And then her colors flashed to fear.

C
alder jerked away from me, his breath running ragged, and my heart pounding against my sternum.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Not now,” he replied. He grabbed my T-shirt out of the yellow bush and handed it back to me inside out.

“But—”

“Not until you’re ready. Really ready.”

My face burned with embarrassment as I clutched my T-shirt to my chest. “Seriously?”

“Get dressed,” he said, not looking at me.

“But—”

Calder frowned at the ground, stifling my argument. I flushed scarlet as I awkwardly pulled myself together. I was such a colossal idiot. I wanted to crawl under a rock and die.

Calder sat silently by my side, not watching me dress, picking at the blades of grass that grew at the edge of the blanket. He rolled and spun them between his fingers creating the tiny sound of displaced air, but it wasn’t enough to fill the silence between us.

I tried to stand up, but he said, “Don’t leave. Just sit here with me.”

So I did, but the silence continued, and it was excruciating. The muscles in his jaw bounced, making me wonder what he was really thinking.

Eventually, his forehead furrowed and the corners of his mouth turned down as he said, “Pavati told me about the letter she wrote you.”

I eyed him suspiciously. It wasn’t what I’d expected him to say. Was that all that was bothering him? “You know what she asked me?”

“Yes,” he said, finally turning to me. He searched my face.

“How long have you known?”

He closed his eyes to the apparently distasteful change in my colors and sighed. “A few days now. But, Lily, the last thing I want to do is fight.”

“Who’s fighting?” I asked, but I couldn’t
not
feel irritated with him. Why hadn’t he told me when he first found out?

Calder took a deep breath. He ran one of his fingers over the topography of my knuckles. “I’m not willing to give them
what they want. And you should be more suspicious of their motives.”

A strange rush of anger flared up in my chest, derailing me from my course. “You mean, they couldn’t possibly like me for me? They couldn’t possibly want me to be part of their family? Well, news flash, they do. And I think Nadia does, too.”

Calder nearly did a double take, the change in my voice surprising him as much as me. “Of course they could like you for you, who wouldn’t? I’m only saying … Lily, I—I’m sorry I’ve been so upset with you when you talk about Mother. Maybe if you tell me what you think you’re hearing—”

“I told you. I don’t
think
I’m hearing anything,” I said. “Nadia is talking to me.”

“Then, tell me what you
are
hearing, and I’ll let you know if it really sounds like something she’d say.”

“She shows me things. About the past. And what she wants for the future. I know how my grandfather came to have this necklace in the first place.”

“That’s easily explainable. Your subconscious probably just filed away something your dad told you.”

“I’ve seen your birth mother. I’ve seen you as a little boy.”

Slight trembling ran the length of his arms, and I could tell he was wondering how much detail about his past life I was privy to.

“Nadia wants you to find your birth family.” There. I’d said it. There was no turning back now. The sudden anger I’d felt was quickly replaced by sadness because it was time to send him on his path.

“You’re wrong,” he said, his tone scoffing.

I closed my eyes and held the pendant in my fist. It took some concentration, but I did my best to mimic Nadia’s voice, liquefying my words into a vaguely recognizable cadence:

“ ‘Calder, when it is time,’ ” I quoted, “ ‘when you know it’s time, you need to go home. You need to find your mother.’ ”

“That’s impossible,” he whispered.

“Is it? A mermaid has no choice but to fulfill her promises. What if Nadia died with a promise unfulfilled? What if the compulsion to fulfill it was so strong, it followed her even after death?”

“That’s impossible,” he muttered again, pressing his knuckles to his forehead.

“I don’t think Nadia is resting in peace,” I said.

“Lily, I’ve told you, my biological parents aren’t even a thought in my head.”

It was when he lied like this that I understood him best. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe he’d let go of his human memories as soon as he was changed, but I also knew how much he wanted to belong to a family. He bent over backward to make my mom happy, and when I watched him helping her in the kitchen, or making his bed when she asked, I often thought
A momma’s boy without a momma
, though I’d never call him that to his face.

“But that’s just it,” I said, putting my hand on his shoulder. “They should be a thought in your head. They should be much, much more.”

“Why? Who says so? Has it occurred to you that this is more important to you than it is to me?”

“You started to search for them last summer. You said you thought they were from Thunder Bay. If it wasn’t important to you—”

“It was only a fleeting thought. And it wouldn’t have been even that much if you hadn’t made me think of them. Truth is, maybe I was a little curious, but I don’t
need
them anymore. I’ve already found everything I ever wanted. I’ve found a family that I want to be part of.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “I thought I kind of already was.”

I looked away and that small gesture stopped him short.

He leaned to one side and reached into his pocket. “Listen,” he said, “I didn’t mean to freak you out with this, and you don’t have to read too much into it.” He pulled out the small velvet box again. “If you don’t want it you can say no.”

He held it out to me, waiting for me to take it. “So are you going to open it? I didn’t steal it if that’s what you’re thinking. But I want … I want to ask …”

“Do you know what I want?” I covered the box with a shaking hand—the soft velvet prickled against my palm—and gently pushed it back toward his pocket. “I want you to find your parents. That’s what I want for you. And it’s something you need to do on your own. Before you do anything … else.”

The hurt in his eyes slashed at my heart. I wanted to kiss it away, but I couldn’t move. All of my muscles had clamped down.

“I don’t need my past,” he said. “I want you. You are my future. It’s you who makes me happy.”

“But that’s just it,” I said. “Don’t you see? Your happiness should not be completely dependent on me.
You’re not whole
. Not yet.”

“Who fed you that line? Pavati?” He grabbed my wrists, hard, and I twisted them to get free. “Don’t trust them, Lily. She just thinks she’ll have better luck with you if I’m out of the picture. They’re queens of manipulation.”

“Maybe you’re right, but it doesn’t make it less true. You need to find your parents.”

“And what if I find them?” he demanded.

“What do you mean?”

“If I find them, then what? Do you think they’d just let me walk out of their lives again?”

“Well …” Admittedly, I hadn’t thought about that. I assumed it would be hard for Calder to leave his family once he found them. I’d never considered that his parents would be the problem—that they would be the ones to not let him go again.

“That’s it, isn’t it!” Calder exclaimed. “You know I wouldn’t be able to do that. Is this just some elaborate plan for getting me out of the way forever?”

“Calder—” I knew he’d react badly, but he was starting to scare me.

“Well, excuse my confusion,
Lily
, but what the hell was
this
all about?” He gestured angrily at the blanket and the imprint of our bodies still lingering in its fibers.