by James, Ella
* * *
Declan
Two days in, and I’m starting to learn her siren ways. I’m pretty fucking sure she’s shy—or at least reserved. She doesn’t like me zeroing in on her too much or asking her too many questions. I can get her talking if I don’t seem over-interested. If I grin at her or nudge her arm with mine, woman’s like a hermit crab. Goes right into her shell.
“You’re pretty funny, you know that?”
We’re sitting on what’s left of the old rubble pile, and Finley’s pulling a square of Atkins bar into a bunch of little pieces, having just insisted “it tastes different this way.”
When I give her a smile, she draws her knees up to her chest and wraps her arm around them, one hand cupping the remnants of her bar, her damp hair curling over one shoulder.
“I’m not wrong. It does taste different with the insides pulled out.” She pops a little piece into her mouth. “If nothing else, the texture’s different.”
“I guess so.” I have the last bite of my own bar, which is sitting heavy in my stomach.
“You know you can eat more than me, right?” she asks. “You’re what, twice as large as I am? I can go without a bit if need be. I doubt you can.”
I make a cringy face, and Finley shakes her head. “Samesies.”
That makes me laugh. “Pray tell me, where’d you come across ‘samesies?’”
She shrugs, looking shy again. “One of my friends says it.”
“Which one?” I drink some of my water, trying to ignore the churning in my stomach.
“Oh, you know. Anna.” She rolls her eyes.
“Hey, now, let a guy make small talk.”
“Anna is my dearest friend. She’s married to Freddy, and they have a wee one, Kayti.”
I smile when she says “wee one,” and she shoots me a dark glare. “Let’s avoid critiquing your American-isms, shall we?”
I stand up, stretching my sore-as-fuck back before bending down to grab the hammer. “Tell me what slang is gettin’ your goat.”
I hear her laughter behind me. For someone so prone to bossiness, she’s got a nice, soft laugh that’s what I think one might call a giggle.
“Gettin’ your goat? Are you sure you aren’t from Mississippi?”
Something tugs behind my breastbone. I rub at it before swinging the hammer again.
“Used to have a buddy from down in Texas.”
For a moment, all the air is sucked out of the cave and I can’t get a breath, but then she’s smiling beside me, tucking her hair, which she just washed, into a bun atop her head. “Did he or she have goats there?”
“I don’t know. It was a friend from Carogue,” I manage.
But I realize I do know. I went to Nate’s family’s place a couple times, and I never saw goats—although I guess that doesn’t mean they didn’t have some.
“Did he wear a cowboy hat?”
Another steady breath. “He did. He liked them Stetsons,” I drawl.
“Did he speak like that? Do they speak improperly, as in caricature?”
“Texans?” I shrug. “Sometimes, for effect. Most of them know the difference, though.”
I hear her make a soft, pained sound when she swings her arm, and I reach for her without thinking. She recoils, and I step back.
“Sorry.” I rub my forehead, which is throbbing. That was stupid.
She folds her arms and gives me a look that’s hung somewhere between a frown and a glare. “Was that a sneak attack?”
I shake my head, letting a breath out. “Used to locker rooms.”
Her blank look lets me know she’s got no clue what that means. “Have you ever seen a locker room?”
“I have—in the movie Carrie.”
That makes me laugh, which makes her glare. “Anyway.” I bring my hands together. “Locker rooms are full of guys stretching and getting dressed, undressed, taping themselves up, just fucking around.” I wince when she does; now I know what bothers her, and any swear word is on that list. “There’s not a bunch of space that’s yours. You want someone’s attention, you just knock their shoulder or give them a swat.”
“Is this your way of calling me a bro again?” Her mouth curves up into a smile that makes my dick hurt, and I shrug. “Too good to be my bro?”
“Of course.” She rolls her eyes, and I frown at her right arm. “Where’re you hurting?”
She rubs a strand of hair back off her forehead and says, “Everywhere.” Now that I’m looking closely, I realize she looks tired as hell.
I hold my own sore arm out, massaging the inside of my forearm with my free hand. “Is it more down here, or more up here?” I squeeze my triceps.
“There,” she says softly.
“So stretch your arms above your head like this, right?” I stretch mine toward the ceiling, bending them so I don’t touch it. “Keep your hand closed and reach back like you want to grab the back of your neck. Then with your other hand, lightly press the side of your elbow.”
I demonstrate for her, feeling almost sick with joint pain as my triceps pull.
Finley shuts her eyes, looking relieved, and I resist an impulse to tweak her chin. When she looks at me again, her face is relaxed.
“Wow, that did help. Thank you.”
“No problem.”
“I suppose you’re well versed in such things,” she says, at the same moment I’m saying, “You want to use your other arm more, too, if you can.”
She switches the rock to her left arm.
“Are you left-handed?” she asks.
“Little bit of both.”
“You’re ambidextrous?”
“Not really,” I hedge.
“Well you’re using mostly your left arm to swing the hammer.”
“Trying to use both.”
“Your right one hurts.” After she says this, her gaze falls down to her shoes before it lifts back up to mine. “I’m right, aren’t I?”
I roll the shoulder. “Pretty obvious?”
She nods. “I can tell it bothers you. I noticed you swing mostly left-handed, although I don’t remember hearing that about you—that you throw a baseball left-handed. And I would have, because we’ve got a lot of children who’re lefties.”
“Yeah, fucked up the shoulder.”
Her brows draw together. “Is there no fix for that?”
“Oh, yeah. There’s a fix.”
“Why haven’t you been fixed?” She gives me a no-shit look, and I can’t move as a cold sweat hits me—at the word “fix.”
I feel my teeth start to chatter, clamp my jaw shut as my shoulders tremble. Jesus Christ. My stomach churns. “Didn’t get around to it yet.”
“Before your trip here?” She looks skeptical—or maybe it’s dissatisfied.
I nod. “Gonna try a few things when I get back.”
“What’s the story there?” With my weak, shaking arm, I start to hack at the wall again. I pause mid-swing, squeezing my eyes shut. What the fuck did she just ask me? Story…
“Story what?”
“What’s the story of why you came here? What motivated your visit?”
Another cold sweat, and my legs feel weird and wobbly again. Fuck. My stomach rolls as I’m gripped by something like panic. Just withdrawal, I tell myself. I struggle to think as I grab a quick, desperate breath. “My cousin drops the shipment off…”
She nods. “Bryant. We see him perhaps twice a year. I didn’t think of him as your cousin.”
“Well, no.” I give her a smile I hope doesn’t look too strained. “You didn’t know me.”
Everything feels kind of echo-y as I focus my gaze on her.
“In any event, I’ve met Bryant a time or two, and once his girlfriend Mary. Did something happen to him?”
“No…but he was telling me about it. He mentioned how people wanted autographs.” I shrug, feeling like a fucking moron as I struggle to find words. Finally I manage to add, “I wanted a break.”
“Put another pin on y
our corkboard,” she says. I frown before realizing what she means: add another destination to my travel log.
“Yeah, something like that.”
“Is it all you’d dreamed of?” She waggles her eyebrows, and I turn my head so she can’t see me quite as well.
“Oh yeah. Better.” I glance back at her as I strike the wall again. “You ever read that book Watership Down—the one with rabbits?”
“I adore it.”
I nod. “That’s the kind of trip I really wanted. Get back close to nature. Underground. Just find a burrow, find a buddy. Bam. Vacation.” I smile, and I feel it ease up—that dark, bad feeling that withdrawal brings on.
“Good and well, but I’m not your buddy, Carnegie.”
“You’re my buddy, Siren. When that fucker—” I point to the stone blocking our exit— “moves, and I get you out of here, you’re going to admit we’re buddies.”
“I thought we were bros.” She’s smirking.
“How do you say this word…?” I spell avocado. Her mouth twists with a smile she kills by pressing her lips together, but she can’t hide the way her eyes tilt at the corners.
“Avocado,” she says softly.
I grin, because she’s saying ah-vo-cay-doh.
“You spend your days throwing balls at grown men, partying with too many women to keep track of, and herding sheep pro bono. I’d say you’re no authority on anything, Carnegie.”
I laugh. “Herding sheep’s not a good enough vocation for you?”
“Sheep herders are the worst sort. I hear they’re perfectly unbearable.”
I nod sagely. “I’m afraid I heard the same thing.”
“How’d you learn that, anyway? Did they teach it at your pretty boy school?”
That makes me laugh again, which makes my head ache. “You calling me pretty?”
She shoots me a fuck-no look—one that’s aimed mostly at my shorts, and I shake my head. “Hell no. I spent a couple summers in the Alps.”
“As a shepherd?”
“As a sheep.”
She smiles, and I “baaah,” and her face falls, and she murmurs, “Baby.”
“That your little fuzzy guy?”
“Fuzzy girl. I wonder if she’s missing me.” She slams her stone into the cave’s mouth again, and her whole body seems to sag.
“I bet a lot of people miss you, Siren.”
“Then where are they?” Tears flash in her eyes. She whirls, stalking over to the sleeping bags. I start toward her, and she flees toward the stream.
The cave is so small—burrow, whatever the fuck—I could be to her in a half-second, but I take my time getting a water bottle from her pack and cross the modest space between us slowly, giving her space.
When I get to her, she’s sitting cross-legged by the little stream, her head bowed, one hand dangling into the water.
Even in the shadows, I can see she’s got her jaw locked as I sit beside her.
“Where are they? Where are they?” She wipes her eyes, sniffling. “What happened? What if it wasn’t a mudslide but an earthquake? Otherwise,” her voice breaks, and she covers her face. “Otherwise, I feel they’d be here. I think they’d have found us. You said you merely ducked and we were in here. So we’re close to surface level.”
I catch myself wanting to scoot a little closer to her, so I lean the other way. “We were, that’s true. I think we’re still close to the surface. We can feel that little breeze around the rock—and even more since I can wobble it a little better, yeah?”
She nods, her mouth tight as she wipes at her eyes. We’re not making great progress, but we’ve made enough so we can feel a little bit of fresh air sometimes.
“Another day or so—” God fucking help me— “I think I can get my hand between the cave’s wall and that rock that’s got us stuck.”
She nods, and a tear glitters as it streaks down her cheek.
“Don’t be worried, S. We’ve got this.”
She sniffs, wiping her eyes again. “My name is Finley. Just so you know.”
“I can’t call you F, though,” I tease. “Who wants an F?”
“You’re insufferable.” She stands up, tugging at her cotton shorts, and I look up at her.
“Too bad you’re stuck with me.”
She kicks my shoe, and then she marches off theatrically. I stay there for a second, splashing water on my neck.
It’s true, what I said to her. Just another day or so until I get us out of here. And I can hold on that long. I fucking have to.
Fourteen
Finley
“Do you ever sleep?” I’m whispering, although I’m not sure why since it’s just us and I know he’s awake.
He’s lying on his side. I’m facing him because I don’t like sleeping with him at my back. I offered him the first sleep shift, because anxiety had me wound too tightly to try, but then I got this horrid headache, so I stretched out beside him, where I quickly realized he’s not sleeping. He keeps breathing deeply and shifting about.
“Do you?” His low voice comes like something corporeal through the dark, and I find I’m grateful for it. I turned off the lantern when I stretched out here, although it frightens me to be entombed in darkness.
“A bit.” I sigh, adjusting my hair band so my locks flow down my back instead of over my shoulder. I prop my cheek on my palm and blink at him. “I can sort of see you, even though there’s no light.”
I watch his lips twitch. “I can sort of see you, too.”
“Tell me something, Declan Carnegie.”
“What kind of something, Finley Evans?”
“You know my surname.”
“Magnet at the house.” His voice is a bit hoarse with what I presume is exhaustion. His head is propped on the small, plaid blanket I gave him to use as a pillow. I scoot a fraction closer to him, and our gazes lock like magnets. Something electric zips through me—a sort of boldness, borne perhaps of sheer stir-craziness.
“What are you scared of?” I murmur.
I feel him shift a bit as he props his elbow on the blanket and his cheek against his palm, peering down at me. “I bet you’re wanting me to say bugs, aren’t you? Or clowns.”
“Why would I want that?”
“Oh, you know. Big dude scared of a little bug.”
“Or a child’s entertainer?” I smile, because it would be a bit funny.
He gives me an I-told-you-so look. “I’m not scared of bugs. Clowns don’t really wind me up either. I’ll tell you what I’m scared of.”
I lift my brows.
“Other than clocks. I fucking hate cuckoo clocks.”
I laugh. “You hate cuckoo clocks?”
“Have you ever seen one?”
“The sort that open up and something totters out?”
He nods. “Those things will knock you on your ass.”
“They jump out at you?”
“Not literally. I’m talking figuratively.”
I can’t hold back a giggle. “So…they startle you?”
“They startle everyone,” he says in righteous tones. “Who wants that? Some fucking mouse or chiseled wood Pied Piper shit just bounces out and the clock does that loud gong noise. Hey, fuck you, it’s eight o’clock, did you just shit your pants?”
I laugh so hard, I roll about and wind up on my back, where I’m faced with the ceiling.
“What’s your other thing?” I whisper tightly. “You said other than clocks…”
“Nu-uh. Now you owe me. Tell me one of yours and I’ll tell you my big one.”
I heave a deep sigh. “Only really one big fear here, and I’m afraid I couldn’t share it. I’m quite off my rocker, not the funny sort of off. Just off.”
“Oh, c’mon, you can’t not tell me after that. It’s…” He reaches for the watch I keep between us, pressing the light-up button to make its screen turn faintly blue. “It’s two fifty-one in the morning. We’re stuck in a fucking cave—”
“A burrow,” I correct.
>
“We’re stuck in a rabbit burrow. You’ve got a phobia that makes you sound off your rocker. I’m thinking fear of panty hose or terrified of cutlery. I want something really good here.”
He yawns behind his hand, still giving me a pointed look, and I scrunch my nose. “You’re making me feel anxious as you speak.”
“What is it, Siren? I gave you clocks. What do you have for me?”
I squeeze my eyes shut. Fold an arm around myself inside my sleeping bag. “It’s not the funny sort, nor will you necessarily find it novel. You’re going to be sorely disappointed.”
“No? Well that’s okay.” His voice is soft and kind, and at that moment, I decide I’ll go through with it. I exhale…inhale. And I just say it. “I’m afraid of water.”
“Water, like…”
“The ocean. I abhor the ocean. I’m…I’m land-bound.”
I can feel his surprise in the stillness. In some subtle flicker of his mouth, a tiny movement of his brows over those discerning eyes. I can feel his questions, unsaid weights that make the air around us thicker.
“You’re trapped here.”
The truth of those words makes my eyes well. I nod at the ceiling. Despite the care I’ve taken to keep steady, a tear escapes the corner of my eye and streaks down my cheek, running toward my left ear. I wipe it and sigh. “I don’t get emotional unless I’m over-tired, Carnegie. I blame you and this rabbit burrow. We could be up there—” I point to the ceiling— “crushed by rocks under the open sky.”
He chuckles softly, but it feels half-hearted. Somber. Afterward, he lets a long breath out and shifts onto his back beside me, propping one thick arm behind his head. I can feel his gaze on my face for a bit before his quiet question.
“Why are you scared of the sea, Siren?”
I’m not sure if I’m surprised he asked. Perhaps I’m not. He doesn’t seem the sort to shy away from something he wants—and I suppose he wants to hear me speak of it.
I rub my lips together, aim my gaze toward his shadowed form.
“I’m thinking of speaking of something horrid. You should tell me not to.”
“Horrid’s my middle name, though.”