My dad came between us, blocking my view, smothering me in a yet another hug.
“I know,” he said as I hugged him back. “I needed to see with my own eyes you were all right. Marshall called me and told me Sol was mixed up in some business with Jax Harrison.”
“I’m good, Dad. What about Sol and Jax?”
My dad tucked a wayward strand of hair behind my ear. “Evidently they got into it the night before last night. Jax ended up in the emergency room. Nasty stuff.”
I looked over at Noah. He gave me a slight shake of his head. My heart felt heavy. I had never had to keep things from my dad before. I felt it, a whole new life building that had nothing to with him, that he had no part of.
“Mr. Harper.” Noah came over and offered his hand without the slightest trepidation.
“Good to see you again, Noah.” My dad’s eyes narrowed the slightest when they shook hands. Then they cut to me sitting on the stool, raking over my attire. It couldn’t be much later than eight thirty or nine in the morning and obviously we had just had breakfast. I waited for my dad to let go of Noah’s hand.
“I realize my daughter is fond of you, Noah. I expect you to treat her with respect.”
“Dad, this isn’t necessary.” Heat crept up my neck. I cast a quick glance at Maggie, who smiled ruefully. Noah’s mom had her eyes pinned on him, alert to my dad’s every word. I groaned inwardly, imagining all the admonishments to be safe, not rush into anything before we were ready. Totally embarrassing. Totally too late.
“I understand, Mr. Harper. I will.” Noah met his unswerving gaze. After what seemed like forever they dropped hands and Noah sided up to me, my shoulder bumping his elbow, his stance almost territorial.
My dad looked down at me and smiled. “You ready to go home?”
What else could I say but yes.
* * *
I hadn’t seen Noah for forty-eight hours. I’d slept most of the first day after my dad had brought me home from his house and we’d spent that evening at home. We’d grilled out and talked more about school then watched a movie.
The next day had passed with one cryptic text from Noah saying he’d be out of the area and he’d come see me when he got back. That night I had stayed at Erin’s, consoling a tearful Ally. Jax, bruises and all, had left for college, and while I pretended to be sympathetic, inwardly I was glad he was gone.
I had gotten home about an hour ago after a failed attempt to swim in Erin’s pool. She’d warned me not to, and after about five minutes, I had thought I was dying. All that chlorine had seeped into my skin, nearly suffocating me.
I’d decided to try to sweat it out and had taken off on my bike. Surprisingly, it seemed to have worked, and I felt much better when I wheeled my bike back into the garage. No sooner had I dropped the kickstand than a pair of arms wrapped around me from behind, lifting me off the ground. Noah buried his face in my neck, squeezing tight.
“I can’t breathe,” I gasped, slapping at his hands. He spun me around in his arms and crushed his mouth to mine. I sagged against him. Finally. I’d missed his mouth.
“I’ve missed you,” he said when I let him pull away.
“Me too.” I pulled his head back down and we kissed for what seemed like forever, which wasn’t nearly long enough. We didn’t stop until my dad’s dramatic throat clearing drew our attention. He stood in the doorway, the keys to his car in his hand.
Noah slowly put me down then held out his hand to my dad. “Mr. Harper. It’s good to see you.”
“Noah,” he said, looking between us before settling his eyes on me. “I have to run a few errands. You need anything while I’m at the store?”
I thought for a minute. “No, I’m good.”
He walked to the car and opened the door, then paused before crawling inside. “You two be careful.”
“I’ll take care of her,” Noah said, throwing his arm over my shoulders.
I thought I heard my dad mutter something like “That’s what I’m afraid of,” as he got into his car.
We watched as he backed out of the driveway and as soon as his car was out of sight, I was on him again.
“Where have you been?” I asked between kisses.
“Maggie needed some more materials and I had to make a quick run.”
“And you’re not going to tell me where.”
“Oh hell no. That’s my own little secret.”
“I bet I could coax it out it of you,” I said, skimming my tongue up the side of his neck.
“I bet you could too,” he said, moaning into my mouth. “Before you try, I want to take you somewhere. Will you come with me?”
I’m pretty sure he knew I’d go anywhere with him. After two days of being deprived of his presence, it was absolutely glorious when we shot through the water together. I hadn’t ventured far into the Deep since the spear incident and it felt good to be out here again. We made frequent stops, to kiss, and to touch, sometimes just to gaze at each other with goofy smiles on our faces and float tangled together.
Eventually he led me out of the surf.
“What is this place?” I stood beside Noah on a deserted beach that was different from the ones we’d been to before. This one stretched for about a mile in either direction, a single two-lane road running parallel to the Gulf some fifty yards away. Too much prime open space to be anything but government-owned. All that was out here was a lone building nestled among the dunes. Constructed of concrete blocks and painted white, it blended into the beach with complete obscurity. The parking lot beside the building sat empty.
“We call it the Facility,” he said with a note of sarcasm. “It’s a research center, specializing in the local aquatic life.”
“You mean us?” I felt a tremor run down his arm through the hand that held mine, his wariness apparent in the coiled lines of his body. This place made him uneasy.
“Yes. Government’s not too keen on the unknown and the unknowable, so they set this place up under the guise of doing us a favor. It’s the closest thing we have to a hospital,” he said. “At one time there were plans to build us a community of sorts. Our own school. Places to live close to the water. Not all of us have that. Landers consider it a luxury to live on the water. For us, it’s a way of life. Or it should be.”
“What happened? Why didn’t it ever get built?”
“Epidemic hit. A flu strain that wiped out nearly twenty percent of our population.” His hand tightened on mine. “Your mother was one of them.”
“My dad said she died of an infection.” I shivered in the warm breeze and Noah wrapped his arm around my shoulder.
“Same difference. I think at the time that was the explanation they were giving. The landers were getting nervous. An attempt to avoid a panic.”
“How do you know all this?”
“Well, since you’ve been back, my mom’s been pretty open about it. Did you know your mother babysat for me a few times before you were born?”
Astonishment spread over my face.
“Do you remember her?” I looked up at him expectantly.
“No.” He pressed his lips to my forehead. “I was still too little. I doubt even Jamie would have remembered.”
“So maybe that’s why it was you. You were in a way familiar.”
“Yeah, I don’t know. A man named Simon Kelley also died. He was negotiating with the local government to make the project happen. He was your grandfather, Athen’s father. The project died along with him.”
“That sounds very unfortunate.”
“Even today the idea offers some hope for a future that doesn’t involve hiding. The ability to survive as a species.”
“Are we in danger as a species?” All this was so new to me, so wonderfully new. It was sobering to think our very existence was threatened.
“I don’t know. I do know there aren’t as many of us around as there were twenty years ago. And if you hadn’t already noticed, the ratio of males to females is about three to one. Not very good
odds when it comes to procreation.”
I remembered Erin telling me about the problems it had caused when Jamie had decided to marry her.
“Well, now I’m thoroughly depressed.”
“Don’t be. The real reason I brought you here was because this is also a prison of sorts. There are rooms inside, tanks really, equipped to hold one of us. It’s where your father served his time for the crime he committed against your mother. Rumor is he refused to step outside the building even though they offered to let him for fear he wouldn’t be able to make himself go back in.”
I couldn’t imagine anyone being able to make my father do anything he didn’t want to. This building didn’t seem strong enough to hold him. I wondered if anything could.
“I’m not sure I understand why you’re showing me this, telling me all this.”
“Because I think you should know everything so you can make informed decisions when it comes to your family.”
“You think I should forgive him,” I stated, contemplating what it would be like to live inside that building for seven years. Never seeing the sun. Never feeling the wind.
“I didn’t say that. I don’t think I could if it had been my mother, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t. I do think it took a repentant man to force that kind of punishment on himself. In some ways this place was built in ignorance. It might be able to hold me, or Jeb, but not someone with your father’s abilities, his power. It’s one of the reasons I got so mad at Sol that night on the beach for using you like he did and exposing you like that in front of one of them. Some things are better kept secret. And I doubt I would last a week locked up in a place like this. Your father stayed. Voluntarily.”
Noah made it sound like my father was a hero. I buried my face in his chest. “I just want someone to tell me what to do. Tell me what I should do.” I loved the way his arms felt when they came around me.
“I can’t do that, Caris, and you don’t really want me to. I didn’t bring you here to upset you. It’s just, if it were me, I would want to know.”
“God, Noah. You should have seen him that day on that boat. He was magnificent and at the same time so terrifying.”
“You don’t have to be scared of him. Whatever he’s done, I don’t believe he would hurt you.”
I leaned back so I could look into Noah’s face.
“That’s just it. I wasn’t scared of him. I wanted to be like him.”
* * *
It seemed fitting, after Noah’s revelations, that my father would come to me.
My eyes flew open on a gasp. Heart pounding, I lay still, listening for the thing that had woken me from a deep sleep. My open door infused my room with a salty breeze, the constant din of the waves. All as it should be except for the sharp twang that pierced my nose. Three brief encounters and I already knew his particular scent. He’d done that on the boat—impaled his scent in my memory.
I sat up to an empty room, knowing he’d been here. A small light caught my attention. One of my father’s pearls hung from a silk band over the picture of my mother. It shone like a tiny moon, the light illuminating a swipe of moisture on the glass of the frame. He’d touched it. He’d touched my mother.
Without even having to look, I knew he was out on the beach waiting for me. And I knew I had to go face him and tell him I couldn’t accept such a gift. Tell him no matter what this was between us, it didn’t matter to me. I wouldn’t forgive him.
The sun wasn’t far from rising, the gray pre-dawn fighting the inevitable. He stood near the shore with his feet planted in the wet sand. When I approached, he turned to face me, his chiseled face softening into a fatherly expression I’d seen on my dad many times.
“I don’t want this.” I held out the necklace, hating the tremor of emotion in my voice. Hating the way that even as I said the words my fingers tightened around the pearl as though laying claim to it.
“It’s your birthright. You can’t deny that anymore. I know you think you hate me, but it’s not in you to hate, not real hate.”
It was raining. I couldn’t see it, but I could feel it. It wasn’t falling from the sky but from someplace inside me. Warm drops of water sought to ease my mind and steady my heart, washing away what remained of my resolve and indifference.
“I wanted to hate you,” I confessed with trembling lips as he continued to comfort me with the force of his energy. It flowed through me, telling me everything was all right. Everything was right.
“Caris.” He stepped toward me and I retreated, my body not ready to acknowledge the hidden place that recognized him.
“Don’t,” I said, holding his pearl clutched between us. “My dad gave up everything for me.” I needed him to understand that while I didn’t hate him, while I might spare a small portion of my life for him, my dad deserved my loyalty. He had earned it. He would have it.
“I admit he was the better man to raise you. I hope one day he will accept my gratitude.” His eyes bore into mine and I wondered if my eyes did that too—shone with such intensity.
“He won’t.” My arm shook visibly with the force of this one small step closer to absolution. But not hating him was a long way from acceptance. Not hating him was a long way from forgiveness.
His eyes brimmed with sympathy. “You’re like me, Caris. How do you think I found you? Your energy, it calls to mine. Don’t be afraid of it. It makes you unique. It makes you special.”
“I won’t be used as a pawn. Not by you. Not by Sol.”
“Sol is suffering the consequences of his actions. And don’t misinterpret what you saw. My only motivation in coming for you was your safety. Our gifts are what they are, gifts. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking they are something more, like I did. They are merely relics of a time gone by, when such things might have given us an advantage in a different world.”
He spoke as if I were an antique, pretty to look at and collect, but serving no real purpose. As though the evolution of our species was behind the timeline of the world’s evolution, relegating us to circus performer status. I found the idea inexplicably sad.
“Did you kill those men?”
“Men.” He laughed, then his eyes lost some of their light, dimming with compassion. “Do you really want to know the answer to that?”
I thought I did but I found myself shaking my head.
His eyes dropped to my wrist and the bracelet I wore. “You have made a good choice in Noah, but he can’t teach you everything. For your sake, you need to learn control.”
“So I can learn to control it?” I jumped at his morsel of hope, craving the thought of control.
“Yes, but you’ll have to allow me to help you.”
So there it was. The thing I feared most. I wouldn’t be able to resist him. I knew it and so did he.
“Take this.” Ounces could measure the weight of it. Still the necklace hung heavy in my palm. One last ditch effort to lose the weight of his existence.
“Keep it,” he said, his gaze holding steady through the unspoken “please.”
“You were magnificent that day you jumped from the bridge. I was proud of you. I knew in that moment, it was all worth it. The second you leaped I let go of any remaining guilt. How could I be sorry for creating you?”
“My existence doesn’t justify your violent, cruel behavior.” I had come out here to return an unwanted gift and all I was doing was placating his feelings. Making it worse was that my heart had sped up when he’d called me magnificent, the same word I’d used to describe him to Noah. More than a small part of me wanted his approval.
“No, nothing could justify what I did. But it does make it easier to accept. Just as I hope one day you’ll be able to accept me.”
With the rise of the sun came the solid touch of a hand on my shoulder. I had no idea how long he had been standing behind me, how much he had heard. My father’s face hadn’t changed, but his eyes did lift to meet my dad’s over my head.
“You have no place here, Athen. I won’t al
low you to bully her.” My dad’s voice dripped with venom. I’d never heard him speak like that before.
“Bully her?” My father took a menacing step forward. I tensed. Even on this empty stretch of beach there wasn’t enough room for all three of us. I doubted there was anywhere big enough for the two of them.
“You’ve done well with her, Patrick. I don’t admit that lightly. But you are only, well, what you are, and she is different. And you are not innocent in your self-righteous rage. Or have you somehow forgotten you stole her from me?” Scorn punctuated his words. “She is my daughter, my blood, whether you like it or not.”
My dad lunged, a swift movement that took me totally by surprise.
“No.” I reached for him, grasping in my fear. Not fast enough to stop him. His fist connected with my father’s face with startling accuracy and force.
“No, she isn’t.” My dad stood nearly toe-to-toe with Athen, ready, despite the odds, to do battle on my behalf.
Athen wiped at his lip, smearing blood on the back of his hand. A begrudging look passed over his face. “You mistake me, Patrick. I’ll do what’s best for Caris, but I will give her a chance to decide what that is. If she’ll allow me to be a part of her life, I’ll be forever thankful and count myself lucky. If not? Well, life goes on as it’s been. I hope you’ll afford her the same respect. She deserves the chance to make the choice without you standing in her way. You owe her that much. We all owe her that much. Caris, more than you or even Rena, is the one who is the victim here.”
I wanted to refute his words. I wasn’t a victim.
Waterborn (The Emerald Series Book 1) Page 32