Watermark (The Emerald Series Book 3)

by James, Kimberly

  I shot off my pillow with a desperate gasp, shaking my head. My eyes shifted around my room. I blinked, momentarily confused. After so many years of it being pink, it was still unfamiliar.

  No mullets. No Jamie. No monster.

  Warm air reached my skin. My window was open. No more than a crack, but enough to make the curtains shift in the air flowing inside. Why wasn’t the alarm going off? No way my dad hadn’t set it. I was inclined to yell for him, but that would only result in him pounding up the stairs, literally with guns blazing, followed by a thorough check of the house and yard and probably the whole neighborhood, which would prevent me from getting back to sleep anytime soon. My dad took security very seriously.

  I reached under my mattress and pulled out my Glock. I knew damn well how to use it. Still, I felt silly, tip-toeing to the window with the gun clasped lightly in my hand. Silly to think anyone was in my room, much less a monster.

  A gust of wind billowed the curtains and thunder rolled in the distance, and a brilliant flash of lightning illuminated the sky. Something moved on the dock, catching my eye. The meager glow from the lamppost didn’t reveal much, just a small pool of light and the dark expanse of the bay beyond. The dock was empty. So was the yard. At least as far as the landscaped lights would let me see. My shoulders slumped in a release of tension. So much for not letting the whole dead fish in my locker thing not get to me.

  I stowed my gun back under my mattress then returned to the window and pulled it shut, clicking the lock. One of the painters could have left it open. I knew they liked to keep air flowing in the room while they painted, and there was nothing to climb outside my window—no awnings or gables. The back of the house was a wall of stucco.

  I crawled back in bed and reset the alarm on my phone. I needed to get to school a little early to dispose of the fish I’d left in the locker room. I should have done it earlier. It would be one massive stink.

  4

  He stood over the bed, eyes cast on the form under the sheet. He knew he shouldn’t have been able to see her face so clearly in the dark room—nothing compared the dark in the Deep. That was a total and complete darkness. This dark was light. She was light.

  Erin.

  He tried to say her name and it confused him why he couldn’t. He heard it in his head. He’d recited it to himself over and over as he swam. Her name was the first word that popped into his conscious thought after he’d slumbered on a barren ocean floor. His home now.

  No. His mind revolted. She was home.

  He tried again to say her name. His lips parted, but the sound that came out sounded nothing like the voice in his head. It was as if his lips, his throat, had forgotten how. As if his voice were no longer under his command.

  He longed to touch the smooth skin on her arm and her face. Skin nothing like his own. Not anymore. Her hair floated across her pillow, dark and enticing. An image flashed in his mind of big hands running through the long strands. Somehow he knew it would be soft. His skin tingled at the remembered sensation. Those were his hands he saw in his mind stroking through her hair. His face diving into the thick mass, inhaling her scent. A scent he could never forget.

  He inhaled it now and let the sweet floweriness of her seep into his lungs. With it, more images came, unbidden but welcome. Her smile. Eyes so dark and warm he could have drowned in them. As he watched her, something leaked out of her eye and trailed over her cheek, and she whimpered. His heart seized at the sight, at the soft, distressed sound. An ache formed in his chest, so deep it stole his breath. And then he touched her, taking the moisture into his skin. He lifted his hand to his mouth and tasted her.

  Mine.

  The word ripped through his mind and grabbed his heart and wouldn't let go.

  But she wasn’t his anymore. Even now he missed the buoyancy of the Deep, the way it held him and made him strong. Everything surrounding her was too hard and unforgiving, the air so thick it burned his lungs and seared through his blood, but the discomfort was worth the price of seeing her. He had to see her. He had to remember.

  Mine.

  His mind insisted even as his body forced him to retreat from her bed.

  She would be his again. He would see to it.

  5

  “Interesting breakfast choice,” Michael Bray observed when I walked through the locker room door into what I’d thought was an empty gym.

  Michael stood in his gym shorts, basketball shoes, and nothing else. He spun a basketball on his middle finger. It was hard to tell whether he was flipping me off or showing off. Maybe it was a little of both.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked, as though I owned the place. He had surprised me, and after last night’s crazy dreams, I wasn’t so into surprises. It had taken me hours to fall back asleep, and I still felt defensive of my bad behavior the day before.

  Obviously, continuing to be a bitch was the logical thing to do.

  “Shooting.” He caught the ball in his palm, then without looking, he released it off the ends of his fingers. The ball swooshed through the net before it bounced away, echoing through the empty gym. “What are you doing here?”

  “Cleaning out my locker,” I said, as if holding a dead fish were the most normal thing in the world. Yeah, everyone stores dead fish in their locker.

  He glanced down at the fish. Its head stuck out of the paper towel I’d grabbed from the bathroom, eyes glazed and shiny.

  “Okay.” He backed up, giving me a quizzical look before going to retrieve his ball. I watched as he picked it up then took three long strides before jumping straight up and dunking it into the basket. He had long arms and a nicely defined back, not the classic skinny of a basketball player or the stockiness of a football player, but somewhere in that perfect place in between. He had hops too, springing off the floor effortlessly.

  “What are you going to do with that?” He dribbled over to me, eyes intent on my face, the ball seemingly forgotten. He was comfortable in the gym, as though it were his house, and he was daring me to act the bitch on his turf.

  “The dumpster.”

  “Yeah, it kind of stinks.” He spun around and executed an effortlessly graceful jump shot. The ball rolled off his fingertips in a perfect arch, falling right through the basket. I would say he was definitely showing off now, but he was so nonchalant about it, I thought it might have been just normal for him. I didn’t know him well enough to be sure.

  “Do you do this often? Practice before school?” I asked despite wishing to remain uninterested.

  “Every day.” He ran at me, dribbled between his feet and performed a fancy spin move around my back. The ball arched and he managed to make shooting a basketball look like a choreographed dance. He hadn’t missed yet.

  “I’m Michael, by the way.” He perched the ball under his arm, holding it against one lean hip. A fine line of light brown hair trailed from his belly button under the elastic waistband of his blue shorts. It was always hot in the gym, but it seemed excessively so right now.

  “I know who you are.” I could have bitten my tongue. But then, we both knew I'd been lying yesterday. His mouth cocked in that almost smile and his eyes sparked.

  “Well, that’s good. I know who you are too, Erin Shaw,” he spoke my name so deliberately, as though he were testing it out. I found myself wishing he’d say it again. He dribbled over to the free throw line and started drilling the ball in the hoop, one shot after another. After he’d hit fifteen in a row—I counted—he asked, “So, now that you know my name, will you go out with me?”

  “No,” I was startled into saying on a laugh that ended on a snort. Heat rose in my cheeks, which pissed me off. I did not blush around a boy, and certainly not because of a boy. He was persistent. I had to give him that. After Jamie, I’d become sort of a pariah. Not that I was remotely interested in anyone else, but not many high school guys wanted to date a girl who’d already had a baby, even if that baby was dead.

  Aware I’d been watching too long, I forced my
feet to move for the gym door and away from a confrontation I was not ready to have with myself. I would not deliberate over an invitation to a date. Sloppily delivered, I might add. I wouldn’t consider how it made me feel. It didn’t matter.

  “Let me know if you change your mind about grabbing a bite to eat.” Brown, sweat soaked hair stuck to his forehead.

  I headed for the exit before I did, in fact, change my mind. I heard the swoosh of the ball falling through the net on my way out, and because I knew he wouldn’t see me, I smiled.

  * * *

  There were two kinds of best friends. Ally was the best friend I’d grown up with. We’d sold Girl Scout cookies together and played coach-pitch softball together. We’d even taken guitar lessons together for a whole week. Ally was the first friend I’d ever baked chocolate chip cookies with.

  And then there were those friends who were more like soulmates. They knew everything about you without you even having to tell them. All those soul-baring things you’d never admit to anyone. Noah Jacobs was my soulmate friend. He was also my brother-in-law. Or he had been for a little while. He’d seen me at my worst and hadn’t thought less of me for it.

  We’d shared a soulmate afternoon a week ago. He’d come to my house and we’d sat by the pool. It had been Jamie’s birthday, and we’d split a six pack of Jamie’s favorite beer.

  We hadn’t said much. No need to really. We’d both been remembering, and remembering didn’t take a lot of words. And the kind of remembering we were doing was better done with someone else. Someone who understood.

  He’d looked over at me at one point with those green eyes that were so much like Jamie’s and so different too. While Noah’s were darker, they held a bit of humor that gave them a certain warmth. Jamie’s had been the palest green and almost cold in their intensity.

  “Are you going to be all right?” Noah asked with a twinge of guilt. He had his girlfriend, Caris, now and I knew she'd been instrumental in helping him deal with his grief.

  “Yeah," I said. "I still really miss him sometimes.”

  “Me too.” He took another sip of beer and I followed suit, not really tasting it.

  “And then sometimes, I don’t, and that makes me feel guilty,” I confessed in a hushed tone.

  “I get that too. He wouldn’t want that for us though. He’d want us to move on.” He snort-laughed and added affectionately, “He’d kick my ass if I didn’t.”

  “Have you?” I'd asked. “Moved on?”

  “I think so,” he'd said.

  I didn't know why I was thinking about that afternoon when I walked into calculus on Wednesday. Maybe it was because I finally felt like I’d moved on too.

  Michael was already in his desk, and it was the first time I’d seen him really smile. Not with just his eyes, but with his whole face. My breath hitched when I realized why. His smile was in response to my own. I was actually relieved to see him, happy and oddly comforted. He was simply human. He wore closed-toe shoes. Other than when he practiced basketball, he wore a shirt. And even though his hair was longish, it probably took months and not days to get it to that perfect length.

  But more importantly, he didn’t know me from before. He didn’t look at me with barely concealed sympathy or outright hatred or lip-curling disgust. Sure, he’d probably heard rumors—thirdhand gossip—but as far as firsthand knowledge of me, he didn’t have any. Another point in his favor. I scooted into my desk, smile fading. When had I started keeping tally?

  Books slid out of backpacks. Pages flipped among the mumbling of voices as everyone settled into their desks for class. Mr. K, never much for small talk, scribbled a problem on the whiteboard with a bright purple marker. Pencil in hand, I set to work, ever aware of Michael sitting beside me. Some kid transferred out of the class the previous week, and Michael had asked if he could move up a row to see the board better. He'd been easier to ignore when he'd been sitting behind me. I focused on the board and went about copying the problem on a piece of paper.

  His desk was close enough that I could see his every movement out of the corner of my eye. I was well aware when he dropped a small piece of paper beside his foot. It whispered across the floor with a subtle shift of his toe. My pencil stalled just short of finishing a number four. The last time someone had slipped me a note, I’d been in middle school.

  “A note? Really?” I kept my voice pitched low, but even I heard the lightness in my tone, though he could have simply handed the note to me. It’s not like Mr. K was paying attention. His bearded face was planted in the screen of his laptop.

  Michael didn’t bat a long eyelash. Bambi eyes. The super-jock had Bambi eyes, and they blinked in total innocence as he waited for me to pick up the note. I didn’t, choosing instead to doodle in my notebook as a distraction. A line of smiley faces spread across the top of my paper. Great, even my subconscious was smiling.

  After giving us what he deemed a suitable amount of time to work out the problem, Mr. K peered over his laptop and addressed the class. “Anybody think they know the solution?”

  A few hands went up, mostly from the front row. I sat in the second. My hand stayed in my lap, though I was pretty sure I had the right answer.

  “Anybody know they have the solution?” Mr. K pushed from his desk on a cringe-inducing protest from his chair. He was one of the few people I knew who still wore Birkenstocks. Though, according to Ally, they were making a comeback. She’d bought a pair last week on a girl’s day out with me and Caris.

  Khaki pants frayed at the hem and a button-up shirt left untucked added to Mr. K’s unkept appearance. As soon as he started to make his way down the center isle, I regretted my decision to ignore the note. Maybe he was more observant than I'd thought. He bent down, knees creaking loudly for someone who couldn’t be much past thirty, and scooped the note in his hand. It was wrapped in a paper football. His penetrating, and somewhat amused, gaze traveled across the aisle, settling first on Michael, then me. The paper blossomed as he unfolded it. He scanned the note. He was definitely amused now. His lips parted on a sly grin, and I imagined there was a nice looking thirty-something under all the thick jaw stubble and hobbit hair. No use in wondering what the note said. I was pretty sure I was about to find out, along with the rest of the class.

  “Miss Shaw, it seems Mr. Bray,” he turned and bowed slightly at Michael, “would like you to go to the football game with him Friday night.” He looked up from the paper expectantly. A spark of sudden interest had our classmates sitting up in their desks, accentuated by a few loud guffaws, mostly from the guys.

  I remained silent since Mr. K hadn’t actually asked me a question. He seemed mildly disappointed in my failure to respond.

  “I have an idea,” Mr. K said, tossing the paper on my desk. I ignored it and eyed Mr. K under a tingle of suspicion. Mr. K’s ideas usually involved humiliating one the students, which had to be against the code of acceptable teacher conduct or something. “Let’s make a wager.” He looked pointedly at me. “That is, if you’re willing to gamble a little, Miss Shaw?”

  Twenty pairs of eyes focused on me like laser beams. No way could I ruin the chance for the class to have a little fun. But my parents didn’t raise a moron.

  “What’s the wager?” I asked, my tone cautious. It would have been stupid to agree before I’d even heard the terms.

  “If Mr. Bray can work out the problem on the board correctly then he has won himself a date. If not, well…” Mr. K paused dramatically, “Michael is obligated to wash your car every Saturday for a month. You do have a car, don’t you?”

  I nodded and his eyes darted between the two of us, his face beaming as though he’d come up with the most brilliant idea ever.

  “Do we have a deal?”

  Michael and I exchanged a look as the whole class teetered on the edge of their seats. Michael shrugged and that smile of his snuck out, appearing totally game. My eyes flicked to his paper. It was blank. Instead of working out the problem, he’d been watching me. He w
as still watching me, but those eyes gave absolutely nothing away. Not a single tell in his steady, confident gaze. Could the super-jock also find the derivative of the square root of (2x-4)? I guessed I was about to find out.

  “Deal.” Challenge accepted. Plus, I felt as if I owed him a chance for being such a turd to him the other day. He had come to my game, after all. And those feelings I experienced whenever I thought about Michael that I refused to consider? They were getting harder to ignore.

  “Deal,” Michael responded without hesitation, and my smug smile faded a fraction.

  “Excellent.” Mr. K actually clapped his hands together as if our acceptance of his challenge made his day bearable.

  Michael took little time walking to the board and set to work. The squeak of the marker as it moved over the whiteboard was especially grating. Someone behind me whispered her appreciation for Michael’s ass as he worked out the problem. My eyes had yet to stray down that far. They lingered on the broad width of his shoulders. His shirt fit tight enough to emphasize the way his torso tapered down to narrow hips. I would enjoy watching Michael wash my car for the next month.

  I glanced over my shoulder at Ally two seats back. She was grinning ear to ear. The blood drained from my face. I was about to lose.

  By the time I turned back around, Michael was already done, and he flipped the marker end over end in the air, catching it with deft fingers. I looked at his answer then down at mine. They didn’t match.

  “Who thinks Mr. Bray has the correct solution?” Eighty percent of the class raised their hands. “Well, Mr. Bray, looks like you’ve won yourself a date. Congratulations.”