This was what she was afraid of, she realized. That her son would fall in love as quickly as she had done.
“Maybe you could hold on to something for me until I get back,” Dylan suggested.
Nick’s chin came up. He was interested, but wary. No fool, her boy. “Like what?”
Dylan reached into his pocket and withdrew a silver coin. A Morgan Liberty Head silver dollar. Regina had looked it up online. The thing was worth a couple hundred dollars, easy. She sucked in her breath.
Dylan’s gaze clashed with hers.
She exhaled slowly, without speaking.
Nick examined the coin in his grubby palm and then looked up at Dylan. “What’s this, like, a bribe?”
“If it was a bribe, I would have to give it to you,” Dylan explained. “Which I can’t, because your mother would skin us both.”
Nick snickered.
“It’s a marker. Like a promise,” Dylan said. “You keep it safe until I ask for it, and then I take you out in my boat.”
Nick’s gaze flickered to his mom. “Is that okay?”
She hugged her arms across her chest to hold in her expanding heart. “It’s your deal, kiddo.”
“Okay. Cool.” His fingers closed on the coin. A smile cracked his thin face as he stuck out his other hand. “Deal.”
Dylan nodded once, his large, dark hand encompassing Nick’s small, dirty one.
This was her son, Regina thought, almost dizzy with emotion. Her family, her life. She had never had a man in her life, never felt the need for one.
But now, watching Dylan shake hands with her son, she realized how easily he could make a place with them.
And how much it would hurt when he was gone.
15
THE TEENAGER BEHIND THE REGISTER AT THE grocery store blinked purple-lined eyes at the coins on the counter. “You can’t pay with those.”
Impatience whipped through Dylan like wind through a sail. He quivered, desperate to be gone. Browsing the pharmacy aisles had been a nightmare. Too many labels. Too many choices. What if he guessed wrong? He glared at the girl standing between him and freedom and snarled, “Take the damn money.”
Her painted eyes widened. Her jaw dropped. “Dad!” she hollered.
Dylan ground his teeth together. So much for his ability to charm.
A man with a build like a barrel and a receding hairline rolled over from the meat counter. “Problem here?”
“He—” The girl thrust her lip ring in Dylan’s direction. “Wants to pay with that.” She sneered at the fortune in silver plunked on the counter.
“They’re dollars,” Dylan said tightly.
American dollars. It wasn’t like he’d offered her Caesars or doubloons.
Usually when he needed cash to buy propane or supplies, he sold a few coins to a dealer in Rockland. But the past few weeks on World’s End had depleted his currency.
“So I . . .” The creases deepened at the corners of the man’s eyes. “Dylan? I heard you were back.”
Dylan regarded him blankly.
“George,” the man said.
Dylan had gone to school with a boy named George. They’d shared a classroom from kindergarten through eighth grade, shared gum and homework answers and copies of Penthouse that George had smuggled from behind the counter of his father’s store. Wiley’s Grocery. George Wiley. George.
Dylan managed to unglue his tongue from the roof of his mouth. “Good to see you again.”
“Yeah, you, too. Boy, you look just the same.” George shook his head. “Just the same.”
Because he’d aged only half the time, Dylan thought, with an odd lurch in his stomach.
George beamed at the girl with the purple eye shadow. “That’s my daughter, Stephanie, who won’t take your money.”
She rolled her eyes. “Dad-deee.”
His friend George was a father, Dylan thought dazedly. An overweight store owner with an adolescent daughter. Nothing human endured . . .
“So, you want us to run a tab for you?” George asked.
Dylan scowled. “What?”
His old friend nodded at the pile of coins on the counter. “What you got there is probably worth half my inventory. I don’t know exactly how much, and I sure as hell can’t make change. So we’ll open you an account, and you settle up when you can.”
Maybe some things endured, Dylan realized. Like a boy’s casually offered friendship, long after the boy had grown.
He swallowed past a constriction in his throat. “That would be . . . good. Thanks.”
“What are friends for?” George made an entry in a ledger; glanced at the prenatal vitamins as he bagged them. “How’s Regina?”
“Fine.”
Pregnant.
“Good.” George’s grin widened. “Women and the island, they get to us all, buddy. You give her my best.”
Dylan walked out, purchase in hand and George’s good wishes in his ears.
This, then, was what Regina wanted for Nick. The net Dylan felt closing so tightly around him could also be a web of support. Maybe the gossip and aggravation, the friction and demands, were a tolerable trade-off for this sense of community. Of acceptance. Of belonging.
Or they would be, Dylan thought, if he were human.
* * *
When you lived for millennia in the sea, a few days to send a message was nothing. But this once, the human technology that had fouled the waves and roiled the ocean bottom would have come in handy.
Dylan tread water a mile offshore, his long, pale legs dangling like so much shark bait, his balls pulled tight with cold. His human form was another inconvenience that had to be endured. Details tended to dissipate over distance in the water. Dylan needed his human brain to frame and sharpen the images he sent to Conn.
Especially since the messengers he called would filter whatever information he gave them the same way they strained the ocean for food, keeping only what they could digest.
They came, their long, sleek backs and uneven dorsals occasionally breaking the water’s bright surface: huge, slow acrobats of the sea with mild, deep eyes and flukes as individual as snowflakes. Two males, a female, and a calf, drawn by Dylan’s call. Not near, not too near. Their weight could swamp him, their draft could drown him, the barnacles on their sides could scrape him raw. Even the baby weighed a ton.
One of the males struck the water in greeting, and the wash broke over Dylan’s head, sending a roll of amusement through them all.
He surfaced, sputtering.
They did not question why or in what form Dylan was among them. Among the whayleyn, presence— being— was enough. Their vast acceptance surrounded him. Their collective concern enveloped him. They circled, letting their song absorb his story, weaving his message into the harmonies that knit together the Atlantic in the great deep blue, in the clear cold dark.
Dylan had no idea how the words and images of his report would be relayed to Conn, how “homeless” or “crucifix” transposed to notes in the whales’ harmonies. But they understood the importance of the child-to-be. MOTHER LOVE FATHER CARE FAMILY JOY surged over him in waves. Their song filled his ears like the surf; flooded his heart with peace; floated with him to shore.
He stood in the shallows, heart full, mind emptied, muscles loose and relaxed. Tossing back his wet hair, he scanned the beach.
And saw his father sitting guard over his pile of clothes.
Shit.
Dylan’s joy drained away like the waves frothing around his ankles. They were locked in a lonely amphitheater of rock and sand, with no one to witness their meeting but the spruce standing sentinel on shore and a few wisps of cloud.
Bart Hunter sat with his elbow on one raised knee, staring out to sea.
Dylan waded from the surf. He could not avoid the old man. The best he could do was ignore him. He bent for his jeans.
“She used to come here,” Bart said. “Your mother.”
Dylan didn’t want to talk about his mother, didn�
�t want to share her memory. Particularly not with his father.
He jammed his damp foot into his pant leg.
“Not just with you kids,” Bart continued. “Before you were born.”
Okay, Dylan really didn’t want to hear this. He hitched his jeans over his other foot.
“She’d come ashore there . . .”
Against his will, Dylan glanced over his shoulder, following his father’s gaze to his own route from the water.
Bart shook his head. “The most beautiful thing I’d ever seen in my life, and she tells me she loves me.” He laughed in wonder and disbelief, a sound harsh as a sob. “Me, who knew nothing but lobster and the tides. I weren’t much older than our Lucy then. Left school in the seventh grade. Never left the island at all. But she . . .” His voice trailed, lost in memory. He did not use her name. He did not need to. There was only ever one “she” for him, then or now.
“You stole her sealskin,” Dylan said, hard and cold. “You robbed her of her life.”
“I gave her a new life and three children. It should have been enough.”
“You robbed her of her self.”
“And didn’t she do the same to me? I never had a moment’s peace after I saw her. She told me she loved me.” Bart’s voice cracked like ice in April. “But how could I believe her? She being what she was, and me being what I was.”
Dylan opened his mouth to argue, outrage hot in his blood. His father was wrong. Had always been wrong.
And yet . . .
The words stopped his mouth, bitter and unspoken.
Didn’t Dylan believe the same? A selkie could not love a human.
Bart held his gaze, a sad recognition in his faded eyes. And then he stared back out to sea. “Your brother says you need a place to stay. You can have your old room if you want it.”
* * *
Dylan came downstairs with his bag packed while Regina was sweeping the floor. The grill was shut down, the front door was locked, the day’s receipts were totaled . . . and another man was preparing to walk out the door.
Regina looked from Dylan’s zippered duffel to his closed expression and felt her heart clutch.
Get over it, she told herself. She should be used to men leaving her by now.
Anyway, it was only for the night. This time. He’d be back in the morning. He said.
Dylan looked around the empty restaurant. His brows snapped together. “Should you be doing this yourself?”
His tone put her back up. Good. A fight would take her mind off her fear of closing alone, would distract her from the low, achy pain in her gut, would ease the loneliness that waited to swallow her when the door shut behind him.
“You see anybody else to do it?” she asked.
Now he looked annoyed. “Your mother . . .”
“Was here half the night last night and all day yesterday. Anyway, I’m almost done.”
Dylan set down his bag. “Give it to me, then.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Regina.” He gripped the handle just above her hand, humor in his voice and temper in his eyes, hot and real and so close she could have kissed him. “You really want to get into a tug of war with me over a broom?”
She thought about it. “No.”
“All right, then.”
With a sigh, she released the broom. He swept the floor. She erased the day’s specials from the board.
“Thanks for taking Nick out on your boat,” she offered. “It was all he could talk about all night.”
“We had a good time.” Dylan emptied the dustpan into the trash. “I’ll take you out tomorrow.”
Regina wiped her chalky fingers on her apron. “Can’t. I have work.”
“You can’t work all the time.”
He followed her back to the kitchen and hung the broom in the mop closet. That closet . . . Regina suppressed a shiver.
Dylan frowned. “You look done in.”
“I’m fine. Tired.” She dragged up a smile. “Morning sickness seems to be hitting hard and early this time around.”
“You are sick?”
His instant concern should have been gratifying. But she didn’t want him hanging around because he felt sorry for her. “I’m fine,” she repeated.
“Is it the baby?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know.” Worry sharpened her nerves and her voice. “I have cramps, okay?” Guys hated cramps. “I’ve had them all day.”
“Tell me what to do,” he said.
If she had to tell him, what good was that?
“Nothing. I’ve seen the doctor. I don’t need you to play nurse.”
He looked at her steadily. Silent. Willing. And completely clueless.
Emotionally arrested at thirteen, she thought. No one to teach him. To touch him. Ever.
She sighed. “I could use a hug.”
He put his arms around her, awkward as a boy at a sixth-grade dance.
She let her head drop on a man’s strong chest for the first time since she was three years old. She wasn’t used to leaning on people. On men.
She closed her eyes. He smelled like the sea.
They stood in the center of the kitchen, lightly linked, until by degrees their breathing meshed and matched, until he’d warmed her with his body. She’d observed before that his temperature was hotter than hers.
Gradually, her fears and worries, her annoyance and loneliness, slipped away. Her heartbeat quickened. His chest expanded. She could feel his erection growing long and hard against her stomach. Her hands fisted in his shirt at his back.
“I have something for you,” he said.
She smiled without opening her eyes. “I noticed.”
His amusement stirred her hair. “Not that. Not only that.”
He eased her away from him, patting his pockets like another man searching for his keys or a lighter. Eventually, he found what he was looking for and pulled it out: a fine gold chain with a single pearl suspended in a glowing twist of metal.
A single, really beautiful, very large pearl.
Regina sucked in her breath. She put her hands behind her back so she wouldn’t snatch it from him. She’d warned Nick repeatedly about the dangers of accepting gifts from strangers. Not that Dylan was a stranger any longer. But . . .
“Take it,” he said. “You need a chain to replace the one that was broken.”
“A chain, fine. This is . . .”
Too beautiful. Too much. Too painfully reminiscent of the kind of gift a man gave a woman he loved.
“It was my mother’s,” Dylan said. “It may have power to protect you, as your cross protects you.”
“Oh.” Her hands itched for it. “That’s very . . . practical.”
His eyes gleamed. “I hoped you would think so.”
She dug her crucifix from her pocket and threaded it on the chain with trembling fingers. The rounded pearl and the glowing cross slid together with a faint ching.
“Thank you,” Regina said. “It’s beautiful.”
She looked at the two charms lying together in her palm and then up at Dylan. Two bright spots of emotion burned on his cheekbones.
“I need your help to put it on.”
“I can do that. Turn around.”
She did, lifting her short hair out of the way. She felt the fumbling brush of his fingertips and then a warm, brief touch that might have been his mouth. Her heart moved into her throat.
“Well.” She swallowed. “I guess you should go now.”
Stay, her heart whispered.
“I could stay,” he echoed quietly behind her.
She wanted him to.
“No, you can’t. I told Nicky he could have a sleepover tonight.”
“Then you can have one, too,” Dylan said so promptly she laughed.
“Wrong.”
Even if Nick would buy that argument, even if Regina were willing to ignore her own long-standing rule, there was no way she would expose them all to the comments of freckle-faced ten-year-old
Danny Trujillo, whose instincts were honed by his mother’s love of gossip and whose conversation, like the video games he played, carried a M-rating for blood and gore, sexual content, and strong language.
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