Page 6
It had been years since Mark had first held my hand—sometime in seventh grade, I thought—but it felt the same tonight. Even with the confusion and fear rioting inside of me, I couldn’t help the reaction I had to his touch. Not the warmth that spread from my hand to the rest of my body, nor the sense of rightness that moved through me with every caress of his thumb over my skin.
My fingers tightened on his as it suddenly occurred to me just how soon I was going to have to let him go—and for how long. I’d made it home three times in the last four months, and I knew I couldn’t keep doing it, couldn’t keep running off to be with him. Not when things in Coral Straits were such a mess. And not when figuring out how to clean them up was mostly my responsibility.
I glanced down, realized I was squeezing his hand hard enough to hurt—already I could feel my fingers tingling from lack of circulation—but I couldn’t bring myself to relinquish my hold. We stopped at a red light, and a glance at Mark told me he was watching me, a little surprised, I thought, by the vehemence of my grip. But as I met his gaze, held it, his gorgeous brown eyes grew hot. And something more. Something dark and needy that echoed the emotions roiling around inside of me.
Suddenly I didn’t want to go to the football game, didn’t want to be anywhere but alone with Mark so we could talk and laugh and kiss. So he could hold me and I could touch him the way I’d been dreaming about for days. Weeks. Months. I had so little time with him that it seemed a waste to spend it in the middle of a crowded stadium watching a game neither of us gave a damn about, even though it meant spending time with our friends.
“Tempest—” Mark’s voice was a low rumble ripe with need … and with warning. If I didn’t plan on spending the rest of the night stretched out underneath him in the back of the car, now would be a good time to look away.
I didn’t move. And for long seconds neither did he. And then he was lowering his mouth to mine, his lips—
Behind us a car honked and I jerked away, glanced up at the light. It was green, and God only knew how long it had been like that—the lane of cars next to us was moving past at a steady stream. Mark cursed softly, then pulled forward, his fingers suddenly as tight on mine as mine were on his. Then he was making the last turn onto the crowded, car-lined street that ran in front of LJHS, and it was too late to ask to leave, too late to tell him how much I craved the feel of him against me.
Mark parked, then came around to hold the door for me while I slid out of the car. Wrapping an arm around my waist, he jerked me toward him. I had only a moment to register the feel of him against me before his mouth was on mine in a kiss so hot, so possessive, that it stole my breath and my brain cells. All I could do was lean into him—I didn’t think my legs would support me, anyway—and kiss him back with all of the mixed-up, desperate emotions inside of me.
As his mouth consumed mine, I brought my hands up to his face. I cupped his cheeks, feeling the sharp stubble from where he’d forgotten to shave, then shoved my fingers through his glorious, too-long mane of dark blond hair.
He groaned a little, finally pulling away though I wanted nothing more than to hold him like that forever. It was ridiculous, an impossibility, but I wanted it anyway. Desperately and with every too-fast beat of my mixed-up heart.
Something of my desperation must have shown on my face, because Mark’s hands tightened on my arms—almost as if he was as afraid of losing me as I was of slipping away. For long seconds neither of us moved. We just stood there, staring into each other’s eyes as the reality of what we had, and didn’t have, crackled in the air around us.
Then Mark was burying his face against my neck and breathing deep. “You smell like the sea,” he told me. A year ago I would have taken that as a compliment. Here, at this moment, I wasn’t so sure. I started to ask him what he meant, then decided I didn’t want to know. Instead, I made a joke of it, playfully poking him in the stomach while I told him, “Yeah, well, you smell of Sex Wax. ”
He laughed. “Like that’s an insult? I happen to know exactly how much you love that smell. ”
He was right; I did. Some of my first memories were of hanging with my dad at professional surfing competitions, helping him wax his board before he hit the water. Back then I was more hindrance than help, but he never acted like it. Instead, he patiently showed me how to coat his board with the grape-scented wax, teaching me to leave a few little bumps here and there to smooth out with my heels when I was riding and found a slick spot beneath my feet.
Pressing my face against Mark’s chest, I breathed in the comforting scent of him. Pulled him deep inside my lungs, deep inside of myself, in an effort to hold on to him forever. Mark’s arms tightened around me as if he wanted to hold me inside of him too. His lips skimmed down my cheek to the corner of my mouth and back up again, until I could feel his breath—hot and fast—against my ear. “I love you,” he whispered, and everything inside of me lit up like a shooting star over the Pacific. It was the first time he’d said it since I’d been home, and I hadn’t realized, until now, just how much I’d needed to hear the words from him.
“I love you too. ”
His cell phone buzzed in his pocket and he stepped back reluctantly, pulling it out to read the text. He grinned a little as he wrote back.
“What’s so funny?”
“Logan just texted that I should stop trying to get you out of your clothes and get you inside where they can see you too. ”
“What’d you tell him?”
“That he shouldn’t be worrying about your clothes one way or the other. ” He shoved the phone back in his pocket, then reached for my hand. “You ready?”
I nodded, suddenly as anxious to see my friends as they were to see me. “Where are they sitting?”
“A few rows under the announcer’s booth. ”
I looked at him blankly. I’d been a student at La Jolla High for more than two years before I’d become mermaid, but this was the first football game I’d ever been to. Mark should consider himself lucky I knew where the football field was.
He laughed at my clueless expression even as he propelled me toward the stadium entrance. “Don’t worry. I know exactly where they are. ”
I nodded and let him lead, enjoying the novelty of the experience. When I was mermaid, it seemed like everyone in Coral Straits was always looking to me to solve every problem. It felt good to let someone else be in charge for a little while, even over something as minor as this.
Mark kept me close as he bought tickets and chatted with an incessant string of random people. Some of them I knew, or at least recognized, but most of them were strangers. Which was weird on a whole new level. Even when Mark and I hadn’t been together-together, we’d been close friends, our lives intersecting and overlapping on all sides.
But I’d been gone a year. My life had continued on without him, and now, standing here watching as girl after girl jockeyed for his attention, it became clear that his had done the same without me.
I guess I assumed he’d spent most of his time doing the usual while I was gone—surfing with our friends in the morning, the quick rush to school in an attempt to avoid a tardy slip and the subsequent detention, surfing and basketball practice after school followed by homework. Which I still knew was partly the case. But there were too many people who knew him—too many who made room in their rows and invited him to sit with them—for me to think that was all he’d been doing these last months.