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“What are you doing?” I demanded. “Get off of me. ”
He nodded toward where Mark had just delivered a vicious, bone-crunching punch to Kona’s nose. “Let them work it out. ”
“Are you insane? If I don’t get in the middle, they’ll kill each other. ”
“You’re already in the middle of it and everyone here knows it. ” He settled my feet back on the ground. “You know as well as I do that this has been brewing for a year. Let them get it out and then you can see where you stand. ”
I shrugged off the calming hands he’d laid on my shoulders. “Where I stand? I stand wherever I need to to keep them from hurting each other. ”
“Too late for that,” he said in his cryptic way. “But you know that too. ”
Kona landed a painful three-punch combo to Mark’s chest that had my stomach rolling. But Mark countered with a kick straight to Kona’s stomach. “I can’t watch this,” I told Kenji.
“Then go back to your cave. I’ll send someone to get you when it’s done. ”
I looked at him like he was nuts. “You don’t actually think I’m going to leave while they’re beating each other’s brains in, do you?”
Kenji shrugged, but his arm tightened around my waist. At that moment, blood spurted from Mark’s nose and I’d had enough. I sent a jolt of electricity straight through Kenji, not heavy enough to cause any damage but definitely strong enough to make him drop my arm.
“They won’t thank you for interrupting,” he warned.
“Maybe not,” I said, watching grimly as the two of them staggered to their feet and then continued the fight. “But they won’t say anything to me at all if they’re dead. ”
I dove in the middle, completely prepared for a fist to the face or a kick to the ribs. I probably deserved it for being stupid enough to get between two guys intent on causing as much damage as possible.
But as I threw myself into the fray, both Mark and Kona pulled their punches with muttered curses. Mark picked me up, tried to set me outside their little fight circle, but I hung on like a limpet.
“Stop,” I whispered to him, heedless of the tears running down my cheeks. “Please, stop this. ”
Mark cursed again as he slid me gently to the ground. I whirled around then, faced Kona. “Please,” I repeated. “No more. Watching this is killing me. ”
For long seconds he didn’t respond. Then he nodded, gave a kind of half shrug before turning and limping away into the crowd of mercreatures, all of whom gave him a wide berth.
I turned back to Mark. “Can you walk?” I asked softly, my hand going to his bruised and swollen jaw.
He shrugged me off. “I’m fine. ” Then he too staggered down the beach—in the opposite direction from Kona.
I ran after him, conscious as I did of the growing murmurings of the crowd. I knew what I was doing, knew that I was picking Mark publicly in front of all these people. And maybe I shouldn’t have done it, but Kona had known where I stood before this whole thing began. And while I was desperate to know how he was doing too, I had to make sure Mark was okay first. Kona had the heavy, nearly indestructible bones of a selkie. Mark didn’t have that luxury. He was the human. The fragile one.
Filled with guilt and anger and a bunch of other emotions I didn’t have the time or the guts to sort out at that moment, I caught up to Mark a few minutes from our cavern. Now that he was out of sight of the crowd, his limp was more pronounced and he was holding his ribs like something was broken.
“Here, lean on me,” I told him, draping his other arm over my shoulders.
“I’m fine, Tempe,” he said, brushing his lips over my hair. “It’s not like that was my first fight. ”
“I know. But it was your first fight with a selkie, and that’s a little different. ”
He shrugged, didn’t say anything, and I found myself wondering if I was wrong. If Mark and Kona had gone at each other like that before, only I hadn’t known about it. I wanted to push, to demand an explanation, but Mark’s lips were compressed, his face pale with pain. Whatever questions I had could wait.
I got him settled on my pallet in the middle of the cave—the same pallet where we had made love just a few hours before. I blushed a little when I saw it, but shoved the embarrassing but pleas ur able memories to the back of my brain. My lost virginity was the last thing I needed to be thinking about right now.
I grabbed a bottle of water and a washcloth. I soaked the cloth, then started dabbing at a cut near Mark’s eye.
He caught my wrist in his hand. “I need to clean it,” I told him. “You have sand in it. ”
He nodded, slowly let go of my wrist. But instead of lowering his hand, he raised it to my face, where he gently traced my features. “I’m sorry. ”
“You should be. Fighting with Kona—”
He shook his head, groaned. “I’m not sorry for that. ”
I sighed in exasperation. “Then what are you apologizing for?”
He glanced down at the quilt he was lying on, and I knew he was thinking about last night as much as I was. “This morning should have been about you, about us. ” His thumb brushed over my mouth. “I’m sorry, Tempe. I’ll make it up to you next time. I swear. ”
I kissed the fleshy joint at the top of his thumb. “You don’t need to make anything up to me,” I whispered. “It was perfect. ”
He smiled, then closed his eyes as I began my not-so-tender ministrations.
By the time I was done, Mark was sleepy and a little out of it. I started to get up, to give him time and room to rest, but he rolled over with a groan, wrapping an arm around my waist as he did. “Stay with me,” he said.
I nodded, then stretched out beside him, being careful not to jostle him as I did. My care didn’t matter though, because the second I was next to him he pulled me into the shelter of his arms. Curled himself around me.
Wrapped up like that, my back to his chest, my head on his arm—warm and cocooned and as safe as I was going to get—I finally slept.
When I awoke, Mark was gone.
I sat up, groggy and more than a little out of it. I reached for a bottle of water, splashed some on my face in an effort to wake myself up. It didn’t work, not when every cell in my body was begging me to go back to sleep.
I fought my way through the weird lethargy and did my best not to freak out about the fact that my injured boyfriend was no longer beside me. He was probably taking a walk, I told myself as I swallowed the last of the water and crawled out of bed. Or getting some food—we’d missed breakfast thanks to the fight, and if the shadows outside were anything to go by, we’d probably missed lunch as well.
Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong.
After splashing more water on my face and running my fingers through my hair—I really hoped Mahina had remembered to buy a brush when she was picking up supplies—I started down the beach after him. The first few steps were difficult—my legs felt a little funny and I kept tripping over my own feet. I must have been more tired than I thought.
It took a couple of minutes and some concerted effort on my part, but I finally shrugged off the strange lethargy. As I continued walking down the beach, I told myself it was ridiculous to be afraid that he and Kona had gotten into another fight. Neither one of them was in any shape for it after what had happened that morning. To be honest, after the pounding he received—and gave—I was a little shocked that Mark was up and around already. I headed toward the makeshift pavilion where meals had been served three times a day since I’d gotten to the island. Today, there was nothing and no one there. My sense of unease grew.