Page 37 of Stealing the Merman

Only then did Darin reach for Finn, cupping his cheek. “I have to leave.” His voice was thick, sadness drenching it, his words a harrowing echo to the last ones he’d spoken to Finn in Shroud Cay.

Stabbing pain shot through Finn’s heart. His chest seized, but he ensured that his face remained impassive and didn’t betray his feelings. “I know. It was never meant to last. I’m sorry about your friend, this shouldn’t have happened.”

Darin’s fingers trailed down his face, his neck, then traced the cowrie shell necklace. “Remember me,” he said, got to his feet and walked away.

Finn couldn’t watch him leave. He turned his head, eyes burning. He should’ve asked Zade to slow down. There was no telling if Luis would recover, if he was even alive. Finn took a shaky breath. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw movement. Darin.

He was running back to him. What was he doing? Finn’s heartbeat thundered. Darin dropped to his knees in front of him, panting. His eyes were wet, and his body shook. His hands sank into Finn’s hair, fisting his waves. He pushed their lips together and kissed Finn like he had ten seconds left to live. Finn met him strike for strike, violently kissing him back. Teeth clashed, and lips bruised. Darin tasted of tears and abandonment. Finn poured his despair into the kiss, all the tangled feelings he hadn’t dared to examine. He embraced Darin and clung to him with all he had.

Humans and mermen weren’t meant to be together. They lived in different habitats. They were incompatible. And Finn had received a direful reminder of how dangerous his kind was to the ones they chose as companions.

There was no future for him and Darin. There never had been, not in Shroud Cay, and not now. Finn hadn’t deluded himself that there was. And yet, it hurt.

When Darin ripped away from him and sprinted along the beach, he tore Finn’s heart out and took it with him. Illuminated by the full moon, his slender, pale legs pounded the sand as he ran after Fernando and Kristian.

Finn panicked. His hand flew to his collarbone, feeling for the cowrie shell necklace for fear it, too, was gone, but it rested against his skin undisturbed, and as Darin followed the other men around a bend of the coast, it was solid, comforting evidence that their encounter hadn’t been a fever dream.

He would’ve done anything to have more time with Darin. To swim with him between the islands, chasing schools of colorful fish and playing with sea turtles. To lie in the sand and watch the palm trees sway in the wind. To find words for the warmth in his heart when Darin’s green and gold eyes smiled at him.

A sob tore him out of his self-pity. Zade sat a few yards away, shoulders heaving as he fought to keep the pain inside. Finn took him in his arms, holding him and gently swaying. Finn might not see Darin again, but Zade’s man had died in his arms when their passion had carried them away.

“I… I d-didn’t mean to…” Zade sobbed.

“I know,” Finn said, rubbing Zade’s head. “It was an accident.”

Zade nodded fiercely.

That’s when Arian showed up, burning with anger. He barked accusations at Zade, who shrank further and further into Finn’s arms. Finn tried to calm Arian and deescalate the situation, but he wouldn’t have it. He was frothing at the mouth, spitting his contempt at Zade. Only when Tarlis came and pulled him away did quietness return.

Finn had never seen Arian like this. He had a selfish streak, but his disregard for Zade’s pain rattled Finn. Arian must have bonded with Fernando far more than Finn had realized. The two of them had gone on adventures during their days together. What had passed between them that possessed Arian to act this way?

Finn put his feelings aside and looked after Zade, comforting him in his grief. It gave Finn something to think about other than his aching heart.

Over the next couple of days, he noticed how Arian failed to cope with Fernando’s departure. He wasn’t eating or sleeping, and his deteriorating condition concerned Finn.

His erratic behavior peaked in his decision to go see Malik, the sea witch, and ask for a potion that’d give him legs. There was no reasoning with Arian. A potion like that didn’t exist. If it did, mermen would be using it everywhere. And if Malik, by some miracle, would be able to brew him one, it’d cost Arian a price so high, he’d forfeit his life by paying it. But Arian would not be stopped, not by Tarlis’s reasoning or by Finn’s begging. He left.

A month later, news traveled to Culebrita that a merman had enslaved himself for life to the sea witch. Finn was horrified.

Next, Tarlis disappeared. One day he was there and gone the next. Finn frantically searched the waters around Culebrita for him, then the entire archipelago. There was no trace of him. He asked around the other merman colonies that inhabited the islands, but no one had seen or heard from Tarlis.

Finn vaguely recalled that Tarlis had mentioned once or twice that he’d like to return to the North Sea, where he was born. Wasn’t that the area Kristian was from? Tarlis had a mind as sharp as a knife, he wouldn’t be reckless enough to go after Kristian, who was a hairbreadth from exploding into violence at any given moment. Would he?

And then there was Finn’s dilemma. He’d once run from Shroud Cay in the hopes of starting fresh somewhere new after the place was tainted with bad memories. But if Shroud Cay was tainted, Culebrita was rotten. Did that mean that he should leave? The beauty of the island had been washed away by the dreadful end of his latest encounter with Darin.

Like with Conall in Shroud Cay, Finn held onto hope that Darin would return. But as the months passed and Darin never showed, it faded.

Chapter Twelve

Conall

They said time healed all wounds, but perhaps that didn’t apply to Conall. The gash Anne had left wasn’t closing. And neither could he forget Darin and Finn. A year passed and still, whenever he closed his eyes, a vision of the two of them, kissing and touching in the sand, flashed before his eyes. Soft gold entangled with bright copper.

Conall had looked for Finn. He believed in living his dreams, and that included being reunited with Finn. The last attempt had gone wrong, but he wouldn’t be stopped this time.

Weeks after dropping off Darin at the port, Conall returned to Shroud Cay to see Finn and steal comfort from his open arms. But Finn was gone, and no one knew where to. It took the wind out of Conall’s sails.

He made his crew travel up and down the Exumas in search of him. It didn’t take them long to think he was mad. That posed an unacceptable risk. Conall paid them off and discharged them collectively, from deckhand to quartermaster. He assembled a new crew and continued to search the Bahamas. Rinse and repeat.

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