Page 53 of Bewitched By the Sea Monster
“I’m beneath the water.” Alistair’s voice caressed my brain, answering my unasked question. “I can’t surface here.”
“Is it the magic again? Preventing you?”
“Yes.”
I gnawed on the inside of my cheek. “It’s not hurting you now, though. Right? Or is the inlet completely off limits like the dock was?”
“I can be here. Under the waters. It will only hurt if I surface.”
“Good. That’s…I wonder why, though. They could probably make a killing and charge double the price for inlet-facing cottages if they came with the chance to get Nessie all to one’s self. Or, well…I guess that would be a massive liability though, huh?”
“Lia…lie-a-billl-a-tee.” He stewed over each syllable. “Iknowthis word.Liability. Iknowit. But not its meaning.”
Something jangled inside of my chest. Sympathy, sure. Because I felt his frustration, and I knew how maddening it was to have something on the fringes of your mind that you just couldn’t quite grasp. But there was also this sense of…wrongness? Deja vu?
“It’s legal jargon,” I said. “Basically means you’re responsible for something or someone. The isle is responsible for us—the tourists. So, if something happens—like if one of us goes for a naked joy ride on their star attraction and gets hurt—they don’t wanna get sued. So they write some half-baked warning in their brochure, and make sure you can’t pop up to tempt people, and…Yeah. It’s a protection against stupid people doing stupid things.”
“Ah. I see.” Although his tone suggested that he was still puzzling some of the details out. But then he chuckled and parroted one of my other statements. “‘N-naked joy ride.’Is that what you’d call our meeting?”
“I mean, if the shoe fits.”
“Does it?”
“Doesn’t it?’
“I don’t know. What’s a ‘joy ride?’”
“Literally just going for a ride to find joy,” I said. “There’s no place you have to be, no destination in mind. You’re just cruising along the freeway to have a good time.”
“And you were having a g-good time?” I could hearthe sarcasm in his voice, and my brain was flooded with an image of a posh, dark-haired man raising a skeptical eyebrow.
“I mean,no,” I admitted. “It was an experience, sure. But I could’ve done without the broken ribs and sliced up feet.”
Silence stretched between us, fractured only by the rushing of the sea.
Worry curdled the air. Not mine.His.
“You were hurt badly?” he prodded.
“Yeah. Not from anything you did, though,” I said. “Honest. You prevented me from getting banged up worse. The ocean knocked me around pretty good before I got to you.”
“Ahhh…” He dragged the sound out.
“And you were hurt too,” I added. “Trying to bring me to the dock. That magic…it doesn’t hurt for long, does it?”
“No. The pain is q-q-quick.Quick. It doesn’t last.”
“Well, thank the stars for that.” I sighed and wiped at the treacly stream of blood still oozing from my palm. “But even quick pain is no fun. And it doesn’t seem right, this isle, and the magic they zap you with.” I blew out a breath big enough to ruffle the curls that swirled over my forehead. “I’ve only been here aday,and I can’t wait to go home. I didn’t even want tocome,ifI’m being honest. But Jackson was so excited, and I wanted to be too, but?—”
“J-Jackson?”
“My boyfriend. Umm, like a significant other. A mate?”
Alistair gave me another drawling “ahhh.” “Didn’t you speak him…tellhim? That you’re not…not…un. Happy. That you’reunhappy.”
Unease crawled up my throat. “I didn’t say I was unhappy.”
“You didn’t have to.”
