Ripple

Chapter Twenty-Two

It’s as if he knew he should come to the lake. I don’t know how or why, but he’s standing under my tree. Erik. How did he beat me here? Did he race up here, slamming the gas pedal down as hard as I did?

He’s standing there in the shadows, silent, and I walk up and shove him.

Hard.

Despite the fact that Erik outweighs me by at least seventy or eighty pounds, he flies backward and lies on the muddy shore of the lake. I stalk forward, not stopping until I’m standing over him, one foot planted on each side of his hips. “Why do you have to be right?”

I spit the words, so angry I almost choke on them.

But then I see his expression, realize none of this is his fault. He’s hurting as much as I am. He shrugs, still lying in the mud as he turns his face away from me.

“I hate you,” I say, my voice breaking.

“You don’t,” he says simply.

I hate it even more that he’s right.

I step over him and walk to the shore. My toes nearly touch the water. I want to get in and swim right now, my body craving the cool water. But it won’t change anything.

I try to rein in my pain, my anger as he sits up. His sweater is covered in mud. I shouldn’t have pushed him like that. What’s strange is that he didn’t bother fighting back; he just let me do it. It’s as if he knew I needed to get rid of the fury boiling through me.

“So,” I say, turning my attention to the water.

“So . . .?” he asks.

“I want to be with him. Cole,” I say.

“I know.” I hear the edge of pain in his voice. The pain in my chest grows. Why do I always have to hurt people?

“But . . .”

“Yes?”

“He’s already asking so many questions. He’s not going to stop until he knows the truth. And then when he does, he’ll just leave.” I pause, wincing at the way this sounds when I say it aloud. “If I don’t accidently kill him first.”

“I know.”

“You swear you can fix this?”

My question lingers for a long moment. Finally, he finds the words. “I can’t promise you that you’ll fall in love with me. But I can promise that if you do . . . if we do . . .”

I interrupt him, a new idea dawning in my mind. “Why didn’t one of you guys find my mom? She died for this curse. One of you could have saved her.”

“Like I said before . . . you’re hard to find. It’s not as if you advertise what you are.”

“Yeah, I get that. But why didn’t she know about your existence? My curse dates back two hundred and fifty years, and none of them went looking for you guys?”

He looks up at me from where he sits, still in the mud. “I had hoped you’d be looking for me. But I suppose I’m not surprised. Sirens rarely last long enough to pass on the legend.”

I jerk back and look at him.

“I’m sorry. But it’s the truth. Sirens just don’t seem to handle this as well as nixes. Maybe it’s the difference between men and women. Maybe it’s the difference between our curses. It’s just very hard to find a siren who lives long enough to pass the legend down to her daughter. Nixes, on the other hand, we’ve passed this down for generations. We grow up knowing what is to come. What we need to do before we reach our eighteenth birthday.”

“When is your eighteenth birthday?”

“Twenty-seven days.”

I whirl around and stare at him, my jaw unhinged. “A month? Less than a month?”

He blinks and stares back at his muddy palms. “Yeah. That’s why I was so desperate to find you. Because without you? I have no life.”

When I meet his eyes, I snap my jaw shut. Hope. That’s all I see there. He actually wants to be with me, wants me to realize he’s right. Wants me to save him from the things he’s describing.

I’m always the one to cause pain. I’ve never been the one to save someone from it.

“If I agree to this . . . what comes next?”

When he stands, I cringe at the mud covering his backside. He edges forward, so his shoes hit the edge of the water. He’s so much taller than I am—we stand shoulder to biceps instead of shoulder to shoulder. “We spend some time together. I can’t promise you this will work. But if we fall in love . . .”

A second of silence lingers there, and we stare at each other, a hundred things passing between us. He clears his throat. “If we fall in love, the curses break.”

Somehow, the look in his eyes makes everything inside me unravel. I finally see him for what he is: cursed just like me. Screwed is more like it. He’s after the same thing. He’s hoping that somehow we’re okay. Somehow, we can be what everyone else is.

But he’s just as scared as I am that it won’t work.

“So what ... we just hang out?”

He shrugs again, those perfectly sculpted, Greek-god-size shoulders moving upward. “I guess ... I guess we get to know each other. See if it becomes what it is supposed to.”

I swallow and take a huge step into the water. Strangely though, it doesn’t have its usual calming effect.

My physical need for it abates, but my nerves don’t dissipate. “Okay,” I say. I feel as though I’m losing something beloved and gaining something new. It’s Cole for Erik—and a lifetime of possibility. “Let’s try that.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes. How could I go on with my life without knowing what this is? Tomorrow, I’ll tell Cole it’s over. We can ... We can try. See where this goes. See if it can be something.”

His grin is so wide, it envelops his face. After the darkness of tonight, it’s like the sun is beating down on me, warming me from the inside out. I want to bask in it, enjoy it forever. Maybe with Erik

. . . maybe I could.

Never have to swim again? We could do anything. Be anyone. I can give up all the drama and truly focus on college. Studies. On being someone.

How can I not want to do that? How can I not try? I have to.

And yet as I accept a hug from Erik, all I feel is my betrayal.

Because I still want Cole.