Page 9 of Shark 2

“How long will you guys be gone?” Some tournaments happened in one day, while others could be spaced out over two days or even up to a week. I hadn’t been apart from them since the Bastian incident.

Would time away from me remind them of their past lives, the times before they’d met me, when they were a solid unit? Would it remind them what it was like and cause them to leave me? Would this be the nail in the coffin of our relationship? Would this be when Reed left?

Jong-min turned to me, his brows furrowed, and asked, “You don’t want to come with us?”

My mouth opened and closed a couple of times, like a fish out of water. “I can go with you?”

“If you’re worried about work, I can talk to—” Grant started, but I interrupted him.

“No, I’m not worried about work. I just … didn’t think you’d want me to go, I guess.” Admitting it made me immediately embarrassed, but it was good for me to be vulnerable with them sometimes.

“It’ll be inland, no ocean nearby,” Jong-hyun commented. “Can you handle that for a few days?”

A few days away from the sea …

“I actually haven’t been away from the ocean before,” I admitted. Could I handle not having salt water?

Jong-min had his phone out, searching for something on the internet, but since he was so far away, I couldn’t read it.

“I would be willing to try,” I said. “I should be able to handle being away from the ocean, since I don’t need it to survive. I’ve just never had the opportunity to travel away from it before.”

“It’s not just traveling away from it, Kass. We’re going to a desert,” Grant said softly.

A desert?

“We can discuss that later, what’s important is that you want to go with us and we want you to go, too,” Jong-hyun said.

“It would be a week,” Jong-min said, finally answering my original question.

A week away from the ocean, at the desert.

“I-Is Reed going to go with you?” I asked softly, looking down at my hands in my lap.

“Go with them where?” Reed asked and walked into the room. He wore a black tank top and a pair of grey sweatpants. My eyes immediately dropped to the sweatpants, but I jerked them back up to his eyes. His lips twitched on one side, a knowing smirk almost forming, before he resumed frowning.

“Here,” Grant said and held out an envelope to Reed.

Reed read it, his eyes widening slightly. “This is perfect,” he whispered.

“Perfect?” Grant asked.

Reed glanced at me before turning his entire body to focus on Grant. “Yes, I was looking for a way to stall the pack without outright turning them down and this is a perfect way to do that.”

So, he was still considering it. That … hurt.

Maybe it wasn’t a good idea for me to go with them.

I stood and smoothed down my pants. “I’ll leave you four to discuss your trip. I’m going to go for a swim. All this talk about deserts has me sweating.”

It wasn’t a complete lie. I had started sweating when talking about being away from the ocean and inside a desert for a week.

“Have a good swim,” Reed said without even looking at me.

Grant’s hands balled into fists at his side, eyes narrowing at Reed.

Jong-hyun’s hands started to glow pink and his nails turned into claws.

“Thanks,” I replied in a chipper tone, trying to defuse the others, at least until I left.

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