Page 74 of Make Out With A Merman

The rift pulses, jagged and wide, glowing faint green with heat and magic and rot. It moves like it’s breathing.

Like a wound trying to scream.

My chest burns.

I’ve got seconds, maybe less.

So I stop.

Open my arms.

And call the current.

It answers.

Hard.

The power rushes through me, sharp, hot, wild. It shreds the edges of my thoughts, tries to rip my form apart, but I hold steady. I pull it close. Shape it. Push it into the wound.

I pusheverything.

My strength.

My guilt.

Mylove.

Callie’s face flickers behind my eyes. Her voice. Her laugh. Her ridiculous glitter cannon and impossible hope.

She believed in me.

More than anyone ever has.

More than I believed in myself.

I press my magic into the rift’s core.

The pressure screams.

Something cracks in my chest, real or magical, I don’t know. But it hurts.

And still, I push.

I think of my father.

On the night he drowned trying to seal the first breach.

Of the stories he never told, the lessons he never finished.

I never got to say goodbye.

Never got to tell him I was proud to carry his name, even when it felt like a weight.

“I'm not afraid,” I whisper, voice swallowed by the deep. “I understand now.”

I feel the lake tremble.

Not in anger.

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