Page 79 of Make Out With A Merman

My eyes flutter shut without meaning to, and suddenly…

I’m not in the water.

I’min him.

The first thing I see is cold.

Not this cold.

Childhood cold.

Snow through broken windowpanes. Ryder, small and furious, his fists balled in the corner of a cabin too big for how empty it feels.

His mother’s gone.

His father silent.

Just him and the roar of the wind outside and the weight of silence inside.

I feel his loneliness like it’s been sewn into my bones.

Then the scene shifts.

He’s older.

Teenager. Barefoot on the dock. Arms bleeding from runes burned too deep. His mentor yelling. Power flaring wild and wrong. A friend screaming from the shallows, bones shattered by an accident Rydernevermeant to cause.

Guilt swallows me whole.

He didn’t run from his gift because he was weak.

He ran because he wasgood.

Because hurting someone, even by accident, shattered something sacred inside him.

And he never forgave himself for surviving it.

I see him as a child, training at night, alone, in secret. Failing again. Hating himself for it.

I see the moment he first saw Camp Lightring, not as a soldier, not as a protector, but as ahome.

His first real home.

And then I seeme.

The way he saw me the day I stumbled off that stolen paddleboard, glitter trailing behind me like sea foam. The burst of irritation in him. The way it burned straight into curiosity.

I feel every time I made him laugh.

Every time I scared him with how easily I got under his skin.

Every time we made love, warm and soft and passionate.

Our first kiss.

The way I glow in his eyes.

I feel the slow realization.

---