“I want you to promise me that no matter what happens, you’ll be with my sister and take care of her.”
He waited a beat before shaking his head. “I can’t promise you that.”
“But you love her!” Gemma insisted.
“That’s why I can’t promise you that. What holds us together needs to be love and mutual respect and desire. I can’t be bound to her by guilt from you. That’s not what’s best for her.”
Gemma sighed. “Daniel.”
“I can promise that I will look out for her for as long as I’m alive, even if we’re not together and even if she decides she hates me one day,” he said. “But that’s the best I’ll do.”
“Thank you.”
“But why all this worry about your sister for the rest of eternity? Are you planning on not being around to protect her?” Daniel asked.
“No. I just…” She tried to play it off. “I can’t be around her all the time, and I want to know she’s safe.”
“She’s safe, but I have to be honest. It’s you I’m worried about.”
Standing in front of him, Gemma was at least a foot smaller than he, and, dripping wet as she was, she looked even smaller. In an objective way, he knew that she was beautiful, but that’s not what he saw when he looked at her.
Her golden eyes had grown harder over recent months, but they still had an innocence and optimism to them, and when she smiled, her expression still had that hint of little girl to it.
In her, he always saw a frightened child, trapped in a situation that they were fighting desperately to change. It was what he’d seen in her eyes that very first time he’d rescued her from the sirens, when she was still human, and Penn had cornered her on the dock next to his boat. And that was why he helped her then, and why he helped her still.
“I’m fine,” Gemma said, and started backing toward the door. “But I should probably head back. Long swim.”
“Gemma.” He stopped her and stepped away from the counter, closer to her. “Did I ever tell you about when my brother died?”
“It was a boat accident, wasn’t it?” she asked.
Daniel nodded. “He got drunk even though I had told him to stop drinking. He took a boat out when I asked him not to. And he crashed when I told him to slow down.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, sounding unsure of what else to say.
“I can forgive myself for that. He made all those choices to drink and drive a boat, and I’ve learned to accept his choices as best I can. He knew what he was doing, and I tried my hardest to talk him out of it. But he was five years older than me and wasn’t about to let me tell him what to do.
“But the part I can’t forgive myself for, the part that still haunts me, is that I didn’t find him,” he went on. “After the boat crashed, he was lost in the bay, and I went in after him, but I never found him.” He’d walked up so he was right in front of her, and she stared up at him.
“Why?” she asked.
“Because I should’ve been able to save him, and it might not make sense, but I feel like I didn’t do everything I could. Anything short of staying in that water until I died doesn’t feel like enough.”
“If he’d died, your dying wouldn’t have brought him back,” Gemma told him.
“I know. Logically, I know,” he admitted. “But that’s not how it feels at night when I’m lying awake.”
“You can’t blame yourself for his death.”
“I’ve had plenty of therapy about John’s death, and that’s not why I brought it up.”
“Then why did you?”
“Because I know that something’s going on with you, and I don’t know what it is,” Daniel said. “But I don’t want to find you dead and know that I didn’t do everything I could to save you.”
“Daniel, you won’t find me dead, and you’ve done absolutely everything you can. You’ve done so much more than you ever needed to.”
She stood on her tiptoes so she could lean in and kiss him on the cheek, then she put her arms around him. He hugged her back as she squeezed tighter, and he kissed the top of her head. Then she stepped back, and when she smiled up at him, there were tears in her eyes.
“I love you. I’m not in love with you, but I do care about you,” Gemma said.
“I care about you, too. An awful lot.”
“I should go, though.” She stepped toward the door. “But please do me a favor and stop worrying so much. Everything is going to be fine, you’ll see.” She smiled and her brown eyes twinkled in a way that almost made him believe her.
Then Gemma turned and ran out the door, racing down the path to the bay. He considered going after her so he could see if she did really swim away using her legs, but he thought he already knew the answer.
FIFTY-SIX
Holiday