TWENTY-THREE
Admissions
Gemma was still sleeping when Harper left. After Gemma had talked to their dad the night before, she’d stayed in her room. Both Harper and Brian checked on her many times, but each time, Gemma was sound asleep. Whatever Gemma had been up to while she was with the sirens, it had obviously exhausted her.
Harper had slept a lot, too. The twenty-plus-hour drive had been very tiring. But Harper woke up often, certain that Gemma had left again, and would rush across the hall to peek in on her.
Even leaving today had been hard. Harper had called in to work, because she wasn’t ready to leave Gemma for that long. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Gemma not to run away. It was that Harper was afraid the sirens might come and find her.
She’d called Daniel a couple times, and he hadn’t answered the phone. For some reason, that made Harper nervous. With possible revenge-seeking sirens on the loose, she didn’t like the idea of anybody involved with rescuing Gemma not answering the phone.
It wasn’t like she could leave Gemma home alone, though. Harper had called Alex, and he came over to help watch out for her. Since Gemma was still sleeping, Alex got comfortable on the living room couch.
He’d brought his laptop with him, and he immediately returned to doing his Internet search on how to break the sirens’ curse. When Gemma woke up, they both hoped she’d be able to help out, since she knew more about the mythology than either of them did. But for now they thought it’d be better if Gemma rested, and Alex was left to his own devices until she woke up.
Harper thought about warning him that his job was to guard Gemma, not make out with her, but honestly, she didn’t really care much about upholding Brian’s attempt at grounding Gemma, and he was at work so he couldn’t enforce it. Usually Harper would back him up, but this time she understood that Gemma didn’t need to be punished for what she’d done.
Besides that, she didn’t think Alex should be punished. He’d worked hard to find Gemma, so at the very least he deserved to be an exception to the rule. And he could help protect and watch over Gemma when Harper wasn’t around.
Still, Harper didn’t plan on making her trip down to the dock a long one. She just planned to see Daniel, make sure he was all right, thank him again for his help, and then leave. If she could do all that without getting on his boat, that would be even better.
After overhearing his conversation with Alex the other night, Harper had become convinced that she couldn’t be around him anymore. She couldn’t become involved with him, not right now when so much was going on with Gemma, and it wasn’t fair to lead him on like that.
But more than that, things were becoming increasingly dangerous for everyone around Gemma. Harper had seen what the sirens could do, and she had a feeling that if they did find Gemma, and Harper and the others couldn’t stop them, the sirens would seek vengeance on all the people who had tried to help Gemma. That included Daniel.
Or it would, if he stayed a part of Harper’s life. It would be much safer for him if she stopped talking to him.
So today she would just check on him, and maybe tell him good-bye. No, definitely tell him good-bye. She just didn’t know how to word it yet without it sounding weird.
As Harper walked down the docks to where Daniel’s boat was moored, she tried to go over what she planned to say to him. Red, white, and blue flags tacked onto the docks’ posts waved wildly in the wind, preparation for the Fourth of July celebration this weekend.
When she reached Daniel’s boat, she was surprised to see a flyer taped onto the side, right next to the boat’s name, The Dirty Gull.
It was warped and faded from the sun and water splashing on it, even though it had only been there for a few days, but the words Have you seen me? were still legible above a large picture of Gemma. Alex had printed up a bunch of flyers and hung them around town.
Harper leaned over and grabbed on to the boat with one hand. She had to get the flyer down. For one thing, she didn’t want the reminder of Gemma being missing, but more important, she didn’t want the sirens to spot the connection between this boat and Gemma.
She grabbed one corner of the flyer, and had just started to pull when a boat zipped by, creating a wave that made The Dirty Gull rock hard to the side.
“Oh, no,” Harper groaned.
She gripped the boat tighter to steady herself, but that only succeeded in causing her to lose her tenuous foothold on the dock. She tried to wrap her arm around the railing so she could hang on, but she couldn’t get a handle on it.
Just when she was about to slip and splash into the water, Daniel’s arm appeared over the railing and grabbed her.
“I’m seriously starting to wonder how you survived without me,” Daniel said, grinning down at her.
“Much better, actually,” Harper said as his strong hands held both of her arms. “I wasn’t always trying to climb onto boats, so I very rarely fell into the ocean.”
Once he’d lifted her up and set her safely on the deck, she lingered in his arms for a moment before remembering why she’d come here. It was hard to do when he looked at her like that, his hazel eyes full of something that created heat in her belly.
And he was shirtless—again—which only made matters worse. It was getting harder and harder for her to reject someone who looked like Daniel did when he wasn’t wearing a shirt.
“What can I do for you today?” Daniel asked, his arm still wrapped around her waist so her chest was pressed to his. His abdomen and chest felt so firm against the soft contours of her own body, like he was made of concrete instead of flesh.
“I, uh…” Harper couldn’t remember what he could do for her, so she shook her head and stepped away from him. It was impossible to think or even breathe when he held her close to him like that.
“Are you okay?” Daniel wrinkled his brows in confusion as Harper backed away from him.
“A flyer!” Harper announced excitedly when she remembered. “I was peeling a flyer off your boat.”
She’d actually managed to rip off half of the flyer. But in her attempt to hang on to the boat, she’d dropped it into the water, where the scrap of paper was presumably floating out to sea.
“You mean the missing poster for Gemma?” Daniel’s expression grew even more confused. “You came out to tear that off my boat? How did you even know that I had one?”
“I didn’t.” Harper leaned back against the railing behind her, trying to put some space between her and Daniel. “I happened to see it when I came out here, so I was trying to take it off, and then I slipped, and here we are.”
“Yes, here we are,” Daniel agreed as a bemused smile spread across his face. “The question is, why are we here?”
“I tried calling you earlier, and you didn’t answer the phone,” Harper said. “I thought maybe … I don’t know. Something might have happened.”
“You were worried about me?” He stepped closer to her, and his smile grew wider.
“Yeah. So?” Harper shrugged and tried to seem casual. “I worry about people. There’s lots of crazy stuff going on right now. It makes sense that I would worry. I worry a lot. That’s not a big deal. It’s just how I am.”
Another wave came up, and since Harper had been leaning against the rail, she almost fell backward over it. She caught herself at the last second, and Daniel grabbed her arm, just to be safe.
“Why don’t we go down inside and talk about how natural it is for you to worry?” Daniel asked. “It’s much less likely that you’ll fall overboard down there.”
“Yeah, sure.” Harper stepped back from the edge and followed Daniel down into the boat.
This was actually going against her original plan, which was to avoid getting on the boat in the first place, and, if she did go on the boat, not to go down into his living area. But it was better than standing on the deck and getting tossed around so he’d have to catch her.
When Harper went down, she noticed his tiny quarters appeared a bit cleaner than when she’d seen them before. A stack of neatly folded clothes was at the end of his bed, and his bed was actually made. There was an empty bottle in the tiny sink, but that was about all that constituted a mess.
“So?” Daniel leaned against the small dining table that sat between padded benches. “You were saying that you were worried about me?”
“No, I was saying that with everything going on, it makes sense that I would worry in general.” Harper sat down on the bed, since it was the farthest away from him that she could sit. “Why didn’t you answer your phone?”
“I was sleeping,” Daniel told her. “I went on this really long road trip yesterday, and I was awake for, like, twenty-four hours in a car. For some reason, that made me really tired, so when I got back, I slept a lot.”
“Sorry.” Harper smoothed out a wrinkle in his blankets. “I mean, thank you for coming with. And all the stuff you’ve been doing to help me, and Gemma. You really have been so helpful lately, and it means a lot to me.”
“That’s so weird how you can do that,” Daniel said, and she looked up at him. He was staring out the window, his lips pursed.
“What?”
He shook his head and smiled crookedly. “You can say something that’s supposed to be nice, like you’re trying to compliment me, and you make it sound so bad.”
Harper bristled. “How was that bad? I was just thanking you!”
“Exactly!” He motioned to her, the sad, crooked smile still on his face. “You’re thanking me, and I can just hear the ‘but’ coming.” He changed his voice to a high falsetto, presumably meant to sound like Harper. “‘Thank you so much for helping me, Daniel, but the thing is, you’re a dick.’”
“I never said that!” Harper shot back, genuinely offended by his impersonation. “I would never say that! I don’t think you’re a dick!”
“Sure you do.” He scratched the back of his neck and wouldn’t look at her. “You think I’m some kind of a slob and a loser. You have ever since we met, and I am sorry about the way we were introduced, but I think I’ve spent enough time trying to prove to you that I’m not like that. It was just a really bad first impression.”
When they’d met, Daniel had just woken up and decided to pee over the edge of the boat. Harper looked up at just the wrong time and got a full of view of his nether region.
“That was an awful first impression,” Harper said. “I will agree to that. But I’ve never … Okay, I haven’t thought you were a loser for a long time. You’ve been so great with me and Gemma and everything that’s been happening. I know that you are not a dick at all. You are kind and patient and brave and funny and so nice…”
She trailed off and stared down at her lap, because that wasn’t what she wanted to say at all. And it actually embarrassed her that she’d admitted so much.
“You did it again, you know,” Daniel said. “You just made a whole string of compliments sound terrible.”
“Well, I’m sorry!” She threw her hands up in exasperation. “I meant them, but I don’t know how else to say it.”
“I believe you meant them. But you didn’t come here today to tell me any of that.” He paused, and Harper looked at him. He appeared to be in the middle of a very serious thought. “You came here to tell me to leave you alone.”
Harper was silent for a moment, then lowered her eyes. “I wasn’t going to tell you to leave me alone.”
“So you’d say it differently. More gently, then, but the sentiment remains the same.”
She didn’t say anything to that, and Daniel sat down next to her. Not too close, but close enough, and neither of them said anything for a minute. The silence felt a little awkward, but Harper didn’t know how to fill it.
“What’s the deal with us?” Daniel asked finally.
“What do you mean?” Harper lifted her head cautiously. “There is no deal with us. There’s nothing. We’re just friends—”
“Harper,” Daniel groaned. “Stop.”
“No, Daniel, I won’t stop. There’s really dangerous stuff going on right now, and I really do need to focus on that. And I don’t want you getting hurt. That’s what’s going on. That’s the deal with us. I don’t have time to like you, and I don’t want you to get hurt.”
He met her eyes evenly and simply said, “Bullshit.”
“What?” She blinked. “Those are all perfectly valid reasons. Things are crazy and—”
“Bullshit,” Daniel repeated, more emphatically.
“You can’t just keep saying that,” Harper said. “That’s not an argument.”
“You want an argument?” Daniel asked. “You want me to present a valid argument?”
“I want you to say something more than bullshit,” Harper allowed.
She actually expected him to swear again, probably just to spite her, but instead he turned and pushed her back on the bed. She was too surprised to even try to stop him. He hovered inches above her, supporting himself with an arm on either side of her.
He hadn’t pinned her back, so her arms were free, and she could push him off if she wanted to. But she didn’t.
Instead, she just stared up into his eyes, breathing harder than she would’ve liked. She licked her lips, and tried to slow the frantic beating of her heart.
“This is your argument?” Harper said quietly when he didn’t say anything.
“My argument is that if I kissed you right now, you’d kiss me back,” Daniel said, his voice low and sure.
“You don’t know that,” she argued without conviction.
“I do.” He nodded once, his eyes never leaving hers. “You’d do it because you like me, and it doesn’t matter if you have time to or not. When you care about someone, you just do, and nothing changes that.”
She swallowed hard. “If you’re so sure, then why haven’t you kissed me?”
Before he could answer, the phone in Harper’s pocket started playing Silverchair’s song “Mind Reader”—Gemma’s ringtone. For a split second Harper considered not answering. She didn’t want to spoil the moment with Daniel, because he was right, and she wanted very badly to kiss him.
But the moment was already broken, and Gemma might need her. She hadn’t left her that long ago, but if Gemma was in trouble and Harper missed the call because she was busy making out with some guy, she’d never forgive herself.
“That’s Gemma,” Harper said. “I have to get it.”
“I know,” he said, his voice heavy with regret.
He didn’t move, though. Harper reached into the pocket of her jeans and pulled out her phone, all while Daniel was above her.
“Hello?” Harper answered the phone, and that’s when Daniel finally rolled back, allowing her to sit up. “Gemma? Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, everything’s fine,” Gemma said. “I just woke up, and you weren’t here. Alex said you had an errand to do or something. When are you coming back?”
“Um, I’ll be back in a few minutes.” Harper stood up and walked away from the bed, away from Daniel. “I’m just leaving. Did you need anything?”
“No, I just…” Gemma paused. “I wanted to make sure you were okay. I’m just feeling a bit edgy, I guess.”
“Yeah, I understand,” Harper said. “I’ll be home really quick, though, and we can talk more then. Okay?”
“Yeah, sounds good,” Gemma said, and she did sound a little relieved. “I’ll see you soon.”
Harper hung up the phone and stood with her back to Daniel for a minute, thinking. She was right at the bottom of the steps leading out of his boat. When she turned back around to face him, he was still sitting on the bed, watching her.
“If I don’t talk to you anymore, I want you to know that it’s not because I don’t like you,” Harper said carefully. “Because it’s pretty obvious that I do.”
He lowered his eyes then, probably knowing that whatever was coming next wasn’t good.
“I can’t have you as a part of my life, because I need to take care of my sister,” Harper said. “And I do like you, so I don’t want you to end up getting your heart ripped out.”
“When you say you don’t want me to have my heart ripped out, do you mean that metaphorically or literally?” Daniel asked.
“Maybe both,” she admitted. “’Bye, Daniel. And thank you in advance for understanding.”
He gave her a small wave before she turned and darted out of the boat. She had to climb over the rail to get back to the dock, and she practically fell in the water again, but there was no way she was asking for his help.
Once she was safely on the dock, she walked quickly back to her car, nearly jogging, and the entire time she had to fight not to cry.