Donna tosses a sardine in the water to call over one of the dolphins. “Lace your fingers over her dorsal fin and hold on,” she says. “She’ll pull you across the surface of the water. Ready?”
I nod and she gives the dolphin some signal. She takes off and it’s amazing to be flying over the surface of the water as she pulls me along. When it’s Marcus’s turn, he puts his head down, and it’s almost as if he’s swimming. There’s a pang in my heart as I remember watching him swim, almost as if he had fish in his gene pool.
An hour later, we’re changed and on dry land again. When we get to his truck, Marcus pulls out his phone. “Swim with the dolphins, check.” He looks at me. “You hungry? I’m a little behind on my new foods.”
“Sorry,” I say, holding my hands up. “I’m fresh out of chocolate covered things.”
“I’m on it.”
He steps on the gas and drives us back the way we came, but instead of getting on the highway, he heads to the coast. He parks at the wharf and shepherds me into a restaurant there. We’re seated and when the hostess offers us menu, he waves his hand.
“I heard you have the best abalone around,” he says.
She smiles. “We do. Won three awards last year for our abalone.”
“New food?” he asks me with questioning raised eyebrows.
I smile and nod.
He looks back at the hostess. “Sold. Abalone all around.”
“How are you affording all this, Marcus?” I ask when she leaves.
He winks. “Sold a kidney.”
Abalone doesn’t taste like much. This is what we discover when our food comes. Because the restaurant isn’t in full swing yet at eleven on a Saturday morning, the chef comes out and explains to us that it’s all in the preparation. He describes how he pan fries it, then hand sets each piece in artichoke foam and barigoule. It’s all Greek to me, but Marcus (literally) eats it up.
The chef brings us coffee and dessert on the house, and I’m pretty sure he and Marcus exchange phone numbers.
It’s early afternoon when we leave the restaurant and climb into Marcus’s truck.
“This was nice,” I say, tucking myself into his side as he pulls onto the highway.
“Not what you deserve,” he says, enclosing me under his arm.
“You’re more than I deserve.”
I feel his chin move against the crown of my head as he shakes his. “I can’t wait for the day when you finally realize that you aren’t a bad person, Addie. I want to be there to see you finally start living.”
I lift my head and look at him. “Last I checked my pulse, I was alive.”
“Being alive isn’t the same thing as living your life.” He trails a fingertip over the scar on my shoulder and a sick feeling rolls through my stomach. “Sometimes I get the feeling your mother wasn’t the only one who died that day.”
My insides go from fire to ice in the second it takes for those words to exit his mouth. I shake out of his grasp. “If you’re going to go all pop psychology on me, I can save you the trouble: Post-depression survivor’s guilt with a mild PTSD component. I’ve gotten it directly from the professionals.”
He shakes his head. “They think they’ve got all the answers, but the only one with answers is you, Addie.” He pulls me to his side again. “I’m not going to tell you to let it go. That would be ridiculous. You can’t ever let something like what happened go. And I’m not going to tell you to stop blaming yourself, because that’s not likely to happen. All I’m asking is that you let yourself be okay with not being dead.” The hint of a smile pulls at one corner of his mouth. “Because I’m glad as hell you’re not.”
I can’t breathe. I can’t even move.
He presses his mouth to my temple then glides it to my ear. “There is a whole lot of life inside you, Addie, and it would really suck to waste it not living.”
When we finally exit the highway, he pulls to the side of the road and lifts my chin. When he kisses me, I let myself really feel it. I let myself acknowledge more than just the physical sensations. I open my heart up to everything Marcus is communicating on every level with his kiss. The sudden ache in my chest is deep and intense, a hole in my soul that Marcus’s kiss has tapped into. He pulls back and his dark gaze settles into mine, seeing everything.
He thumbs my cheek, and I realize it’s damp with tears. “I can’t make it go away, Addie, but I can promise that you won’t have to face it alone. I’ll be here for you in any way you’ll let me.”
I press against him and kiss him and he kisses me back, slow and gentle at first, but becoming deeper and more desperate with every twist of our tongues.
There’s something about the way he’s holding me that makes me feel safer than I’ve ever been. Protective, yet tender, as though he’s afraid of breaking me.
Or maybe he’s just afraid of me.
I feel him smile against my temple. “When is your birthday?”
The question comes out of nowhere and seems pretty random until I realize he wants to know exactly how illegal I am.
“January sixth.”
“Two months,” he says, lowering his forehead to rest on mine.