The Siren by KATHERINE JOHN (general ebook reader .txt) 📕

sand. Rick must have noticed me shivering because he stopped walking and shed the button-down denim shirt he wore over his T-shirt, draping it across my shoulders.

“Thanks.” The shirt was soft, still warm from his body heat. I slipped my arms through the roomy sleeves, unsure whether the sudden rush of heat I felt was from the extra layer of clothing or the feeling of his hand lingering on my back for a hair too long. We were just friends, taking a beach walk.

“Did you have a good week?” he asked.

I nodded, glad it was too dark for him to see the blush I felt in my cheeks. “After Monday. I kinda yelled at some people on Monday.”

His eyes glinted in the moonlight, amused. “Tell me more.”

“Just Madison and Stella. They deserved it. Well, Madison did. I’ve gotten to know Stella a little better, and she’s not so bad.”

I outlined what had happened as we trekked along the shore, and he assured me I was completely justified in berating them. “That girl with the phone—”

“Madison.”

“She’s obsessed with herself,” he said.

“Yeah.” I shuddered. “And her fans reflect it back at her, making her think she’s really as important as she thinks she is. It’s gross.”

“It’s not only celebrities who act like that, though,” he added. “When I take fishing groups out on the boat, a lot of them don’t even care about catching fish. They just want pictures with the fish, so it looks like they caught them. It drives me nuts.”

I thought about when I’d driven out to see the super bloom in the California desert a few months ago and found hordes of people with cameras trampling the poppies to take pictures of themselves on the fluorescent orange carpet. As a child, I’d made the annual trek to the Antelope Valley or Santa Monica mountains to see the explosion of color that reappears every spring in Southern California with my mom, and we were always nearly alone on the trails. These days the trails were off-limits, due to crowds of careless Instagrammers who cared nothing about preserving nature. “It’s like they’re more interested in capturing the moment than experiencing it,” I agreed.

“There is no moment. It’s all capturing.” He laughed.

I thought of JeanieBabie24’s myriad bikini pictures and wondered what he thought of his girlfriend posing in a hot-pink thong. Had he shot those pictures? I had to ask him about her. Asking would make her real, make me stop fantasizing about a man who didn’t belong to me. So what if he thought I was a crazy stalker? It didn’t matter.

“Can I ask you something?” I asked before I could lose my nerve.

“Sure.”

I gazed out at the sea, afraid to look at him. “Do you have a girlfriend?”

“No.” He stopped walking and turned to me, but I still wouldn’t give him my eyes, unsure whether to believe him. “Taylor? What’s up?”

“It’s…well, you were mentioned in one of the resort’s pictures on Instagram, so I clicked on your profile, and I saw you were tagged—”

“Jeanette.” He sighed. So that was JeanieBabie24’s real name. “She’s not my girlfriend. She’s friends with a group of people I know, the younger half sister of a guy I went to school with. We dated, sort of, but not for long before I realized she wasn’t—we weren’t a fit. She’s a sweet girl but misguided and she—we just don’t have anything in common.”

I frowned. I wanted to believe him, but… “But she was posting pictures of you guys together last week.”

He nodded. “That was from months ago. She posts all these pictures of me—some she takes directly off my account. I’ve asked her to stop, but she says it’s to make some guy jealous, or that she just liked the picture. I don’t want to hurt her, and she’s my friend’s sister, so I don’t know, I kinda gave up worrying about it. But I can see…how it looks a certain way.”

We’d reached the end of the beach, where a path led up a small hill into the trees. “I wouldn’t be here with you right now if I had a girlfriend,” he said. “I’m not that kind of guy.”

If he wouldn’t be here with me if he had a girlfriend, did that mean what I thought it meant? I finally looked at him then, and his eyes were clear. He wasn’t Rory or Cole, and he wasn’t looking for a friend or a piece on the side or a fuck buddy. I wasn’t sure why or what exactly he was looking for, but this guy was telling me point-blank he was interested in me. Heat bloomed in my chest and tingled all the way down my arms. I smiled, miraculously keeping my voice light. “Cool.”

He returned my smile and jerked his head toward the path into the trees. “It’s dark, but worth it, I promise,” he said, holding his hand out to me.

I took it, aware of nothing but the touch of his skin against mine as we hiked along the shadowy trail. His palm was smooth with calluses, his grip firm. Everything about him was strong, steadying, solid. And he doesn’t have a girlfriend. The world was suddenly full of possibility.

When we came out of the trees on the other side of the hill, I gasped. The bay before us was lit from within by an otherworldly blue-green light. The glimmering fluorescence was stronger around the edges and along the floating dock that stretched into the water.

“Firefly Bay,” he said, sweeping his arm out at the bay.

“It’s beautiful,” I breathed.

“Bioluminescence,” he explained. “The tiny plankton glow when they move or touch anything. They’re especially bright tonight because the water’s still disturbed from the storm. Watch this.”

He walked out into the shallow water, ripples of eerie blue light cascading around his calves as he moved. “Is it safe to be in it?” I asked.

“Sure,” he said.

I slowly walked toward him, dragging my feet through the warm sea to produce glowing waves. “This is incredible!”