But as Isla sleeps, content, my mind drags me back to that night.
I dived into chill waters, searching for the owner of the pained sound. In the darkness, I felt a large, slippery form and dragged the mass to shore. In the muted light cast from a nearby house, I stared down in horror at a twisted creature that resembled a clumsy attempt at melding the human body with an animal’s. The mouth that gasped in pain belonged to Isla, the girl I could never take my eyes off during classes.
How could she have been that thing?
Then, I saw the blood. A jagged gash on the part of her body that was other. Despite the odd form, I desperately pressed my hands to the torn flesh and tried to get my brain to work.
Next thing I knew, another water creature crawled onto the shore. As I watched in horrified fascination, the seal-like being dug its clawed flippers into its chest, and a moment later, my best friend shucked off the skin, as if the animal form were a costume.
“Owen?” I choked on his name.
“I’ll explain later.” All his focus was on the creature under my hands. “What happened to Isla?”
“It is her?”
Then, she shuddered and moaned, and I set aside my questions.
Owen did something, peeling away the strange parts of her body until she was simply an injured, naked girl under my hands. The sight was somehow worse.
“What do we do?” I looked to my friend, hoping he’d have the answers I didn’t.
Owen’s face, normally relaxed and teasing, was stone. He clutched two shimmering cloaks, which I later learned were Isla’s and his selkie skins.
“You have your keys?” he asked.
Daring to remove one bloody hand from Isla’s wound, I fished the keys out of my back pocket. Owen snatched them and took off at a sprint, the two glimmering pelts slung over his shoulder.
“Meet me at the road!” he yelled.
I managed to wrap my shirt around Isla’s waist as a poor attempt at a bandage before lifting her in my arms and carrying her to the road. Owen tore toward us in my rusty car. I slid into the backseat, Isla cradled against my chest. She began to shake, letting out pained whimpers.
“Hospital?” I asked, mentally cursing the forty-minute drive to the nearest one.
Owen shook his head, speeding down the twisty back roads. “There’s someone closer.”
I thought he meant a local doctor.
But Owen took us to someone else. My knowledge of the world expanded in a lot of ways that night.
Isla was unconscious the entire time though. Once she was fixed up as could be, Owen sat me down. Told me about selkies. Then, he made it clear how hard my life would become—and Isla’s too—if I repeated anything about the night.
I easily agreed to keep my mouth shut. Gladly.
Selfishly.
Because a naive me believed Isla’s injury was all that needed to heal.
Turns out, I scarred more than her body that night.
7
ISLA
I never imaginedmyself as a snuggler. But then I wake up, tucked in Finn’s arms, and have to recalibrate the view I have of myself. With this man so close, my body responding to every rise and fall of his chest, there’s an insistent push for me to alter multiple ways I approach my life.
For example, my idea of partnering with any person besides this perfect human.
This is what I’ve always imagined it would feel like to lie next to my mate.
