“Ner, I—”
“Can we take a selfie?” Ner rolled off me and pulled his phone out.
Did he know what I was going to say? Was that why he interrupted me?
His weight disappeared, and I gulped a lungful of air. “Sure.”
We lay with our hair splayed on the sand and looked at the camera. Our smiles were easy, but the pressure of Ner’s imminent departure loomed over us. He kissed my cheek and showed me the pic.
“Are you fine with me sending it to my mom along with the snowman pic?”
“Yeah.” Even if he posted it on social media, only a handful of people would recognize me. Besides, the moment I’d stepped out of my comfort zone, the most wonderful thing had happened to me. So maybe I’d been wrong the whole time, and I hadn’t been protecting myself. I’d just been hiding.
“She’ll show it to everyone, so I might as well post it in the family group chat. Cool?”
I nodded, and he turned the screen so I could see the message he was typing underneath the pic.
Building a sand snowman in my new favorite Christmas tradition! I’ll see you all soon.
“You text your family in English?” I frowned. His accent was great and I found his rising pitch at the accented syllables endearing. But I expected a natural reverting to the mother tongue when speaking with family.
“Not my brother and parents, but this chat is set up for the holidays so we have many cousins in it who don’t speak Greek and we don’t speak their language.”
“It’s amazing how you keep in touch with extended family. I love that. Tell them I wish them Happy Holidays.” I rested my head on his shoulder and watched him type.
Rick says hi and Happy Holidays!
Thumbs appeared on the messages, then several replies.
Mom: You look happy. We miss you.
Marinos: Mom made me decorate the tree. You owe me.
“That’s my brother,” Ner said, rolling his eyes.
A picture loaded. It was a selfie with a dark-haired woman in front; her face visible from the nose up with focus on the table behind her, showing a dozen people talking, eating, and waving at the camera.
“That’s my mom, my father right there, my brother, cousins from Poland, these guys are from Spain…” Ner’s voice trailed off and he locked his phone as more messages came pouring in. His expression fell, and he sat cross-legged on the sand. He must miss his family.
“Thanks for showing me the pic. They look like a fun bunch.” I sat up and shivered, the morning chill getting to me.
“They are. I’ll send you the pics I took in case you want to show them to your brother.” Ner shrugged, but I knew what he was doing and I was grateful. With a huge family like his, his pushing me to reconcile with Linc made sense.
I gathered the courage and nodded. “Yeah. I’ll do it now. Maybe I can bribe them to get another pic of my godson.”
Ner wrapped his tentacles around me as he forwarded the images. The warmth of his body kept me from shivering, and the kiss on my cheek reminded me of ways we could stay hot throughout the rest of the day.
Chapter Seventeen
Nereus
December25th-evening
After a day curled up together, watching Christmas movies and having lazy sex, I was the most relaxed I’d been in my life.
Rick had fallen asleep on the couch with his head on my lap, snuggling my tentacle as if it was a scarf. Summoned by thirst, I wiggled myself out of his grasp and pulled the fuzzy blanket up to his neck.
I grabbed a glass of water from the kitchen and propped my hip against the counter as I unplugged my phone charging there. Apart from texting my family, I hadn’t used it since the day before, so I opened my social media to catch up on pics of snow and Christmas trees my friends had probably been posting for days now.
