A slow smile lifted one corner of his mouth. “You’re actually upset that I got bit by a turtle.”
“Oh, please. You’re not even bleeding.”
“Which you felt the need to check on for yourself.”
“I had a theory your toes must look like worms, for a savvy reptile to bother gnawing on you. Wanted to confirm or rule it out.”
“And what were your findings?”
“Definitely the ugliest toes I’ve seen. Very worm-like.”
“Hmm,” he said, as if deliberately reminding her just how appealing his baritone could make even single syllables.
Her name, for example.
Which did not matter even a little bit.
The moment lengthened between them, and a throb passed through Claire’s chest. They could have been friends. Real friends, comfortable and safe and…and yes, in time, maybe more. But he’d let something come between them—something abrupt and final, a blunt barricade that left nowhere to grow.
“If you knew why, you’d understand,”Ryker had told her. She’d hissed in Ryker’s face. Demanded to know what possible excuse Tai could have for giving up on their plans.“Not excuse, reason,”Ryker had insisted. Then he’d insisted he couldn’t break a friend’s confidence, because in the end he’d simplychosen to side with Tai. When she was honest with herself, she admitted this had hurt too.
Now here her nemesis was, treading water mere feet from her, still infuriatingly attractive. Here he was with his deep voice and his flashing eyes, freeing his foot from a snapping turtle with enough care not to harm the animal.
“Anyway,” she said, “it’s official. We’re not avoiding each other. If we actually need to speak, we can, for the duration of this event.”
He should appreciate her olive branch, but instead his face blanked hard. With his shiny irises he looked almost robotic in the dimness of the cave.
“Understood,” he said.
Then he slipped under the water and swam toward the daylight past the waterfall. After a moment, Claire followed. When she emerged into the main pool, Tai had already joined Philippa on the side. He shivered as he grabbed a dark-purple beach towel from one of the haphazard piles of gear they’d all shed. He didn’t look at Claire.
Sometimes she wondered what might happen if she could meet him fresh for the first time, see if their magnetism still worked without the driving force of a dramatic falling out. But she couldn’t do that, and she couldn’t trust someone who threw her dreams in the dirt and walked away, who missed the hurt she’d shown to his face, who saw her as nothing but the other side of a financial contract. So just as he claimed to, Claire had told the truth this whole time too.
They weren’t friends.
Three
Tai had come to his best friend’s coed bachelor party knowing he was a minority of one. Ryker and Leslie didn’t count; they were the guests of honor. Among the rest of the group, Jake and Hannah belonged to the bride, and everyone else were clearly friends of both Ryker and Leslie, though they’d known Ryker considerably longer. The thing Tai figured out within the first hour of their hike—these vampires weren’t only Ryker and Leslie’s friends. They were Claire’s too. Every last one of them.
When Mackey was cool toward him, Tai hadn’t flinched. The guy seemed cool toward everybody, even Leslie, who drew people to her quiet, wise warmth without effort. When the twins, Logan and Nova, were equally frosty—though Nova seemed to forget she was supposed to be as long as they were discussing social issues—Tai got curious and made a few test approaches. Then Philippa gave him a smile that didn’t reach her eyes, and Tai knew.
Claire had told all of them. She had painted him as greedy, arrogant, fake—and those were only the charges she’d leveled tohis face. No doubt, to her closest friends, she’d called him other things too.
It hurt. Physically. Deep in his chest.
Which was ridiculous, because he’d chosen not to enlighten her. For the best. Only choice, really.
By the time they reached the waterfall, the twins had relaxed enough to tell him about themselves, and for a few minutes Nova seemed to forget all over again that she wasn’t supposed to get along with him. Idealist, indeed. Then the party moved on to the indoor art gallery, and she remembered.
Tai stopped trying to make friends and instead focused on the art. He’d been here a few times to socialize with potential foundation donors, but he never got tired of the permanent exhibits and always found some work in the temporary ones that moved him.
Here was one such artist. He read her biographical information, framed on the wall beside her featured pieces. Mariah Davis from Atlanta, fifty-three years old, both a sculptor and a folk musician who played mandolin, dulcimer, guitar, and fiddle.
No wonder she captivated him.
Tai shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans to keep his fingers from trailing over the breath-stalling creations in front of him. Mariah took old, broken musical instruments and repurposed them. Here she’d turned a violin into a hollow house for hammered-brass butterflies to pour out of. Here she’d half-melted an unrepairable flute and shaped the melting half to resemble ocean waves.
Fluttering notes. A sea of music.
