“Trying to find something more meaningful than a one-night stand isn’t gonna kill you, E. I swear, you have the emotional depth of a puddle.”
I gasped and smacked the back of my hand to my forehead. “You wound me.”
He rolled his eyes.
“Golf tournament’s this weekend,” he said after a beat. “Island’s gonna be crawlin’ with tourists.”
“Shit! I forgot. Right on.”
He nodded. “Shelter Cove’s gonna be packed tonight for open mic.”
“Hell yeah. I’m in.”
My siren’s compulsion stirred, imagining the audience, its thirst for attention a slow heat that crept through my insides urging me to unleash my voice. Our song created a deep and powerful pull, far stronger than our speaking voices, and I was all about big impact.
“Let’s get going,” I said, impatient to move. “I want to get a couple more hours in before we head back. I get cranky when I’m not in the water long enough.”
“You and me both, cuz.”
“I’ll race you to that shoal we found last week. Loser gets the winner’s front desk duty for a week.”
Niko didn’t stand a chance. I had a full night’s sleep and motivation—I despised desk shifts. Anything that took me away from the water was torture.
He flashed his wide, toothy grin, face bright with an excitement that matched my own. “You’re on.”
I plunged beneath the surface, dolphin-kicked as far as my breath could take me, and settled into my stroke. Flying through the ocean in harmony with the waves, my soul echoed the sights and sounds of its watery home.
Why would anyone risk this for a relationship? What could one woman give me that the ocean and the allure of my voice didn’t already provide? Especially when the odds of finding a woman who’d accept my nature and respect my need for independence were... not in my favor. A creature like that was more mythical than a siren.
Chapter Two
LENA
SEA PINES, HILTON HEAD ISLAND, SOUTH CAROLINA
The key to Grandma’s house was under the doormat right where the lawyer said it would be. I flipped it over in my hand wondering how things would be without her. Would the house still look like home? Smell like home? Feel like home? Only one way to find out.
I willed my arm to move and wiggled the key into the lock. I turned the knob of the forest-green door, mossy with age and the incessant humidity, and shoved it open with a bump of my hip. I’d nagged her for years to fix the old door. The task fell to me, now.
Stepping across the threshold into the hallway of my past, I held on to the doorknob like an anchor to the present. The rising tension in my chest threatened to strangle me, but I refused to start crying. I inhaled deeply, held my breath to recenter, and exhaled long and slow. One sob session per day; that’s all I’d allowed myself since Grandma died.
I tossed the key onto the entry table. It struck the glass with a clatter and created a trail through the thin coat of dust—dust that wouldn’t have been there a week ago. She’d always kept the house pristine.
The house’s musty scent—salt air infused with damp moss, the soft, comforting fragrance of the Lowcountry, of my childhood home—suffused my senses. But something new punctuated the familiar smell. Emptiness. It had only been a week since my grandma passed and the house had been locked up, but staleness changed the quality of the air. It sucked the life right out of it and reminded me of what I’d lost.
I padded across the living room’s plush carpet into the kitchen. This is where I’d always remember her. Sitting at the kitchen table balancing the ledger of her herbalism shop. Eating her lunch watching deer graze outside the bay window. Hovering over the standing mixer whipping cream to top the coconut cake she made for my birthday. The kitchen was the center of the house and our family of two. The ghost of our lives—the ghost of her life—lingered there, and I held on to it with desperation, not wanting to admit I was alone.
The woman who’d raised me, the only family I’d ever known, was gone. I’d never see her again. Never curl up on the couch with her and watch TV. Never eat cinnamon toast with her at midnight. Never feel her arms wrap around me in unconditional love.
The hole Grandma’s absence left in my heart ached with each breath. I braced myself on the edge of the island and let my head drop trying to breathe through the abyss of my loneliness.
“Come on, Lena,” I mumbled in a feeble attempt at self-encouragement. “You know how to breathe. You teach your students how to breathe for Chrissake. Pull it together.”
I’m not sure how long I stood there breathing through the persistent lump that had plagued my throat since I’d received the news of her passing. But eventually my legs stopped shaking and the lump shrunk enough my breath no longer shuddered.
My nerves back under some semblance of control, I needed to get on with my day. Responsibility called. I wandered into the living room and curled up cross-legged on my corner of the couch. I pulled out my phone and brought up the number for my studio in Charleston.
“Yoga Star Charleston. This is Candace. How can I help you?”
