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Luke didn’t have the heart to tell her that was exactly what he was worried about.

Luke considered waking Syrus and letting the guy know he could stay as long as he needed. But then again, Syrus seemed to already be assuming as much, and waking him up from much-needed rest to tell him something he already knew was probably idiotic.

But Luke was too exhausted to get any more work done—apparently hauling a mysterious, bodybuilding foreign prince out of the freezing ocean took it out of a guy—and he’d probably end up injuring himself or marring the wood and need to start over if he tried.

He found himself heading upstairs instead, to his bathroom, where he ended up staring at his reflection, clippers in hand.

And why shouldn’t he shave? It wasn’t like it was for anyone. But Luke finally had a moment to himself, and he really did need it. He had patches of hair all the way up to his cheeks and down his neck. If someone had met him and Syrus in that parking lot, it would have been Luke who’d been taken for an axe murderer, he was pretty sure.

So Luke got to work. He shaved off the scraggly bits, then trimmed and shaped what was left into something more manageable, only a little bit longer than a five o’clock shadow.

When he was done, Luke couldn’t help grinning at himself. Somewhere along the way, he’d forgotten he had a jawline. His smile wasn’t terrible either, when someone could finally see it through all the scruff.

Luke wasn’t up for doing his own haircut—the last time he’d tried, it had ended in disaster, and he didn’t really mind the longer length, anyway—but he had some product Shauna had foisted on him forever ago. Luke rubbed some between his palms and ran it through his strands.

There. That was better. It was out of his eyes, at least, with some of his natural wave coming through.

It was surprisingly jarring seeing himself look like a reasonably put-together human. Luke’s grin dropped into a frown. Jesus. What else had he been letting slide while he put his all into Colby?

With a weirdly heavy feeling in his chest, Luke cleaned up the beard trimmings and put the clippers away, then wandered into his bedroom. The bed was still a little too tempting, inviting him to dive in and take that much-needed nap, but the real question was, How long had it been since he’d washed his sheets?

Luke gathered his energy and tore them off the bed, then threw the load into the washer downstairs. While he was waiting, he busied himself straightening some of Colby’s mess. It wasn’t exactly life-changing stuff, but it lifted a little of that heaviness to do it.

All the while, though, Luke was oddly hyperaware that he wasn’t alone. For once, there was someone else in his house, someone besides his adorable son. Luke kept pausing, thinking he’d heard Syrus say something, thinking he maybe saw movement out of the corner of his eye.

Was this how people who rented out their rooms always felt? Totally on edge, waiting for their houseguest to appear?

But no, that was stupid. Luke was just out of the habit of prolonged adult interaction. He didn’t get many chances these days. The few other day-care parents were all happily married couples. They were friendly enough, but a single dad still seemed to put them on edge, like he was something they didn’t know how to navigate, one half of what was supposed to be a whole.

And then there was the fact that most of the guys Luke had grown up with had moved away over the years, to bigger cities or better opportunities. The ones who were left were just as reclusive as he was. Luke hadn’t seen his old friend Trent in ages, not until Seth had made book club happen.

That was evidence enough that new blood was good for a town, shaking people out of their funks. It was nice to have someone to chat with in the mornings too, when Luke brought Colby in for a donut. Seth loved hearing anything Luke had to say about their little community, and it was a treat to tell it all to someone who hadn’t been living there since diapers.

Luke had thought that maybe the new research institute out in the woods would bring in its own influx of new citizens, but the place seemed to have shut down as quickly as it had first appeared. Maybe they’d run out of funding already. They’d certainly been busy around town to start—scientists and lawyers wandering the woods and the coast—and then…nothing.

Maybe Pine Bluff was just cursed to stay small and isolated no matter what.

Luke had just collapsed on the living room couch, finally too worn out to lift another finger, when he heard a thump and a muffled yell from the spare bedroom.

Luke definitely hadn’t imagined the noise this time. Had Syrus tried to get up on his own? Unless the poor guy had been dreaming he was back in the water and had lashed out accidentally. Luke needed to ask him again what had happened, and how he’d found himself there. Maybe Syrus had wrecked a boat out there somewhere, or been thrown overboard by rough seas.

Either way, he had to be awake, right?

Luke rose from the couch with a groan and headed back to the spare bedroom. He knocked once, but there was no answer.

Luke opened the door a crack to peer in. “Syrus,” he whispered. “Are you okay?”

But Luke didn’t hear Syrus’s answer, if there was one. He couldn’t hear anything over the rising static in his ears.

Because yes, Syrus was awake, and still lying on top of the spare bedroom’s covers, just like Luke had left him. But his damaged feet were nowhere to be seen.

No, there were no feet. No legs either. Instead, the lower half of the bed was covered by an enormous fucking fish tail. Which would have been alarming enough, even if that fish tail hadn’t been connected to Syrus’s bare-chested, muscular torso.

The static in Luke’s ears changed into an eerie, high-pitched ringing sound.

A merman. There was a real-life merman in Luke’s house.

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