Chapter Text
Lewis has no patience for unanswered questions — nor for algorithms he can’t reverse‑engineer, or equations missing crucial variables. . . They grate at him with an abstract sort of urgency. The feeling that he’s left the stove on at home. It’s a nerosese he’s certain he inherited from his mother. A pediatric and neonatal surgeon by trade, not to mention mother of four, she has no tolerance for uncertainty either.
But more than uncertainty, he hates magic. Though, he supposes, magic is the epitome of uncertainty, isn’t it?
Lewis regards the Moon Pool’s cavern wall with the kind of distrust one usually reserves for venomous animals. Inland Taipans and Stonefish and Redback Spiders. The air in the Moon Pool’s cavern hums against his skin like electricity. The hair on his arms stand on end. Something in here is waiting. Something in here has some kind of beating heart. Some kind of sharp mind.
Bella steps forward beside Cleo and Rikki.
The wall reacts.
A thin, snake‑like column of water peels itself from the dark stone, rising with eerie precision. It doesn’t slosh or drip. It forms. A spine of liquid. A head. A trembling point aimed directly at them.
Lewis’s breath catches. He takes half a step forward. To do what, he doesn’t know. But his instincts scream within him. Protect Cleo at all costs.
The water doesn’t just hover. It listens. It tilts, tasting the air, as if deciding which girl to strike first. Then—
Strike!
It snaps forward with the speed of a rabid dog, the air cracking around it. Cleo yelps. Rikki grabs Bella’s wrist. All three leap backward.
The water hits empty space and dissolves into mist, but the wall behind it seems to shiver — like something alive, disappointed it missed.
Titanitius rings in Lewis’s ears. He forces himself to take a breath. One, then two. A third afterward. The girls are saying something but his mind can’t quite register it. Apparently, the sea is sentient now. Another layer has been peeled on mermaidism, and what lies underneath is even stranger than tails and full moons and magic powers. Jesus. What is his life?
“I think you guys should stay away from here,” he says.
Not forever — though that would be ideal. Just until he can figure out what's going on. If it’s safe.
“No!” Cleo protests. “This is our place and we’re not going to be chased out of here by a leaky wall, right?”
Rikki nods in agreement. Bella seems more skeptical, but nevertheless agrees.
Really, Lewis isn’t sure why he suggested staying away. He knows Cleo better than anyone else. She was never going to stay away from Mako Island.
Quietly, Lewis sighs. Resigned. It looks like he has work to do.
###
Cleo has all-but-mastered her control over water. She doesn’t need to wrap herself in a raincoat to ride with him back to the mainland anymore. A tiny twist of the wrist, a minute twitch of the fingers, and she can keep the seaspray off of herself. Now, the most dangerous part of travel by boat is simply ensuring her seat is completely dry before she sits.
“We’ll figure this out,” she says.
Lewis can feel her gaze on him. His own eyes stay fixed on the darkening horizon, where purple-orange light melts into the emerging wash of dusky blue. The day is slipping away. Only a couple more hours of daylight left. He can feel the pulse of the sea humming in his veins, just beneath the surface of his skin. It’s subtle for him, present, insistent, but quiet enough to ignore if he tries. He wonders what Cleo must feel. How much stronger the pull must be.
Cleo continues. “We’ll get our place back. Until then … We’ll just have to be careful.”
Lewis nods in agreement. “I’m going to get you girls your special place back. I promise. I just … need some time.”
“Hey,” Cleo says, insistent. “Look at me.”
He does. As always, her beauty steals the words from the tip of his tongue. Her dark curls whip around her face, tangling in the wind. She’ll text him later, annoyed at how much she’ll have to detangle. Her cheeks and the delicate bridge of her nose are sunkissed, toeing the line of burnt. She is vision to behold. Every bit of mermaid on land as she is in the sea. Something about her feels half-tender and half-wild.
“It’s our place too. You and me,” she says.
Lewis lifts a brow. “My ability to still shower says otherwise, love.”
Cleo’s gaze softened. “It’s where we had our first kiss. Where we got together for the very first time. That makes it our place, too.”
Oh, Cleo Jane Sertori. Always going straight for his patchwork heart. Lewis can’t fight the smile that touches his mouth. He remembers their first clumsy, tentative kiss like it was yesterday. Their first time reaching the mainland as boyfriend and girlfriend. Walking the docks hand-in-hand.
“How can I argue with that?” He asks.
Cleo smiles back at him. She reaches out and takes his hand, brings to her lips and presses a soft kiss to his knuckles.
“So, do you want to stay for dinner?” she asks.
There’s a mischievious glint in her eyes that tells Lewis she knows he’ll say yes. And she’s right, of course. How can he say no to her?
###
“Sorry about dad,” Cleo says, knocking her shoulder against Lewis’s. “He’s been … overprotective lately.”
Lewis considers making a joke — moreso than usual? — but ultimately decides against it. He call tell Cleo still feels embarrassed by her dad’s outburst during dinner. The yellow glow of the Sertori’s porch light illuminates the angry red flush on her cheeks. She’s leaned against the hood of his silver Ford Ranger, arms folded tightly across her chest.
“It’s okay,” Lewis says. He means it. “Seriously, Cleo, it’s fine—“
“No!” Cleo interrupts, throwing her hands up in the air. “It’s not okay! I love my dad more than anything, okay? I do. But it isn’t okay for him to disrespect you. He was out of line.“
Warmth spreads through his chest. His gut. His limbs. It’s incredibly endearing to see Cleo so indignant over Don’s disrespect — perceived disrespect, anyway. Lewis disagrees with her on that. Yes, Don caught an attitude with him, and yes, Don said some unsavory things in regard to his intentions and character, but Lewis knows it isn’t personal. Not really. With Bev gone, somewhere in the wind, and an increasingly unruly Kim on the precipice of fifteen, Don has his hands full; Lewis can certainly understand his overprotective instincts spiking into overdrive now and again. Especially with all the late nights he has to work.
“I don’t see it that way,” Lewis reassures her. “He loves you. He just wants to keep you safe.”
Cleo sighs, the fight leeching out of her. He knows that she knows that he’s right.
She looks at him with those big, hazel doe eyes. Presses a soft kiss to his shoulder. “I’m never safer than when I’m with you.”
Lewis swallows. His heart jumps in his chest. The words are right there on the tip of his tongue …. I love … I love …
He kisses her. The soft, sweet sigh Cleo makes sets his blood on fire. He’d bottle that sound if he could. Shoot it like heroin. Lewis is hyper-aware of the windows they’re in the sight-line of it. He reluctantly ends the kiss, knowing Don is almost certainly peering through the curtains.
Cleo frowns at the loss. Lewis chuckles and tucks a strand of dark, curly hair behind her ear. She leans into the light touch of his hand, and for a wild second Lewis considers kissing her again, potential eyes watching them be damned. Though, if Don were actually watching them, he’d surely of started flipping the porch light on and off to signal Cleo back inside. . .
“I wish we had somewhere we could be alone,” Cleo says, lightly touching his chest. “Actually alone. Just us.”
Lewis bites back an immediate “me too,” worried it’ll make him sound too eager. Instead, he slides his hand into hers and gives it a gentle squeeze. He searches her face for reassurance in the silence that follows.
There’s something different in Cleo’s gaze tonight. Something headier. Heavy. Lewis finds it difficult to look away. To breathe. She blinks slow, long, dark lashes fluttering, as she takes a half-step closer and kisses him again.
This kiss is different. A far cry from the soft, chaste kiss they’d shared a few moments ago. Her tongue touches the seam of his lips, a quiet inquisition, and Lewis feels himself give in immediately. His hands are on her slim hips, pulling her close, before his mind can register what his hands are doing. His lips part and he can taste the chamomile tea on her tongue—
There it is again. That sweet sigh. Deeper this time. Longer on the exhale. Lewis can feel his pulse thrumming in his carotid. Cleo’s arms are around him, her dainty fingers pressing into his shoulder blades, keeping him close, and the earth is tiling— He’s dizzy with it—
The porch lights strobe suddenly. They break apart, startled and breathless. Cleo spins around to see Kim standing in the open doorway. Her arms are crossed.
Cleo huffs, irritated, and Lewis silently prays to a God he doesn’t believe in that his pants would get a little less tight. Jesus. His zipper is biting him like a damn spider.
“Kim!” Cleo shrieks, flustered. “Whatever it is, the answer is no!”
“Dad says Lewis has to leave now!” Kim shouts back, oddly smug. Happy to be ruining Cleo’s good time, Lewis assumes.
Cleo groans. “Fine! He’s leaving! I’ll be inside in two minutes!”
Kim flicks her honey-blonde hair over her shoulder and disappears back into the house. Cleo turns back to face him, cheeks no longer angry red, but flushed pink, pouty lips kiss-swollen. Her sheer purple lip gloss is smeared to her cheek.
“See you tomorrow?” She asks, hopeful. Sweet.
“You know it,” Lewis says, and he means it with everything in him. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
It’s a promise.