“Oh, Lily,” he says, shaking his head. “I know about love. I know about wanting and dreaming and wishing with every piece of your soul. I know enough to recognize the difference between the parts that are real and the parts that are only in my fantasy.”
He turns his head slightly to face me, and I find myself saying, “L-like what?”
“Like when she cries and my heart tears into little shreds, and all I can think of is making her forget the source of her sadness.” His face is blank, emotionless. His words—and the underlying emotion bombarding me through the bond—more than make up for it. “That’s real.”
My voice is barely a whisper when I ask, “And fantasy?”
“Believing she might ever feel the same way.”
When he swings into a sitting position, I have to stop myself from reaching for him. My hand itches to wrap around his biceps and pull him back down and…I don’t know what. But that would sweep me into a totally different current, one I’m not prepared to drift with.
I lie there, staring at his broad back, just visible in the starlight.
“I think I’ll sleep on land tonight,” he says, pushing to his feet.
I feel helplessly glued to the ground, unable to make myself move or speak or do anything at all.
He pauses, like he’s waiting for me to respond. Then, when I don’t, he adds, “I’ll be under the palm if you need me.”
“Quince,” I call out. I’m not sure what I want to say, but I have to say something. I scramble to my feet and gather my courage. “Why didn’t you ever tell her? This girl you love. Why didn’t you tell her how you feel?”
His shoulders tighten and then relax. He does that a lot. Lets the tension take over and then releases it. That must be how he always remains so calm, why I can never set him off like he does to me. He doesn’t fight the emotion, he just processes it.
“Because”—his voice is heavy with a kind of resigned sadness—“she doesn’t want to know.”
That’s the moment that I know, for certain, that he’s talking about me. I might have speculated and wondered and imagined, but when he says that, I know with unwavering certainty that the “she” he’s talking about is me.
And I feel like the biggest coward in history for letting him walk away.
Sometime just before daybreak I finally fall asleep. I spent hours tossing and turning and twisting in the still waters of the blue hole before finally succumbing to exhaustion on the ledge Quince and I shared the night before. So I’ve been asleep only an hour or two at the most when I feel someone rock me awake.
“Lily,” Quince says, his hushed voice full of tension, “wake up.”
I blink into the dawn light filtering through the water. “What?”
“Shh.” He holds a finger to his lips, then waves a hurry-up gesture at me before kicking into the depths of the hole.
Still dazed by sleep, I follow. When I reach the seafloor, I ask, “What’s going—”
But he wraps a hand over my mouth before I can finish. Then, before I have the nerve to bite him, a shadow passes above.
A human shadow.
“Oh, no,” I whisper. “What are they doing here?”
“Fishing,” he says. “Their engine woke me up. I watched them long enough to see they were set up with fishing gear, not diving. We should be safe down here.” He glances up nervously. “At least until the sun moves directly overhead.”
He’s right. As long as the sunlight streaming through the water comes at an angle, there will be shadows for us to hide in. But by noon we’ll be in direct view through the crystal-clear water to anyone looking.
“Maybe they’re morning fishermen,” I say. “Maybe they’ll move on soon.”
Besides, it’s not like the blue hole is teeming with fish. Most forms of sea life are smart enough to know that a contained pool of water is not a safe place to hang out. And the isolation means they could get into the pool only during extremely high tides and severe storms.
“Guess we’re stuck here for a while,” Quince says, hugging the wall.
“Yeah, guess so.” Something about his distance—it’s emotional and physical—brings back memories of last night. “Look, Quince, about last night—”
“Forget it,” he says before I can finish. “We both said a lot of things we wouldn’t normally say. Let’s just chalk it up to a long, emotional day. Okay?”
“Oh.” I’m not sure why I’m disappointed. “Okay.”
I try to tell myself it’s the bond, that the warm emotions I’m feeling toward Quince are nothing more than a magic trick. But they sure feel real.
I’ll have to sort them out…as soon as we’re not in danger of discovery.
We settle in along the wall, waiting for the shadows above to disappear.
Two hours later, I’m starting to get nervous. I mean, what if they don’t leave before noon? What if they see one of us? I would be hard enough to explain, with a green and gold tail fin for my lower body, but what about a human boy who’s been underwater for two hours? That opens a whole other can of worms.
As if reading my thoughts, Quince says, “We have to do something. We can’t just sit here waiting for the last few inches of shadow to disappear.”
“Agreed,” I say. “But what?”
“I’m not sure.” He rubs his temples, like he’s been thinking hard with no results. “We have to get their attention away from the hole, but I don’t know how to do that when we’re stuck in here.”