Forever(8)

Not yet, I want to see how much she suspects.

“What are you talking about?” I asked, pulling myself on to the dock.

Carly looked me up and down. “No normal human could hold their breath that long.”

This one is smart.

Joline’s eyes grew enormous as she tried to imagine what her friend meant. “What are you saying Carly?” Her voice quivered. Thayde pull himself from the water and sat on the edge of the dock.

“I’m saying these guys have got to be free divers, or…” she drifted off. Narrowing my eyes, I scanned her mind quickly. Her childhood innocence allowed her to suspect the truth – that we were able to breathe underwater but her adult insecurities told her it was impossible and she was listening to them more.

“Or what?” Thayde challenged. “What are we? Fish?”

I laughed, squeezing the water from my dress. “Yes, fish. Most definitely!”

Carly shot me a nasty glare. When Joline began to laugh with me, Carly turned on her heel and walked away.

“Carly, wait!” The skinny teen ran after her friend.

Thayde let out a sigh and picked up his soaked shirt. “Well, thank goodness that’s over.”

“Can we go back to our hut now?” I picked up the end of my dress to keep from tripping over it. As I looked down, I noticed the tattoo. It was jet black and ran the length of the outside of my foot.

“Thayde, look!” I held my foot to him. The tattoo stood out black as night against my tanned skin. Looking down at his own foot, he broke into a grin.

“So what do you think?” A hint of hope peppered the end of his question.

“It’s awesome!”

I loved it. It was so much cooler than I thought it would have been. Even better was the fact that it didn’t hurt whatsoever.

Thayde jumped to his feet, slipped his arm around my waist and we began to walk back to our hut on the other side of the hotel.

“Bon nuit!” A few French speaking guests nodded goodnight to us. The dimly lit surroundings added to the romantic atmosphere and I cuddled into Thayde.

“So tell me the tale of you and Ezen.” I said as we turned onto the thin asphalt path leading through the grassy grounds.

“Ezen and I met in our first year of high school. You could say we were lone wolves and we became friends because of it. Both his parents were dead and he lived with his grandparents. My mother had passed and Limus wasn’t much of a father,” he cleared his throat, “so we had a few things in common.”

He stopped to pick a white gardenia from one of the many bushes lining the hotel. Placing it behind my ear, he kissed my cheek and we continued walking. When we reached the bridge that connected the hotel to the huts, Thayde stopped and leaned over the edge of the handrail, dropping his soaking shirt on the edge.

“We visited Neridia because I owned the apartment my mother left me. It was our place to escape when we got sick of being out of water. When Ezen’s grandparent’s passed, he stayed there. I didn’t mind. On one of the days I went to visit, I couldn’t find him. I looked in all our usual hang outs, but no one knew where he was. Ezen never left without leaving a note and I knew something had happened to him. I hired a tracker to help me find him. It took a few hours.”

He paused and I waited. The silence was interrupted by the loud call of a peacock. When Thayde didn’t continue, I leaned against him.

“He was tied to a large rock on the bottom of the ocean a few miles south-west of Neridia. Someone had taken a deep sea fishing hook and pierced it through both of his wrists. So he couldn’t try and rip himself off the barb of the hook, they went to the effort of installing a wire clip on the end.”

Horror must have reflected on my face because he pulled me close to him and rubbed my arm. “They bound the end of his tail with wire and left him there to die. He was barely conscious when we found him. We got him back to Neridia in time to save his life. If you notice, he never takes those cuffs off his wrists. It’s because the scarring from the ordeal is pretty gross. He doesn’t like people looking at them and asking questions, so he wears the cuffs to cover them up.”

“Wow.”

“He told me I saved his life and he wanted to swear an oath to me that should the need ever arise, he would return the favor. So we swore to always protect one another, even if the result is death. Out of that oath, came the tattoo on our left arm.”

“Did he see his attacker?” I asked.

“No. They approached him from behind and knocked him out. When he woke up, he was already tied to the rock.”

“Wow,” It sounded eerily similar to the threats Akin made to me two years before. All it would take would be one hit to the head and I could do whatever I wanted to you. Whatever. His awful words rang in my head.