Page 68 of Eternally Yours


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I’m terrified.

I roll off him, start to stand, but Samir reaches for my hand. It’s the slightest brush, but it makes my legs go wobbly and I collapse onto my knees.

“Wait. Dylan. Please.” My bound heart wants to do anything he asks, if he just saysplease. (Even if he doesn’t.) “I didn’t mean to scare you. I won’t hurt you. Let me explain.”

I don’t see any way this can end without him hurting me. Without me hurting him.

But he stands and offers me his hand, and I take it.

We find a secluded spot in the shadow of a pier. The kind of spot people get away to hook up in, probably, but that’s not what we’re doing.

“I never told anyone about what happened,” he says. “Are you really... you know...”

I blink at him.

“A merman?”

“Merfolk,” I say. “We don’t really do binary gender.”

“But you’re... I mean...”

“I’m a guy when I’m human.”

“I thought I was going crazy,” he says. “This last year, every time I looked out at the ocean, I wondered if you were out there somewhere or if I just made it all up. I thought it was all in my head. Until I saw you at that Corn Dog Cart, I didn’t know if you were real.”

He reaches for my hand.

“But you are real. And you’re beautiful.”

I close my eyes, but I can’t stop the humming in my chest.

He thinks I’m beautiful.

“I want to get to know you.”

“It’s complicated.”

“Because I’m human?”

“Because...” How am I supposed to explain without it sounding weird? Or like some sort of purity thing? “Us merfolk... we’re only with one person all our lives. We onlykissone person. Like, ever. And it binds us together.”

Samir tilts his head and purses his lips. “You mean, like, soul mates?”

“Sort of.”The one who knows the song of my heartis a better translation.

“But we didn’t kiss. I mean, I didn’t kiss you. It was mouth-to-mouth.”

“I know. But...”

It hits me so hard, I almost fall to the sand.

We didn’t kiss. But merfolk don’t really call itkissing. The better translation from Orocan issharing a breath.

“Oh no.”

Samir blinks. “What?”

“You gave me your breath. But I didn’t give mine back.”