Page 50 of Stranded With the Grumpy Mermaid

She takes a breath.

“I was wrong.” Her voice shakes, but she doesn’t look away. “I was scared. I’m still scared. But being stranded with you on that island was the happiest I’ve been in my entire life. And I don’t think anything else really matters.”

I stay very still. Her mouth trembles.

“I hurt you. I know I did. I’m sorry.”

The sea moves against the rocks below us.

“And I love you.”

There it is. Plain and shaking between us.

“I love you, Rafe.” She repeats, but this time her voice is just a thread, like she, too, is running out of oxygen.

A laugh almost gets out of me. Almost.

She steps closer.

“I don’t know how we handle the department. I don’t know what people will say or what we’ll have to change. But I want to figure it out. With you.”

Her voice drops.

“If you still want me.”

She stops there, barefoot and dripping on the granite, watching me.

For five weeks, I stayed away. I let her have every inch of distance she wanted, even when it hurt like hell.

I never stopped wanting her. Not once. I open my arms.

For one second she just stares at me.

Then she moves.

She hits me hard enough to knock me back half a step. Her arms lock around my neck and I lift her without thinking, hauling her against me until her bare feet leave the ground. She’s freezing and soaked and shaking, and I hold her tighter.

“I love you, Nerissa Marsh,” I say into her hair. “Completely. Stupidly. Irreversibly.”

She makes a wet, broken sound against my neck that turns into a laugh. I set her down and take her face in both hands. Her cheeks are cold beneath my palms. Her lashes are wet.

Then I kiss her.

Slowly. Deeply. With all the feelings I kept bottled up inside me all this time I spent away from her. When I pull back, she keeps her forehead against mine.

“Hi,” I whisper.

She laughs again. “Hi.”

Below us, out on the black water, a horn sounds. One long note.

We turn together. The last boat to the mainland is pulling past the headland, its lights bright against the dark water.

“There goes my boat,” she says, against my shoulder, zero regret anywhere in it.

“Mm. Stranded on an island with you again. This is becoming a bad habit.”

“Terrible habit.” She slips her arm around my waist. “Except this time we’re stranded on purpose.”