Fathom (Mermaids of Montana #3) - Elsa Jade Page 0,56
album on when you did my hair before prom,” Lana murmured over the mournful pop reminiscence of how “it must’ve been love”.
For an instant, her mother’s deft hands faltered, tugging at her scalp. “I’d forgotten. I played it because ‘Listen To Your Heart’ was the theme at my prom. I didn’t mean—”
Reaching up, Lana squeezed her mother’s hand. “It’s over now,” she said in the worst Swedish accent ever.
Her mom snorted. “Are you making fun of my music?’
“Yes?”
With another little tug at her hair, her mom laughed. “Well, it was the nineties, so fair enough.”
Everything they’d shared had been so long ago. Lana’s throat tightened. “It was good. And even when it wasn’t… It was us.”
After all her hard work on the contrary curls, her mother petted her like it didn’t matter. “I never stopped looking for you. You know that, don’t you?”
Lana tilted her head into her mother’s knee in a nod. “I know. I knew.” She swallowed hard against the lump in her throat. “I think I stayed lost, because… What if you weren’t looking?”
“Honey—”
“No.” Lana pivoted to peer up at her mother. “I knew I had problems. I knew I’d made things worse, that I’d hurt people, and broken things, maybe forever. I guess part of me thought that if I changed everything, I’d change myself too.” She shook her head, making her curls dance, and she gave her mother a wry grin. “I even changed galaxies. But that didn’t do the trick either.”
Her mother tipped her head up with a firm hand under her jaw. “There’s nothing about you that needs to change, Lana,” she said fiercely. “Nothing.”
A mother’s lie, as sweet and fleeting as a meltaway candy. “If only you were on the Tritonesse council,” Lana mused. “Marisol is basically royalty on her world but she’s only one voice against their anger and suspicion.”
Her mother scowled. “They sound awful. Why would you even fight for them?”
“They call Earth a closed world, but in some ways they are too. They fought for so long, so focused, that they see everything as a threat.” She grimaced. “I mean, I am a threat, so they’re not wrong about that.”
“Not on purpose, you weren’t,” her mother objected. “You never meant to do any of it.”
That was the problem, wasn’t it? As Sting had said, with no control over her zaps, she was just a bomb waiting to go off. And for a world struggling to find its way in a new time of peace, a reminder of danger could never be wanted or welcome.
“Please don’t think the worst of them,” she told her mother. “When you see Tritona, you’ll understand why they fought so hard. It’s like…like the aquarium in the library, except even more beautiful and wild and all around you.”
“Kind of like your Sting?”
“I call them my zaps, actually,” Lana said.
Her mother chuckled. “You know I mean that beautiful, wild, always-around alien.”
“He’s not always around. I sent him away.” Heat burned in her cheeks—a memory of flames…and Sting’s touch. “Anyway, he’s not my anything.”
“Does he know that?”
“We’re just…” She thought for a moment. “Friends, I guess. And partners, in some ways. And we’d both been on our own so long that I think it made us a little…weird.”
Her mother smiled. “It’s good to find someone whose weird matches yours.”
Lana scoffed. “I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.”
Her mother’s searching look seemed unconvinced. “Well, you do need to be clear what you want, at least in your own mind.”
Lana gave a wobbly nod of sorta agreement. If there was one thing her trip to Tritona had given her, it was certainty in her own mind. For so long, because of Wavercrest syndrome, she’d thought she might be going crazy, but meeting alien mermen had set that fear aside.
No, it wasn’t her mind she worried about when it came to claiming her Tritona heritage. Her night with Sting loomed in her mind. Yeah, she wasn’t sure she could trust her body.
Definitely not that wicked, wayward throbbing at her core: her heart.
“Well, don’t just lurk there in the shadows,” her mother said, a teasing lilt in her voice. “What do you want now?”
Hadn’t that always been her question, though? What could she dare to want when everything had always seemed beyond her reach?
Then she realized her mother was looking toward the doorway.
She swiveled around and scrambled to her feet. Of course, it was Sting. Now it wasn’t just her cheeks hot, it was her whole head.