“This sucks,” she said. “I should go home. This was a mistake.”
The childishness of her thoughts made her scoff at herself. She kicked at the sand, like the poor looser she was being, and reluctantly walked down the beach back to Penny and her friends.
Chapter 11 - Rafe
“Of all the places you could have thought to have her meet you, you chose Tilly’s,” Kane said as he took a long swallow of his beer and slammed the empty bottle against the wooden table.
Rafe didn’t see what the big deal was. He liked Tilly’s. The crowd was mostly locals rather than the touristy type and the live band would start in about thirty minutes. Classic rock cover songs were the best. The waitresses were always friendly and he’d yet to see a fight in the place, unlike many of the other bars in town that seemed to breed physical altercations. Besides, in a few days, the Party for Life Festival would start, and this place, along with all the others, would jack up t
he prices and be standing room only. Tonight was a good night to meet Kalina. No fighting. No drama. Only Rafe with his girl.
At least that would be the case soon. At the moment, drama oozed off the man sitting opposite him at the table. If anyone seemed ripe for a fight it was Kane. He’d had too many beers and his words were beginning to slur. Rafe had seen his boss drink a lot, on many occasions, but had yet to see him get this hammered. He wasn’t quite sure what sparked his need to drink himself into a stupor, but he’d noticed the man’s attitude change after their trip to the island. He seemed sullen. It had gotten worse the moment Rafe mentioned how Thane’s people looked like one big happy family.
The people on the island were there for each other the way any real family would be. He could tell that from only seeing them once. They’d all crowded around as soon as their boat came into view, and even when Kalina had made it clear she wanted alone time with him, they’d kept their eyes on her from afar. As far as Rafe could tell, Kane had no family. At least none he ever talked about.
“Family,” Kane suddenly said as he took his next beer from the waitress and held it up as if making a toast. “Here’s to family.”
Rafe held up his beer and tapped it against Kane’s, not sure where the older man was taking this but hoping he’d explain. Secretly, he wished he’d hurry up because it was half after six and Kalina was supposed to meet him at seven. It wasn’t that he didn’t like his boss’s company, but there was no denying that the atmosphere changed greatly whenever Kalina and Kane were near each other.
“I had a family once,” Kane said. “I had a good family. Yessir, I did. Gone now. Gone to the wind, scattered like ashes. Hell, that’s what they are now. Ashes.”
Rafe didn’t know what to say. He wanted to console the guy, but he wasn’t sure if that would be smart. Kane had a bit of a temper and seemed to snap at hardly anything at all sometimes. Rafe didn’t want to end up nursing a broken nose from an accidental punch thrown in his direction. Even with the fear of triggering a knee-jerk reaction, Rafe knew the right thing to do was to keep him talking, to allow him the chance to put his pain into words.
“What happened to them?” Rafe asked, wincing through the last word and wondering if he should have kept his trap shut.
Stupid…stupid…stupid. Nothing good can come from that question, dummy.
He hadn’t meant to pry, but if he’d remained quiet, he thought maybe Kane would have thought he didn’t care enough to ask, and he did care. He looked up to Keelan Kane in many ways. Rafe’s own father had been a son of a bitch. He’d left his mom for the road. Technically they’d remained married until his mother had called it quits, but his dad had been a truck driver and had opted for every job that had come his way. In retaliation, his mom had taken to the road too, and had dragged Rafe along with her.
“Sharks,” Kane said. “Sharks ate ‘em.”
He lifted his head up as he finished the statement, his chin raised nearly to the roof, and his bottom lip curled over his top in a pout that bothered Rafe more than it should have. Probably because it gave the impression that Kane was fighting back tears, and that didn’t seem right. Kane had never shown an ounce of sadness since he’d met him.
“We were on a schooner,” Kane said. “A small fishing vessel. My mom hadn’t wanted to go, but my dad insisted. We would all go as a family this time. I’d asked how Dad spent his days, so in reality it was my fault. If I hadn’t asked, he wouldn’t have dragged us all out there to show me.”
He stopped talking long enough to take a swig from his beer.
“My sister didn’t know any better. God, she was so little. The cutest damn thing you ever seen. Something in the water caught her eye I guess. ‘Cause she leaned over and…and…she fell overboard. I saw her first and I screamed. I jumped in after her, but I was only ten. I couldn’t swim all that well and she went under so fast. And the fin.”
A glossy look came over Kane’s eyes and he lifted his eyelids as if holding tears in place, pinning them up there in his head so they wouldn’t run down and wreck his manliness.
“The fin. I was scared, man. I was so scared. I was a fucking coward. I swam away when I should have kept looking for her. But I did look back as I kicked my feet and tried to reach my dad who’d jumped in after me. She never came back up to the surface. She didn’t make it. The shark took care of that. Only took her. I was in the water and so was my dad, but it only took her.”
He swigged from his beer, tilted his head back, and kept going until he drained the rest of it. Then he stood. Rafe touched his hand.
“You survived,” Rafe said. “You weren’t a coward, man. You were just a kid. You can’t hold onto that grief. It took your sister, but you made it out. So did your mom and your dad. That’s something.”
“None of us made it out of that water, Rafe,” he said. “That’s the point, you dumb shit. The shark took my sister, but she had it easy. I had to hang around and take the beatings and deal with all the talk about how I should have watched her better. My dad was driving the boat and my mom was with him. I should have watched her better. My mom and dad lived, in theory, but they died out there on that water too. And so did I.”
Rafe wanted to offer him better words of support, to finish talking it over, but Kane smacked his beer bottle and sent it flying to the floor where it broke and shattered into pieces. He stormed out of the bar cursing under his breath. So there Rafe sat, trying to see things through his boss’s eyes. His hatred of sharks and his need to hunt down every one of them made so much sense now. So did his refusal to let peace lie between himself and Kalina’s people. In his mind, every shark was the one that ate his sister. Rafe buried his face in his hands and massaged his temples. The night had taken a much darker turn than he’d expected. He needed Kalina to show up soon and wash away this cloud.
Chapter 12 - Kalina
By six o’clock, Kalina was revving to go. At half past, she’d left her friends partying on the beach and had packed the sexiest clothes she could find into a plastic bag and had sealed it tight. She’d stripped completely naked and waved goodbye to all her friends as she stood in the moonlight and placed the plastic bag between her teeth. As soon as her feet touched the water, her body began to change. She had made the transformation so many times that it now felt good. Her body exploded, and energy tore her bones into a million pieces, sucking them back together in the form of a shark. She opened her mouth and scooped the plastic bag into it, clamping her jaws shut and doing her best to keep the bag away from her razor-sharp teeth. She’d done this a hundred times. They all had. It was how they carried clothes, wallets, and other smaller essentials to the mainland without having to ask Juan Diego to transport it for them.
She zipped through the water, loving how the schools of fish scattered as she soared toward them. She was the queen of the ocean, the scariest thing around, and whereas only yesterday she’d loathed her monstrous form, she now felt great. She was wanted. A boy was waiting for her in a bar, and she couldn’t wait to walk in and turn his head. Water shot through her gills and filled her body with so much oxygen she thought she could scream with delight. The only thing that would be better right now would be a gulp of blood, or a mouthful of fish, but now wasn’t the time for a quick snack. If she tried, she’d only drop the baggy, and she’d be forced to walk into the bar naked.
And that would totally make a bad impression.