“Where do you live now?”  I interrupted whatever discussion they were having.

They both swiveled around to look at me.  “Havensville,” Hayden answered.  “We moved inland to attend college and stayed in the area.  There’s several cities in a fairly short distance of each other, it works out well for business.”

I frowned.  That was…problematic.  First of all, it was in another country, technically, despite actually not being that far away, and that would mean going through the work of getting proper papers again since I technically didn’t have any after disappearing 10 years ago.  That Morgan legally wasn’t me anymore.  I could make it work in these beach towns where people didn’t care as much about proper ID for menial workers, but moving to another country…not so much.

But the bigger problem was the inland thing.  I couldn’t live that far away from the ocean.  “Are there lakes nearby?”  I asked hesitantly.  I could possibly work with a lake.  It wasn’t great, but it could maybe make do in a pinch.

“Not really, no.”  Hayden flopped down on the end of the couch nearest me.  “Is that a problem?”

“You need water, don’t you?”  Vance guessed, leaning against the armrest of my chair.  “So that won’t really work, will it?”

I shrugged slightly.  “We can always do long-distance – ”

“No,” they interrupted in unison.

Vance rested his hand on my shoulder, lightly rubbing my collarbone with his thumb.  “We’re fine moving to some place that works for you.  Our work is flexible, we can do it wherever – moving isn’t a problem, and if living in Havensville is an issue for you, then we won’t do that.”

Hayden actually looked somewhat excited.  “We haven’t built our own place yet,” he mused.  “We should do that.  Find someplace close to the ocean, then design whatever we want.”

“Yeah, we should definitely build our own place.  Do you want a pool?”  Vance abruptly asked me.  Then another thought occurred to him.  “Saltwater or freshwater?”

Okay, that was…a lot more than I was planning on figuring out at the moment.  Sure, they were architects, so this was probably right up their alley, but I kind of cringed at the idea of them moving to another place for me, then building a home designed around what I wanted.

“Doesn’t matter as long as I have the ocean or a lake nearby,” I muttered.

“Yeah, but…your dream house?”  Vance pressed.  “What would it contain?”

The thing was, I didn’t have a dream house.  I hadn’t felt like I was allowed to dream for a long time.  The idea of having a house at all was more than I’d ever considered.

“Walls and a ceiling,” I answered after a long pause.

Hayden rolled his eyes and looked amused, like he thought I was making a joke, but Vance – I could feel his thoughtful eyes on me.

I decided I was about done with this topic, it was too uncomfortable, so I abruptly got up and went to the kitchen to start preparing lunch.  “Just tell me where you plan to move to, near an ocean or lake, and I’ll come there.  It doesn’t matter much to me.”

Hayden followed me into the kitchen and captured my hands from behind before I could start preparing anything.

“Let me cook,” he suggested.  “I technically have training, and I haven’t gotten to show that off to you yet.  Anything you like to eat?  Don’t like?”  He suddenly looked troubled.  “Do you eat seafood or is that too close to home?”

I had turned around to face him, feeling embarrassed.  He had training in cooking and had let me make the simple omelets last night and then make breakfast this morning, too?  I could do some basic cooking, but it was just average, at best.  If he had training, he doubtless would be able to make something lightyears better than me.

“What – when did you get training?”

“We both got dual degrees,” Vance explained as he climbed onto one of the barstools by the high counter.  “We knew we wanted to study architecture, but neither of us were interested in giving up our hobbies, either, so Hayden studied cooking and I studied literature.”

Huh.  Apparently I actually didn’t know a lot about them.  Of course I’d known Vance liked lit, but cooking for Hayden was new for me.

I went to sit with Vance while Hayden winked at me and then started preparing food for a salad, looking fairly focused and a lot more serious than I normally saw.

“But you should answer the question,” Vance nudged my knee with his, “about food.  Allergies, likes, dislikes?  Anything changed since high school?  We want to know.”

High school had not been a good representation of my food likes and dislikes, actually.  I’d had to go with whatever my uncle was willing to buy or make or with cafeteria food, and my opinions rarely came into play.

“I like spicy foods.  And salty.  Not a huge fan of sweet stuff.  And I do eat seafood, actually more than most land-based meats – we are technically predators of the ocean, I guess?  Like Bruce could go hunting with an orca pod if he felt like, and we do fish and the like.  We just generally try to make sure that if we don’t source seafood ourselves, it comes from someone who ethically catches them.  In towns with large merfolk populations like this, there’s often at least one merfolk fisherman to buy from if we don’t catch stuff ourselves, so we know we can trust them.  Bruce got what’s in there now, which means it’s either from him or another merfolk, so anything in there is fine.”

“Makes sense.”  Hayden browsed the fridge, making some choices before pulling out some shrimp and starting the range.

They started asking me more specifics about what I ate, what I liked, what merfolk in general ate, what supernaturals in general ate – pretty much whatever came to their minds.  And given that they were both curious about this new world they’d just discovered, that meant a lot of questions.

We ended up eating outside in the little patio area, and after we finished, Hayden took my plate and handed it to Vance, then swiveled on the bench so he could rest his head in my lap.

That kind of took me aback, but after a moment’s pause, I started sliding my fingers through his dusty golden hair.

“So, freshwater,” he murmured as Vance carried the dishes inside, “must work somewhat okay for you?  Do you end up transforming in it?  Actually, is your transformation voluntary?”

“In the ocean, I can’t control it.  It happens automatically.  That’s why I avoided getting in the water back when we were kids – I knew I’d transform and that would have been hard to explain.”

“Hmm.”  Hayden closed his eyes, apparently enjoying having me play with his hair.  “We thought you were just scared of the water and couldn’t swim.”

I remembered.  They had begged me a lot over the years to get in with them, enjoy the ocean, even offered to teach me how to swim.  Of course, they never realized back then that the problem wasn’t that I didn’t know how to swim, it was that I actually knew how to swim too well – with fins and tail included.

“Freshwater,” I continued, “doesn’t work the same way.  I can take a shower, for instance, I don’t end up transforming.  Lakes or some rivers, I can transform, and I might feel a strong urge to do so if I’m fully submerged, but I don’t have to like I do in the ocean.”

“What about a saltwater pool?”  Vance asked as he rejoined us, taking the chair next to the bench.  “Would you transform in that automatically?”

I shrugged.  “No idea, never been in one, but I’d guess no.  Our bodies should know the difference between the ocean and a pool of water, even if it’s saltwater.”

Vance apparently decided it was his turn to play with my dreads, because he reached over and started gently tugging on them, curiously investigating a few metal ties I had wound into some of them.  “Hmm, so, if we built a house and had a pool, you think you’d prefer saltwater or fresh?”

Back on the uncomfortable topic, then.  Bother.

I shrugged in answer.  “Doesn’t matter to me.”

I got a look from both of them which suggested they didn’t buy that, but at least they didn’t press me on the issue.

“Do you want to stay here?”  Hayden suggested.  “You have your friend here.  We could just buy some land along the coast and built here.”

I hesitated.  Yes, being near Bruce would be nice, but…my most recent interaction with this merfolk community had left me feeling jaded towards them.  I didn’t have high hopes for any merfolk community really accepting me, but it kind of sucked that I knew the Elder here had a distinct view towards humans and thought I needed to give mine up, something I now knew was impossible for me.

“I don’t know,” I finally said.  “I think – I think I need to talk to some people before I decide that.”

I needed to talk to Bruce about the Elder, about what happened, and find out if she would pose a problem for Hayden and Vance.  She’d wanted me to split from them, so if she found out I hadn’t and was staying in the area…would she try to force me to?  Would she try to make life difficult for me when I went to get a job?  I needed some answers before I committed to staying in Willen Cove.

“So,” Hayden shifted slightly, drawing my attention to my lap where he was looking up at me with bright eyes, “can you tell us more about what happened to you after you left?  You said something about an awful merfolk community – was that them, or this one?”

“Them,” I answered automatically, before wondering if I should filter this.  They probably would guess I was holding stuff back, but I had a feeling they would get really upset if they knew the full extent of the bullying I’d faced back there.

I shrugged slightly.  “It was a tough situation for me, giving up everything I’d known and coming to a strange place with different customs, not knowing anyone.  It was a rough transition.”

It hadn’t helped that my parents had died during an internal fight with these merfolk – and my parents been on the losing side.  While the issues had since been resolved and all merfolk were technically welcome to come to their community, even those who’d once been involved in the “rebellion,” it didn’t mean that people forgot.  Or that some of them wouldn’t hesitate to remind me that my parents were, to them, traitors, yet another mark against me in their books.

“Morgan,” Hayden reached up to slide one hand along my lower back, under the t-shirt, his fingers sending warm sparks across my cool skin.  “You know you can talk to us about anything.  Please don’t be afraid to tell us the bad stuff, too.”

Right, because that made sense.  Since we’d split up, they’d gone on to become successful businessmen, which international business connections, and they’d even gotten dual degrees in college.  Whereas I…had nothing to show for the last 10 years.

A wave of bitter self-loathing hit me, but my face was in neutral position and I fought the impulse to wrap my arms protectively around myself.  I didn’t want them to realize just how broken I really was.  Telling them everything was the last thing I could possibly do.

This relationship…it was doomed, wasn’t it?  They cared about me, but the me of 10 years ago.  The me of now wasn’t someone they would love.  Not when they really knew me.  Not when they really understood how pathetically little I could offer them – apart from a lot of danger, the only upside was an introduction to the supernatural world, which was fascinatingly new to them for now, but eventually…eventually reality would weigh in.

I couldn’t let them move here for me, I realized.  Or anywhere.  Not permanently.  I’d have to talk them into renting or something until the intrigue of finding me again, finding out I was a supernatural, and finding out about the supernatural world wore off.

Until they saw me for what I truly was and left.

“It just wasn’t a good fit for me,” I answered coolly, ice in the edges of my voice.  “We didn’t exactly gel well.”

“Morgan,” Vance murmured, tugging on my dread until I looked into his sad, concerned eyes, “please don’t shut us out.”

This was hard enough without trying to deal with his insufferably expressive eyes.  I was having trouble convincing myself that I should just enjoy this as long as it lasted because every time I looked at either of them, it hurt.  It hurt because I knew this couldn’t last.

“I need to go talk to some merfolk,” I changed the subject abruptly, shoving Hayden out of my lap and standing up.  “If you’re thinking about staying here, I need to resolve some stuff first.”

“Hey.”  Vance caught my hand before I could leave.  “You know we’re more concerned about where you want to live, right?  If you don’t want to stay here to begin with, it won’t be an option.  Just tell us.”

I shrugged, pulling my hand free and kicking off my shoes.  “It doesn’t matter to me.  One place is pretty much the same as all the others.”

I hurried inside to exchange my borrowed clothes for a robe so I wouldn’t ruin the clothes, then headed back outside, ignoring the twins’ attempts to get me to stay and talk while I dove into the water, waiting for a moment submerged until I fully shifted before surfacing to toss my robe on one of the rocks, out of the way of the tides and waves.

“You promised not to run,” Hayden pointed out as he sat on the edge of the retaining wall.  “This seems an awful lot like you’re running away from talking with us.”

I hesitated as I looked at him, troubled.  Technically, he was right.  I was avoiding talking with them because running away was the only was the only sort of control I’d had on my life for years.  Hide my emotions behind frozen walls and run when necessary.  I ran when things became unbearable.  I suppose it wasn’t really control at all, but it felt like my only option.

“I’m coming back,” I tried to sound confident as I looked at him, then at Vance standing behind him, his arms crossed as he clearly agreed with his brother’s assessment.  “But you could also try not prying.”

“We just want to know everything about you,” Hayden reasoned, as if that was perfectly understandable.  “We’ll tell you anything you want to know about us.  Can’t you try the same?  We’re dating, it doesn’t need to be an awful thing.”

I sank slightly lower into the waves.  “Not everyone is able to open up so easily.”

Hayden frowned.  “You used to be very open with us.  I mean, obviously you were hiding the whole merfolk thing, but otherwise, you’d tell us everything.”

“Yes,” I agreed quietly.  “Used to be.”

Then I sank beneath the waves, propelling myself far away from the house, deep into the ocean.