Page 43 of Stranded With the Grumpy Mermaid

Not because Neri says anything.

Because I do.

We’re standing on the beach near the cottage, boat lights growing out on the black, twenty minutes out, maybe thirty, and relief has blown straight through every sensible thought I possess.

“Come home with me.” It’s out before I can stop it.

She turns to me, confusion on her pretty features.

“I don’t mean from here, we’re getting off this island for sure.” I laugh, and it’s a sad, nervous little chuckle. “I mean after. Come with me and let’s face all this together. We can’t just give up on us because I’m your boss.”

Her face changes. It’s small. Her shoulders tighten beneath the blanket. Her eyes leave mine.

I keep going anyway. Because there’s a tiny, desperate spark inside my chest that pushes on, despite knowing I should be giving her some time. Some distance to sort her own feelings.

“I want this when we get back, Neri. I want you. Do you want that too?”

For a few seconds, all I hear is the relentless sound of the waves licking the shore.

“I want to go home without losing my career,” she says. “I worked too hard to risk it now.”

The answer catches me completely off guard.

“What?”

“You know what I think about when I picture going home?” She looks at me now. “I think about every time I’ll get a featured speaker spot at a conference or a grant for my research and someone will whisper I got it because I’m sleeping with the department Chair.”

“Neri—”

“You know I’m right.” Her voice is quiet, but there’s nothing uncertain in her tone. She’s as solid as the granite. “That’s what’s waiting for me. Whispers and rumors.”

“Who cares what people think?”

“That’s easy for you to say.” She gives a short laugh with no humor in it. “You get to tell people a lovely story. I get talked about.”

That shuts me up.

She stares past me toward the approaching boat. “If people think you slept with one of your postdocs, they might question your judgment. If they think I slept with the Chair, they question everything I’ve earned.”

“That’s not fair.”

“No. It isn’t.”

Her eyes shine in the firelight.

“I worked so long to get where I am. I don’t want every paper, every recommendation, every job interview after this to come with somebody wondering if you gave it to me.”

“Then I stop being your Chair.”

Her head snaps toward me.

“I mean it. You don’t report to me. We disclose the relationship. I step away from anything involving your work. Whatever has to change, I’ll change it.”

“You can change your title.” Her voice cracks for the first time. “You can’t stop people talking. You’ll always be Doctor Rafael Vasquez, one of the world’s most famous astronomers, who is involved with his postdoc.”

“I don’t care what they say about me.”

“I care what they say about me. I can’t afford not to. I’m not just a girl in a man’s world, Rafe. I’m a mermaid in a human world. There is no escaping the kind of shadow standing next to you would cast on my work.”