“She does,” he admitted. “So maybe she’s my best friend, and you’re like my backup.”
Gemma smiled at his joke, then went on. “I can’t ever thank you enough for what you did, even if I had all the time in the world.”
“Can’t help but notice your use of the past tense for ‘had’ there. How much time do you have?”
“The rest of my life,” she said, and she wouldn’t look at him.
“Mmm.” He leaned back against the counter. “Your being so evasive isn’t really putting me at ease.”
“I just came out here to tell you that I don’t know how I can thank you.”
“You don’t need to thank me,” he insisted. “Your being alive and safe is thanks enough.”
“You were gonna die, Daniel!” Gemma reminded him. “That was huge. You can’t just brush that off.”
“I wasn’t gonna die. I was gonna be a siren, and I don’t know. That might not have been so bad.” He smirked. “You and me, we would’ve taken on Penn and maybe ruled the world.”
She rolled her eyes as she smiled. “Yeah, it would’ve been great. If you don’t mind dining on human flesh.”
“It’s probably one of those things that you get used to.”
All the humor in her expression disappeared, and she lowered her eyes. “I hope not.”
“Yeah, me, too.”
“And I know it sounds weird that I came out here to thank you, and now I’m going to ask you a favor.” She bit her lip and looked up at him nervously.
He arched an eyebrow. “A favor?”
“I want you to promise me that no matter what happens, you’ll be with my sister and take care of her.”
He waited a beat before shaking his head. “I can’t promise you that.”
“But you love her!” Gemma insisted.
“That’s why I can’t promise you that. What holds us together needs to be love and mutual respect and desire. I can’t be bound to her by guilt from you. That’s not what’s best for her.”
Gemma sighed. “Daniel.”
“I can promise that I will look out for her for as long as I’m alive, even if we’re not together and even if she decides she hates me one day,” he said. “But that’s the best I’ll do.”
“Thank you.”
“But why all this worry about your sister for the rest of eternity? Are you planning on not being around to protect her?” Daniel asked.
“No. I just…” She tried to play it off. “I can’t be around her all the time, and I want to know she’s safe.”
“She’s safe, but I have to be honest. It’s you I’m worried about.”
Standing in front of him, Gemma was at least a foot smaller than he, and, dripping wet as she was, she looked even smaller. In an objective way, he knew that she was beautiful, but that’s not what he saw when he looked at her.
Her golden eyes had grown harder over recent months, but they still had an innocence and optimism to them, and when she smiled, her expression still had that hint of little girl to it.
In her, he always saw a frightened child, trapped in a situation that they were fighting desperately to change. It was what he’d seen in her eyes that very first time he’d rescued her from the sirens, when she was still human, and Penn had cornered her on the dock next to his boat. And that was why he helped her then, and why he helped her still.
“I’m fine,” Gemma said, and started backing toward the door. “But I should probably head back. Long swim.”
“Gemma.” He stopped her and stepped away from the counter, closer to her. “Did I ever tell you about when my brother died?”
“It was a boat accident, wasn’t it?” she asked.
Daniel nodded. “He got drunk even though I had told him to stop drinking. He took a boat out when I asked him not to. And he crashed when I told him to slow down.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, sounding unsure of what else to say.
“I can forgive myself for that. He made all those choices to drink and drive a boat, and I’ve learned to accept his choices as best I can. He knew what he was doing, and I tried my hardest to talk him out of it. But he was five years older than me and wasn’t about to let me tell him what to do.
“But the part I can’t forgive myself for, the part that still haunts me, is that I didn’t find him,” he went on. “After the boat crashed, he was lost in the bay, and I went in after him, but I never found him.” He’d walked up so he was right in front of her, and she stared up at him.
“Why?” she asked.
“Because I should’ve been able to save him, and it might not make sense, but I feel like I didn’t do everything I could. Anything short of staying in that water until I died doesn’t feel like enough.”
“If he’d died, your dying wouldn’t have brought him back,” Gemma told him.
“I know. Logically, I know,” he admitted. “But that’s not how it feels at night when I’m lying awake.”
“You can’t blame yourself for his death.”
“I’ve had plenty of therapy about John’s death, and that’s not why I brought it up.”
“Then why did you?”
“Because I know that something’s going on with you, and I don’t know what it is,” Daniel said. “But I don’t want to find you dead and know that I didn’t do everything I could to save you.”