His admission had made her stomach swirl with butterflies and her heart soar, but then both her heart and her stomach clenched with fear. She wasn’t certain that Alex would know why he liked her.

If he was under the spell of the siren, he’d only know that he lusted after her, with no discernible reason for it.

“Why?” Alex laughed at that. “What do you mean, why?”

“It’s important to me,” she insisted, and something in her expression convinced him how grave this was.

“Um, because.” He shrugged, finding it hard to find the words. “You’re so … so pretty.” Her heart dropped at that, but he went on, “And you have a wicked sense of humor. You’re sweet, and you’re smart. And impossibly driven. I’ve never met anybody as determined as you. Anything you want, you’ll get. You are way, way too cool for me, and you still let me hold your hand, even when we’re in public.”

“You like me for me?” Gemma asked, staring up at him.

“Yeah, of course. Why else would I like you?” Alex asked. “What? Did I say something wrong? You look like you’re going to cry.”

“No, you said everything just right.” She smiled up at him, tears swimming in her eyes.

She stood on her tiptoes and kissed him. Tentatively, he wrapped his arms around her, and as she kissed him more deeply, he lifted her off the ground. Her arms were around his neck, and she was practically clinging to him.

“Gemma!” Harper shouted from her bedroom window, and Gemma’s heart sank when she realized they’d been spotted.

Alex put her back on the ground, but they were slow to untangle from each other. His forehead rested against hers, and she kept her hand on the back of his neck, burying her fingers in his hair.

“Promise me you’ll remember this,” Gemma whispered.

“What?” Alex asked, confused.

“Me, as I am right now. The real me.”

“How could I ever forget you?”

Before Alex could ask anything else, Gemma left, running over to her house without looking back.

16. The Dirty Gull

SIXTEEN

The Dirty Gull

Harper chewed her lip and stared at The Dirty Gull. Her father’s crumpled lunch sack in her hand, she’d been pacing the dock in front of Daniel’s boat for the past few minutes. This had never happened before, and she didn’t know what to do.

Nearly every time she took her father his lunch, Daniel would inevitably be outside in some capacity so she’d run into him. Every other time it had happened, she’d tried to avoid him, but now that she actually wanted to see him, he wasn’t out here.