CIRCE’S SONG HYDRO-YACHT
MUSE CRUISE
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 8TH
7:25 P.M.
“Attention, Alphas,” a breezy female voice smoother than the sea they floated on wafted out from the cruise ship’s speakers. “The first annual Muse Cruise will set sail in five minutes.”
Charlie’s mocha-brown eyes scanned the crowd as she clutched her Heartbreak Helper helmet close to her chest. She shivered in her shiny brown bandeau top she’d paired with capris, wishing she’d brought a sweater. All along the railing of the A-shaped ship, muses from each dorm stood dispensing words of inspiration and wisdom. Each muse wore a couture gown inspired by women of the ages. There were 1920s Dior flapper muses, nineteenth-century muses with towering hairstyles and corseted gowns, 1980s punk princess muses, and even some muses in ultra-futuristic gowns from this year’s runway shows. Thalia wore an Alexander McQueen gown that looked like the love child of the Eiffel Tower and a mirrored disco ball. Her golden tresses had been teased and lacquered into a romantic faux-hawk studded with silver-and-black rosebuds, and her eyes shone from the center of a thick stripe of silvery paint.
Charlie’s arms ached with the weight of her Heartbreak Helper, and she wondered if it had been a bad idea to bring it on the cruise. Lugging it around was annoying, but word of her invention had spread faster than a Malibu brushfire and everyone seemed desperate to try it for themselves. Apparently, there were a lot more broken hearts on Alpha Island than just Charlie’s.
“And that’s why we need to press on, even when adversity strikes,” Thalia was saying as Charlie approached the circle surrounding the muse. She wiped a grain of sushi rice from her neon-pink lips. “Because we only go around once.”
“That we know of,” Hannah Hesse interrupted. “One of us might discover proof of reincarnation. You never know.”
Thalia nodded thoughtfully. “Maybe so,” she said, her golden eyes crinkling as she pondered the idea. “What do you think, Charlie? As an inventor and scientist, do you think our souls inhabit other bodies after we die?”
Charlie blushed and shrugged. She was too focused on bouncing back from her fight with Darwin to focus on the afterlife. “I hope so. I could use a second chance.”
“Second chances come when we least expect them,” Thalia said lightly. “Excuse me, girls, I need to meet with the other muses to put the finishing touches on tonight’s entertainment.”
When Thalia had glided away, a train of silver triangles trailing behind her, Hannah turned to face Charlie. The tiny stud in her nose caught the last rays of the setting sun, and Charlie noticed that Hannah’s eyes were shiny with tears. “Can I give the Heartbreak Helper a try?” she asked, her voice cracking.
“Sure,” said Charlie, pulling a deck chair over to Hannah and motioning for her to sit down. “Who broke your heart?”
Hannah sighed and swatted at the corners of her eyes. “Dingo keeps running away every time I get close. I think I scared him when I slipped a love letter into his cereal at breakfast.”
Charlie instructed Hannah to close her eyes and carefully put the helmet over her spiky red-black hair. In seconds, a group of heartbroken girls gathered around them, each clamoring for a turn.
Celia De La Cruz waved her hand in Charlie’s face. “Me next, okay? I can’t sleep, I’m so heartbroken. Taz gave all six Oprahs the same line about us being special and unique. He played us all!” Celia wailed. “I hate boys!”
“Okay, you’re next,” Charlie said. Sounds like Taz to me, she thought. This was all Shira’s fault. What kind of person brings one hundred beautiful girls to an island with only five boys?
“My turn next!” a few girls shouted and began shoving to get close to the Heartbreak Helper. “No, me!”
Gabriella Santz, an A-list producer’s daughter and would-be architect whose eyes were swollen with fresh heartache, pushed her way to the front of the crowd. “Mel ditched me after I mentioned I didn’t like The Proposal. I tried to tell him it was because I was on set during the filming so I couldn’t get into it, but he said he didn’t want to listen to a rom-com hater!”
Charlie sigh-nodded. It was going to be a long night. Almost every Alpha had a sob story and a broken heart to go with it. She wasn’t sure tangerine mist and a smile was going to cut it—what they needed was distraction. And more boys! But unless Shira became a different person, more boys weren’t likely to materialize.
“I think it helped,” Hannah said, handing the helmet back to Charlie and wiping tangerine essence off her upper lip. “Thanks.”
“No problem,” Charlie muttered. “Next!”
Even if Charlie could heal the heartbreak of all these girls, she couldn’t fix her own. Her helmet helped, but only a little. Tears still stung her eyes every time she thought about Darwin. Even though she hadn’t seen him since their fight in the PAP, she felt him hovering by her side like a phantom limb. Her memories of him were everywhere, and yet he was nowhere to be found.
As Celia grunted inside the helmet, Charlie scanned the ship’s deck again, hoping to stumble into the path of Darwin’s hazel gaze. But instead of locking eyes with Darwin, she spotted Allie, smiling and giggling next to the railing of the ship about twenty feet away, leaning her head on… no way.
Allie’s head rested on Mel’s bulky, blazered shoulder.
Charlie laughed out loud, clapping her hands together like it was Christmas morning and she’d just opened the ultimate present. This time, she didn’t need the help of her heartbreak helmet to force her lips into a smile. “You have another minute, then show the next girl how to use the helmet,” she instructed Celia before pushing her way through the lovelorn line toward Allie and Mel, who were cuddling closer than conjoined twins.
Had Charlie’s crazy plan actually worked? Skidding to a stop on the deck in front of Allie, Charlie was desperate for dirt. “Hi,” she sang out. Allie wiggled her fingers and grinned back. Her cheeks were flushed and her navy blue eyes looked brighter than Charlie had ever seen them. “Can I talk to you for a sec? Over there?” Charlie chin-thrust in the direction of the ship’s railing, made up of interlocking golden A’s.
“Hi, Charlie.” Mel smiled.
“Hi,” Charlie said, grabbing Allie’s hand and pulling insistently. “Be right back, okay?”
Mel nodded. “Bye, babe!”
“What happened?” Charlie whisper-smiled when they reached the rail. “Are you guys… together?”
“I think so,” Allie sigh-smiled. “We ran into each other on the track last night. We have a real connection. I’ve been wanting to tell you about it all day! You were right, Charlie. From now on I’ll totally listen to you about everything.”
“I’m so happy for you guys,” she gushed. And so happy for me! Charlie’s heart flip-soared like a Cirque du Soleil acrobat. But then her acrobat faltered for a second. She couldn’t just assume Darwin would take her back….
“What about you?” Allie’s forehead wrinkled and she put a hand on Charlie’s shoulder.
Charlie looked down and studied the varnished wooden boards of the ship’s deck, trying to ignore the roar of her heartbeat thrumming in her ears. “What about me?” she managed.
“You were right about me and Mel, which means you knew things with Darwin…” Allie’s voice rose with pinched emotion.
Charlie held her breath and looked into her friend’s eyes. Had Allie figured out her plan to get back together with Darwin?
“It was never gonna happen between me and Darwin,” Allie continued. “And we both know why.”
“We do?” Charlie squeaked.
Allie flashed Charlie a rueful smile. “I never stood a chance, because Darwin loves you. Maybe you should give things with him another shot.” Allie widened her eyes and pointed at the plank connecting the ship to the dock. “Here he comes.”
Charlie’s thoughts ping-ponged from hope to fear and back again. She took a deep breath and stuck her hand into the air, waving wildly at Darwin as he boarded the ship. He wore a white linen blazer over a deep green T-shirt, a straw fedora balanced jauntily on his light brown waves. White for a truce, green for new beginnings. Charlie blinked hard, her breath caught in her throat. Looking at Darwin’s tan skin glowing in the twilight, her attraction to him was suddenly as sharp as a knife in her throat. Now that her Allie agony was a thing of the past, Darwin wasn’t off-limits anymore, which meant the feelings she’d been working so hard to suppress revved inside her like a motorcycle’s engine.
Her stomach clenched as Darwin spotted her hand and followed it down to her face. His mouth squeezed into a determined frown, he began to weave his way through the crowd and walk in their direction. She pushed her way through the ship’s crowded deck and walked toward him, conflicting waves of terror and excitement washing over her with each step.
Now that she could finally open up to him and start over, would he stonewall her and send her heart farther into the abyss, or would he consider taking her back? To be this close to potential happiness was almost too much to bear.
Pushing past throngs of dressed-up Alphas, Charlie’s eyes remained locked with Darwin’s as if connected by an invisible rope.
The rope’s pull was so strong that Charlie nearly crashed into Yvette, who stepped in front of Charlie and extended her sinewy arms to give her fellow IM a hug. “Congrats,” Yvette squeaked, motioning over her shoulder at the cluster of girls still surrounding Charlie’s Heartbreak Helper. “Your helmet is a hit. I wish I’d thought of it.”
“Thanks,” Charlie said, dying to get away from Yvette. “You can have it. I don’t need it anymore.”
“Are you serious?” Yvette squealed.
“It’s all yours.” Charlie pushed her way gently around Yvette and a few lingering girls until she got to where Darwin stood, arms folded, waiting for her.
“Something to say?” he said coolly. Inhaling his cinnamon-and-saltwater smell, Charlie practically swooned.
“Let’s go inside,” Charlie breathed, her heart beating in her throat. Her feelings for him were more powerful than ever—she was more nervous around him now than she’d been the first time they’d kissed. She grabbed Darwin’s sweatshirt-clad arm and pulled him along the deck until she found a door marked MAINTENANCE. It would have to do.
Charlie jiggled the doorknob for a moment, then hurled her shoulder against the door until it swung open. Spying a string hanging from a bare bulb on the ceiling, she reached up and yanked it, then shut the door behind them.
“Planning to interrogate me?”
The closet’s bare bulb swung ominously above them. The ship’s horn honked once and its engine groaned to life. The cruise had begun. Charlie remembered learning that once a boat sailed three hundred feet into the ocean it was in international waters, where different laws applied. She stared into Darwin’s adorable face and hoped that maybe different emotional laws might also apply at sea. Maybe in the water, they might have a real chance again.
She took a deep breath, grabbing a mop handle for moral support and to keep from falling into Darwin as the ship set sail. “I’m sorry, D. For letting your mom dictate our relationship. And for letting my friendship with Allie get in the way. And I don’t blame you for hating me enough to drop me off in the jungle, alone.” She paused, her coffee-brown eyes searching his hazel ones.
He took off his straw fedora and nodded slowly, a light brown curl falling across his forehead. Charlie wanted to brush it aside, but she didn’t dare. No trace of a smile played on his kissable lips, no twitch of his dimpled cheek gave him away. What is he thinking? For once, Charlie couldn’t read Darwin’s mind. It was as if he’d slid a heavy velvet curtain over his emotions. She wondered if she would ever be allowed to peek behind the curtain again.
Charlie cleared her throat and continued. “My whole life, I’ve been part of your family’s entourage. I think I needed this time apart to know I could stand on my own, be my own person. But once I saw I could do that, I realized that a huge part of who I was—was your soul mate.” Am I still your soul mate? Charlie’s eyes filled with tears. Why wasn’t Darwin saying anything? He stood there, blinking, watching her impassively, the way Simon Cowell watched wannabes audition for Idol.
Charlie groped for the right words to say next and wiped a runaway tear away as it traced a path down her cheek. “I’m ready to be with you again. Completely. And I promise, nobody else will ever be in charge of us.”
A puff of air shot out of Darwin’s nostrils. The cleaning products clanked around in the closet.
It was so quiet, Charlie could hear the water lapping the bottom of the ship beneath the hum of the engine. But Darwin didn’t move to fill the tense silence with words. Had he lost his voice? Was he trying to decide how to tell her they were over? Charlie’s face went hot with anticipation.
“Darwin?” she said in a strangled voice, reaching out for his hand. She squeezed his fingers in hers, her throat filling with cottony dread. A terrified ache began to form in her chest. If Darwin turned her down now, she didn’t want to think about continuing to live on the same island with him. The pain would be too much to bear, the thought of him with another Alpha too impossible to fathom….
But then Darwin’s grip tightened. His lips lifted into a smile that filled his whole face. “Are you going to say please?”
Relief mingled with joy washed over Charlie, opening up the floodgates of her heart and releasing a torrent of happy tears. She pulled him to her and nuzzled her face into his sweatshirt, soaking the fabric.
“Please! Please!” she laughed, shivering in anticipation of being engulfed in one of Darwin’s bear hugs again. She lifted her face up to meet his, and he leaned in. Soon, their lips locked as if for the first time. The kiss was electrifying—a bolt of lightning hot enough to melt an iceberg. Charlie’s knees wobbled as Darwin wrapped his strong arms around her shoulders. She felt lighter than air, giddy and amazed, as if she had arrived home after a long journey and discovered that her house had been beautifully remodeled. Charlie’s heart sang an aria as Darwin’s kiss told her everything she needed to know.