Heart

The Heart

The Siren Series

Book Three

By Rachel Higginson

Copyright@ Rachel Higginson 2015

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Other books by Rachel Higginson currently
available

Love and Decay

Love and Decay, Season One, Episodes
One-Twelve

Love and Decay, Season Two, Episodes
One-Twelve

Love and Decay, Season Three, Episodes
One-Twelve

Love and Decay, Season Four, Coming December,
2015

The Star-Crossed Series

Reckless Magic

Hopeless Magic

Fearless Magic

Endless Magic

The Reluctant King

The Relentless Warrior

Breathless Magic

Fateful Magic

The Redeemable Prince

The Starbright Series

Heir of Skies

Heir of Darkness

Heir of Secrets

The Siren Series

The Rush

The Fall

The Heart

Bet in the Dark

The Five Stages of Falling in Love

Every Wrong Reason

To Holly and Kari,

The Best PR Girls in the Biz.

Chapter One

“How are you so long?” I growled into the
mirror. I took chunks of my hair with my fists and tugged as hard
as I could. “Ow!”

Okay, so pulling my stupid hair out by the
stupid roots was not going to work. I glanced at the cheap scissors
I’d picked up at the market with longing, but knew they weren’t an
option.

I’d already been down that road.

More than once.

Almost a year ago, I’d hacked away my hair
and changed up my look to escape a world that terrified me. Since
then, my hair had taken on a life of its own. I couldn’t keep it
short.

I couldn’t keep it choppy or massacred or
anything short of shampoo-commercial worthy.

“I hate you,” I growled into the mirror at my
shiny, golden-red locks. When my eyes dipped to meet my own gaze, I
felt my heart stutter and then stop.

My frustrated words bounced around in my
chest and resonated in my ears.
I hate you. I hate you. I hate
you.

Who was I talking to?

I swallowed through emotions I was too
stubborn to deal with and fear too bitter to taste. I would deal
with those things later.

When I wasn’t already late for work.

I spun around and hurried through my little
beach bungalow, swooping up my purse and abused paperback. I shoved
my current read into the oversized silky bag I’d bought beneath a
palm tree from one of my favorite beachside vendors last week and
skipped through the front door.

The cool, salty breeze sailed over my skin
with a tingle of pleasure. I lifted my nose to the sky and closed
my eyes against the pure taste of ultimate freedom. I had
escaped.

I was lonely. I was bored. I had left
whatever pieces of my heart still beating with life back in Omaha.
And I had abandoned everyone that counted on me.

But I had escaped
.

I turned around to lock up my house. It
wasn’t exactly foreign to live alone. I had my own place when I was
sentenced to Arizona for rehabilitation. When I moved back to
Omaha, my mother and I had fallen into the same routine as usual.
We tried to keep as opposite schedules as possible, since neither
one of us could stand the sight of the other.

But it was different here.

I wasn’t just alone, I was
utterly
alone.

I had no one watching me constantly or
demanding I do things I didn’t want to do. I also didn’t have
friends that actually cared about me or cared about what I was
doing.

And worst of all, I didn’t have Ryder.

My hand shook as I lifted my keys to the
deadbolt. I blinked away fresh tears as the lock clicked into
place. Ryder was another thing I needed to bury. And quickly.

I couldn’t do this right now.

Or ever.

I bounded down the steps that led out to a
quaint but chipped sidewalk. My tiny rental sat right on the beach.
Golden sand spread out in front of me and led straight to
shimmering aqua ocean that was so transparent, the coral beneath
the surface glittered in the sunlight. The salty breeze constantly
surrounded me and added soothing character to magnificent sunsets
and miles and miles of white-topped waves.

I had found paradise. And yet it felt
empty.

I slung my purse across my body and walked
down to the road. I had set up my new life in a tourist village
that catered to foreigners. I mingled with natives that spoke
fantastic English and thought I was strange because I had come to
the island and never left. They asked me every week when I would be
headed back home. I avoided answering with pretty smiles and
flirtatious laughter.

The main road in the village was filled with
pedestrian traffic and the occasional taxi. American and English
voices blended together, asking for directions or bargaining over
souvenirs. I weaved through sweaty bodies with my eyes on the
ground and my hands clutching my purse.

I hated the walk to work. I hated that I had
to leave the quiet safety of my house and venture into populated
places where anyone could see me.

I hated staying home too, though. I hated the
stifling silence and the ache in my chest that sometimes grew so
sharp I thought it would split me in two. Home was a necessity I
put up with for my survival.

I worked at a café at the end of the main
street. White awnings billowed over open windows and small tables
clustered together on the front patio, filled with tourists and
locals alike. They sipped inky espresso out of dainty cream cups
during the day and cheap wine once the sun set.

Fleur De Sy, a Belgian national, owned Café
Callisto. She retired to my island ten years ago after having some
unspecified legal trouble. She never explained exactly what
happened, but it was clear she could never go home.

I felt a kinship with her, even if I never
confessed my own reasons for running away from home.

Fleur frowned at me when I swept into the
café. “You’re late,” she grumbled. She wiped her wrinkled hands on
her frilly white apron, and then ran them through her curled,
snow-white bob.

I threw a smile her way, “I lost track of
time.”

In her thick, French accent, she demanded,
“Again?”

“Again,” I confirmed.

She shook her head and let out a puff of air.
“The water will always be there, Ivy. You must remember this so
that I do not fire you.”

“You won’t fire me.” I patted her shoulder as
I squeezed through the tightly spaced tables and chairs inside the
stifling restaurant. The windows were opened, but the breeze had
died down and there were too many people inside. Sweat dotted my
forehead and slid through my hair.

“How can you be so sure?” She raised thinly
arched eyebrows at me, never breaking her frown.

“Because I’m the best server here.” I didn’t
wait for her to reply. I knew her mood would only get worse.

My theory was confirmed when I heard her
grumble, “What does that say for the rest of my employees?”

This time when I smiled, it was mostly
genuine. I was a terrible waitress. I couldn’t remember orders, I
dropped food and broke glasses regularly and I was never on
time.

I had never been forced to work a day in my
life before I fled. I had been pampered and spoiled. I had been
imprisoned in a gilded cage where I was force fed the finest foods
and expected to wear the nicest clothes. Work was beneath my mother
unless conning some poor schmuck out of his fortune counted. And
Nix would never have allowed it.

I stowed my purse beneath the coffee counter
and tied an apron around my waist. Energy started to buzz beneath
my skin, igniting something inside of me I couldn’t explain.

I had found early on that I liked to work. It
was my only consolation for the life I’d exiled myself to. I liked
doing something that yielded tangible results and rubbed callouses
into my palms. I liked the achy feeling in my feet and legs at the
end of a long shift and the weird mixture of coffee and gravy I
came home smelling like.

This job and the ocean were the only reasons
I’d been able to hang on this long.

The ocean.

I hadn’t lied earlier when I told Fleur I’d
lost track of time. I had been stuck staring at the water.

I’d felt a calling to it lately that I
couldn’t explain. Or maybe I could, but I didn’t want to.

Just like my hair continuing to grow, the
pull of the ocean strengthened significantly lately. It had become
so intense that I often found myself barefoot and knee deep inside
of it before I realized what I was doing. The waves would brush
against my thighs and the taste of salt lingered on my lips.

And I would be home.

The ocean possessed a power like I had never
known. It ignited something ancient in my soul, something infinite.
I felt it well up inside me until my heart ached from the force of
it and my eyes stung from emotion I held back.

I didn’t understand it, but I couldn’t tear
myself away from it either.

A soft hand landed on my shoulder, “You’ve
got a table.”

I looked up and met the kind eyes of my
coworker, “Thanks, Maria.”

I surveyed my section until I found the
newlywed-looking couple huddled together over menus. His hand
rubbed a sweet pattern over her back and she tilted her head to
him, attracted to the newness of their happiness.

This job had the unexpected benefit of making
me very good at reading people. I had always been too self-absorbed
in my own drama to notice others before or I had gone to the
concerted effort of avoiding them. Men always wanted something from
me and women were turned off by the aggressive competition they
felt in my presence.

Not now though.

Something had broken inside of me when Nix
attacked Ryder and me. Or maybe Nix wasn’t to blame.

Maybe it had been Ryder.

The Fates had prophesied that he would break
me. That he would ruin me.

And looking at everything from their point of
view, maybe he had. But to me, it felt like I had been fixed.

I was no longer the object of every male’s
desire. Females no longer wanted to cut my throat just because they
didn’t like the way their men looked at me.

When I said I was free on this island, I
meant it. I was free from all of it, all of my old life and the
people that filled it.

I just wasn’t convinced that it was a good
thing yet.

I walked over to the couple and wrote down
their coffee and scone orders. Another table filled in my section
and soon enough I was as busy as the other servers.

My shift flew by. Afternoon coffees turned
into early dinner specials and then late night wine and spirits. My
apron filled with meager tips and my neck ached from carrying trays
of food for hours on end. But by the end of the night, I felt a
rich kind of satisfaction.

It wasn’t until the early hours of the
morning when all of the patrons had finally cleared out that I’d
been able to clean up my section and start closing down. I paused
after setting chairs upside down on one of the patio tables and
stretched my back.

The moonlight glistened in the sky, cascading
milky light over the quiet streets. Most of the population had gone
to bed for the night and the tourists had wandered back to their
resorts by now, ready for free booze or other evening
entertainment. I could hear the lapping of the waves against the
nearby shoreline and my heart picked up speed, thumping
energetically in my chest.

My fingertips buzzed with anticipation and I
felt the telltale skittering along my spine.