Beautiful Sorrows by Mercedes M. Yardley

be able to find my car in the parking lot without him,” she whispered suddenly. The sun’s halo burned in her vision when she closed her eyes. “Michael Thomas always remembers things like that.”
    Quit ran his hand over her leg like he was erasing something written in the sand. He pulled her hemline down demurely to her knees, smoothed it there.
    “I could help you find your car,” he said. She shook her head, rustling the grass.
    “You get as lost as I do, Quit.”
    “I could try.”
    Anna slid out from under him, cozied up to him nose to nose. She ran her hands through his hair, slid them over his cheekbones and rested her thumbs in the hollows beneath. His lashes were wet.
    She slipped her knee between both of his, and rested her nose in the hollow of his throat. She felt his pulse jump under her cheek.
    “You’re alive,” she said, and closed her eyes. She felt his shoulder twitch once, and then he stilled. His hand rested on her back. It almost felt like Michael Thomas’s hand. She had to say it again.
    “You’re alive.”

 
    LUNA E VOLK

    The first time Andros saw her, he knew. He had been raised on tales of the old ways and recognized immediately that there was something more to this girl, something rolling under her skin like the waves of the sea. She was too beautiful; her eyes were too new. She saw magic and wonder in things everybody else took for granted.
    “Isn’t that stunning?” she said once, studying a tiny white flower that bloomed near a brick wall. The men agreed vocally, as they agreed with everything that she said. The women narrowed their eyes. The girl didn’t seem to notice.
     “What is your name?” Andros asked her. She straightened and faced him. Starlight shone through her skin.
    “I’m Serena. Who are you?”
    “Andros,” he said. His heart cried out in joy. Serena? Even her name sounded mystical.
    “You’re not from around here, are you?” he asked knowingly, and Serena laughed.
    “Is it that obvious?”
    “Maybe not to everyone, but it is to me.” He smiled at her, a we’re-sharing-a-secret smile, and Serena laughed again.
    “You’re a strange man, Andros. But I like you.”
    He liked her too, whoever she was. Wherever she had come from.
    He tried to recall everything he could about shape shifters. Was she a skinwalker? He cast the idea aside immediately. Too lovely. Too ephemeral. He felt only lust and desire and his protective instincts rise to the surface when he was around her. No fear. No distrust.
    A selkie? A mermaid? Did she come from the sea? This wasn’t something he could ask, and she could never tell him; but more than that, he should be able to piece this together on his own.
    He asked her out. He rented a canoe and valiantly rowed them around the tiny pond that the city deemed a lake.
    “So,” he said, panting a little from the exertion, “do you like to swim?”
    Serena shuddered delicately. “Oh, goodness, no. I abhor the water. I nearly drowned once when I was a child, and I have been deathly afraid of it ever since.”
    He stopped rowing and the boat drifted silently.
    “But you’re here with me,” he pointed out. Serena bit her lip and gave a small smile.
    “Well, yes. This is where you wanted to come.”
    “But if you’re afraid...”
    Her cheeks reddened ever so slightly. “I am afraid. I’m telling myself to be brave, because the water isn’t very deep and I believe that you wouldn’t let me drown, but I’m still afraid. Yet this is where you wanted to be, and I wanted to be with you.”
    She turned her face away from him. He studied her dark hair, her pale skin painted with that delicate blush. He suddenly understood what she was trying to say.
    “Oh,” he said, surprised and delighted.
    “Oh,” she answered, and covered her face with her hands. Andros leaned forward and took them.
    “I would kiss you right now, but I have seen the movies and know that this is when I would upset the canoe. And I never want you to be