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But now...I was free.
Finally.
Free from everything trapping me since I’d been tended to at the hospital.
My stitches had dissolved a long time ago, and the wound on my head had faded into a pink scar. My cast was now in hacked-up pieces in the Taylors’ rubbish bin. And I’d discarded the moonboot after week four—even though Neri had scowled and tried to persuade me not to be an idiot.
But I’d reached my limit.
I was sick of not being able to move without a hobble and even though my ankle still ached in bed and twinged if I decided to do anything more than walk, I was happy enough that it was mending.
Seven weeks I’d lived with the Taylors.
One week in their guest room and six weeks of sleeping in my sala-bedroom in their garden, listening to the gentle lap of their pool as the underwater vacuum kept it clean, and a bone-deep longing to slip into the coolness kept me awake. I’d lost my fear of being on the ocean through forced exposure, but I had no desire to swim in it.
The Taylors’ pool, however?
I was past the point of desperation to get away from the stagnant Port Douglas heat.
A few nights last week, I couldn’t stand it anymore, so when the lights turned off in the house, I’d waded into their pool up to my waist, keeping my arms above the waterline.
The moment I’d stepped into the water, memories of screaming, sadness, and storms crowded me. My mouth went dry. My heart beat faster. The relief from finally being cool was immediately overshadowed by sorrow and guilt that I’d survived and they hadn’t.
Water had stolen everything from me.
Didn’t matter if it was salt or chlorine.
I’d waded out as fast as I’d waded in, guts churning and breath tight.
I’d stood in the quiet garden while everyone slept and balled my hands, hating that just because I wanted something so fucking badly didn’t mean I was ready.
Ever since that awful epiphany, I’d made a show of groaning about how eager I was to swim when the Taylors jumped in their pool after a long day, cursing my cast and sitting on one of the man-made rocks with rolled eyes and a frustrated huff.
No one knew that a huge part of me was grateful that I had the cast to blame. I was glad I could blame a physical ailment rather than a mental one.
But now, it was off.
And I had no more excuses.
Well, I had one.
One very real excuse but one that already grated on me.
From here on out, I’d have to live a very careful life.
I couldn’t afford to get hurt, sick, or push myself to extremes because medical care would be tricky. When we’d all had the chat about where I would go and what I wanted to do, Jack had been explicitly honest about how careful I would have to be if I stayed.
After running from the hospital that first day, the Australian government had my name on file and most likely a record of me vanishing into the night, never to be seen again.
I’d expected someone to knock on the Taylors’ door—especially seeing as the nurse recognised Anna’s name, but...so far, I’d been lucky.
And I needed that luck to keep flowing because I now lived in a country full of the world’s most poisonous and venomous creatures. Neri had been the one to tell me about the monsters I now shared a home with when I’d gone to pick up a spider in the kitchen to throw it outside.
She’d yelled at me.
She’d yanked me back.
I’d thought her overreaction was like my littler sister’s would have been—a typical arachnophobia response—but that was before she’d stalked to their small bookcase in the lounge and marched back with an encyclopaedia on all the man-eating, flesh-devouring, biting, stinging, tearing, mauling animals that lived here.
Nowhere was safe.
And I had a horrible thought that I might die, not because I was deported home, but because some murderous snake would bite me in my sleep.
“Guess it will take time to build up strength in your wrist again, but it will happen,” Jack said, rubbing his wet hair with a towel. “Least you’re free of it now! Free of any reminder of what you survived. You can swim and do everything you’ve wanted to do.”
“Great.” I nodded, glad my sarcasm wasn’t noticed. Touching my wrist briefly, I saved the spreadsheet I’d been amending and closed the laptop. Seven weeks was long enough for my bones to heal, but my heart? That was still a gaping, bleeding mess.
I still had nightmares.
I still asked if any of the fishermen had found anything that belonged to my family.
Hope still sliced me, not letting me accept the stark truth that they’d gone.
Clenching my teeth, I stowed the laptop back inside its hard-case cover and stepped around Neri, who stood wringing out her hair like her mother had done. She splashed my bare toes as I walked past, catching my eyes but not smiling.
