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I froze. “First kiss?”
She giggled. “You did have your tongue in my mouth.”
“I did not have my tongue in your mouth. I was feeding you air, you ungrateful sea urchin. I was trying to keep you alive.”
“With your tongue.”
“With my mouth.”
“Ah, so you do agree you kissed me. Our lips were plastered together. That’s a kiss, I hate to tell you.” Fire glittered in her ocean-blue stare, and my mixed feelings of horror and despair hovered on a knife’s edge.
I wanted to spank her.
I wanted to stalk away.
But...as she winked at me with as much finesse as a kitten trying to seduce a tiger, I snickered. Every sharp and tangled emotion she dragged out of me transformed into the only thing it could.
Laughter.
“Hey. Laughing at a girl isn’t nice, you know.” She pouted but it was playful. “You’ll scar me from ever hitting on another boy for life.”
“Good.” I chuckled harder. “I hope you become a nun.”
“Nuns can’t wear skimpy bathing suits. And I’d drown in their stupid robes and hats.”
I shook my head, still laughing. “You are literally going to be the death of me.”
She grinned. “Almost entirely likely. But I’ll make it feel good.”
Heat shot through me.
My laughter faded.
Something painful lashed between us that shouldn’t exist.
Glancing at the staircase, my ears straining for sounds of her parents returning, I bent close to her and dared to say, “You’re fourteen, Neri. I work for your parents. I exist by the grace of their mercy. So please...please don’t tell me you’re still harbouring stupid ideas of—”
“Marrying you?” She patted my shoulder as if giving me sympathy on a life sentence. “It’s inevitable, Aslan. I suggest you stop fighting it, and—”
“Stop fighting what?” Anna’s voice sailed from the staircase, making me trip away from Neri. My nape prickled, and I spun to face her mother as she hoisted up the rest of the red net that’d almost killed her daughter.
“Nothing,” I snapped, rushing forward to grab the sea-laden mess. The turtle carcass was mysteriously absent, but the dead fish stank in their half-decomposed state. “Let me help with that.”
Anna flicked me a smile. “Thanks, Aslan.” Her eyes narrowed. “Wait...why are you wet? Did you...?” Her gaze dropped to the knife in my waistband and Neri dripping seawater behind me.
Jack appeared behind Anna, removing his mouthpiece and pushing his mask off his face. He hovered in the water, his eyes shrewd and far too good at reading his daughter.
“Nerida. What happened?”
Anna looked at Neri. “Someone speak. Right now.” Hauling herself onboard, she threw her fins to the side and planted her hands on her hips, still with her tank and wetsuit on.
Neri raised her hand with a deliberately innocent chuckle. “Nothing happened. Aslan decided to go for a swim, that’s all—”
“Neri went to save the turtle that drowned in the net you found. She almost drowned herself. I went in after her and did CPR, but she needs a doctor. Her lungs were full of water by the time I got her onboard, and I might have bruised a rib or two giving her compressions.” Marching toward the captain’s cabin, I muttered, “I’ll haul up the anchor.”
I left the Taylors to yank their daughter aside, studying every inch of her.
I didn’t go back out there, choosing to skipper The Fluke back to shore where Neri would be forced to go to the hospital, I’d be able to stop worrying about her getting sick, and I could get some much-needed space from the girl who made my life both a joy and a misery.
Chapter Sixteen
*
Aslan
*
(Moon in Zulu: Inyanga)
THE FIRST TIME SHE SNUCK INTO MY room, I’d been furious.
I’d shoved her out the very same door she came in through and marched her back to the main house across the garden. The stars had twinkled and the pool had glittered, and by the time I had her safely deposited back into her bedroom, I’d been wide awake and pissed off.
I’d gone for a walk.
Down the street to the beach at the end of the road.
I’d paced the sand and listened to the waves and begged the moon for any hint on what I was supposed to do.
She’d been thirteen the first time.
It’d been the night after her thirteenth birthday when I’d helped Anna supervise six young girls swimming in the pool with unicorn rubber rings and mermaid lilos. I’d suffered between second-hand enjoyment from Neri’s excitement at officially becoming a teenager and agonising grief that I would never be able to be a chaperone at my own sister’s birthday.
Nothing ever got washed up to hint they’d survived.
No fishermen mentioned survivors being plucked from obscure islands.
Jack had done what he could to find out information and even requested all the paperwork that would be required to turn me from illegal into citizen.
We’d huddled over the documents for days, trying to find a loophole for someone already living here under the radar. Someone who had no official identification or itinerary on how they got here. Someone who’d been living secretly in the back garden of the nicest family I could ever have been found by.
