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Visited by their daughter who didn’t take no for an answer.
“I know you’re not asleep. I can tell by your breathing,” Neri whispered, hovering by the cracked door as she peered into my room.
In the two years since this gazebo had been mine, I’d changed nothing.
I still had the bedside light and side table that’d been dragged here from the guest room. The chest of drawers that I’d salvaged from the side of the road, and the extension cord feeding electricity from the house. The money I got paid had morphed into a substantial amount, spent only if I needed something essential or if I wanted to find a way to repay the Taylors by buying them dinner or treating Neri to something for school—even though it still felt strange to buy them gifts with their own money.
“Go away, Nerida.” I curled up tighter on my side.
Flashbacks of saving her a few days ago still flickered behind my closed eyelids. I hadn’t been able to sleep well ever since diving into the ocean after her. My blood felt sharp and slicing. My veins felt thin and feeble. I felt as if my entire body was rejecting this comfortable, safe life by remembering the tragic, painful one I’d done my damnedest to forget.
“But I brought a thank-you gift.” Her bare feet shuffled quietly on the floorboards of the sala. Moonlight spilled over my bed before being forbidden to enter as she closed the door.
The energy in my room intensified every time she stepped foot in it.
Tonight was no different.
If Jack and Anna knew she regularly paid me midnight visits, would they care?
They trusted me.
They trusted me even more now that I’d set aside my own issues to save her life. Jack had pulled me aside the evening they got back from the hospital. Neri had undergone a full check-up and was put on antibiotics just in case she got a bacterial infection from breathing in seawater. Her ribs were bruised but not broken, and she’d make a full recovery without too much special attention.
I’d never seen Jack as fragile as he had when he brought me a beer and sat on the edge of my bed, fumbling for ways to thank me.
I’d done my best to assure him it was the least I could do.
He’d already done so, so much for me.
He’d clasped my hand with a bruising promise that I was welcome to stay with them for however long I wanted. Decades. Centuries. Forever. He’d embraced me so fiercely, I’d remembered how it felt not to breathe under the sea, and then he let me go and marched back to the kitchen.
The next morning, I found a basket of muffins, fruit, and ten sudoku books waiting outside my door with a simple thank-you card from Anna signed: You saved my heart, and I will never be able to repay you.
And now it seemed as if that heart of hers was determined to ruin mine.
“I don’t need any gifts, Nerida. The only gift I’m interested in is you going back to your own room and letting me sleep.”
“You suck at sleeping. You can’t deny it.” Tiptoeing across the small dark space, she hissed under her breath as her toe found a splinter. She landed heavily on my bed.
I growled at her as she sat on my ankle.
The ankle that’d well and truly healed but still ached every now and again. “Goddammit, Neri.” Groaning, I swung my legs out of her way and sat up. Rubbing my face with my hands, I glowered at her in the faint moonlight coming through the Perspex windows. “These visits have got to stop.”
“Ask nicely.”
Damn this girl.
“Please, Ms. Taylor. Go. Away.”
“Nice try but nope.” Her teeth flashed white in the night. “Here.” Passing me a small velvet bag, she hitched up her legs and hugged them. Her pale-pink nightgown encased her body with frills and capped sleeves.
She looked every inch of fourteen, and my heart firmly behaved.
No strange kick.
No annoying tension.
I paused as a stray thought appeared.
Perhaps the reaction I had toward Neri was from her rescuing me...not because I felt anything that I shouldn’t. Perhaps now that I’d rescued her in return, that debt would no longer have any hold over me.
With hope unfurling, I took the little bag and bowed my head politely. “Thank you. But you really didn’t have to.”
“I know.” Her gaze burned into mine as she watched me undo the string and pulled out...a spiny shell.
I looked up. “A shell?”
“I dove down to grab it from the reef. I was stupid to leap in without a knife. I thought the shell’s spines would be sharp enough to cut the net.” She shrugged, struggling not to fidget. “It wasn’t, obviously.”
“You acted before you thought.” I ran my thumb over the smoothness of the shell and winced as I pricked my thumb on one of its sharp spikes. Its faint colours of peach and cream were barely visible in the darkness. “So this is what you were holding when I gave you CPR?”
