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“Yeah...crazy, huh? I never let go of it.”
I couldn’t look at her. The strangeness in my blood was back, bubbling with warning. “Just...promise me you won’t let your heart rule your head next time.”
She smiled softly. “My heart always rules my head. You already know that.”
I stiffened and placed the shell on my knee. “Regardless. Think next time.”
“Oh, I think a lot.” She plucked the shell from my leg and held it in both hands. “This is a spiny frog shell. I’ve forgotten the scientific name, and I was lucky its inhabitant no longer lives inside, but...when I woke up, thanks to you, I was still grasping it. I don’t know how or why but...I think...” She sighed and looked at me beneath her eyelashes. “I want you to have it.”
I held her stare, despite the prickles down my back. “Why?”
“Because...” She huffed and rolled her shoulders. “Kafami sikeyim, this is harder than I thought it would be.”
“Language,” I murmured. “Just because you said fuck me in Turkish doesn’t mean it doesn’t count.”
She laughed quietly before whispering, “I got it from the sea. I held on to it while I almost died. And...I had it when you brought me back to life. I think...I think you were meant to have it because it’s been in both worlds now. It might allow you to talk to your family. You can whisper whatever you want to say to them into the shell and hear them whisper back with the song of the sea.”
I reared back, my blood going cold. “They’re gone, Neri. I don’t need—”
“I think you do.” Resting the shell back on my knee, her touch soaked into my bare skin with a scalding kind of heat. Her fingertips lingered before pulling away. She stood gracefully. “How do you say thank you...in Turkish, I mean?”
My heart skipped a beat, but I forced myself to reply. “Tesekkür ederim.”
She smiled, and it wriggled painfully into my chest. “Tesekkür ederim, Aslan.” Her cheeks pinked. “How do you say I love you again?”
Words fled my tongue; I shook my head. “Don’t remember.”
She rolled her eyes. “Spit it out.”
“Nope. Sorry. Completely forgotten.”
Her hands planted on her nightgown-clad hips. “It was something like senee sevee or uum.”
I flinched at her butchering my tongue. “Seni seviyorum.”
“That’s it.” Her lips twitched into a shy smile. “Seni seviyorum, Aslan.” Her hand came up in surrender. “And before you kick me out and wrap your door in chains and locks, I love you as my friend. I love you for saving me. I love you for helping my mum and dad. I love you because you exist, and not a day goes by that I’m not super thankful to have you living with us.” That blue fire returned to her gaze. “Even if you keep denying we’ve had a first kiss, I promise our second one will be so much better.”
I groaned and threw my pillow at her. “Defol, you little monster. Hayatinda bir kez olsun uslu dur.”
Her eyes widened as her tongue licked her bottom lip. She caught my pillow and hugged it close, damning me to inhale whatever soap and shampoo she’d used tonight for the rest of my non-existent sleep.
“What does that mean?” she breathed.
“It means go away and behave for once in your life.”
Tossing back my pillow, she blew me a kiss. “Oh, I’ll behave. The day I’m no longer too young for you is the day I stop driving you crazy.”
“The day you aren’t a young girl anymore, I’ll be certifiably insane.”
“Part of my evil plan. To make you so nuts about me, you won’t be able to survive without me.”
“I’ll be so tangled by your games that I’ll probably kill you by accident.”
“Kill me with love you mean.”
“Get the hell out.”
“Okay, okay...” Her sweet laughter trailed after her as she slipped through my door and returned back to her room, leaving me with the shell, the sound of the ocean, and ghosts swirling thickly around me.
Chapter Seventeen
*
Nerida
*
(Sea in Maori: Moana)
“HOW EXTREMELY LUCKY THAT HE OVERCAME HIS aversion to the ocean to save your life,” Margot murmured, pulling up her legs and getting comfortable. “Did he go in the sea regularly after that? Seeing as he’d put aside his trauma and jumped in?”
I blinked back the past, struggling to return to the present.
Margot’s question jerked me from my story, and I scowled, desperate to go back to Aslan. My heart fluttered like it always did back then, full of desperate knowledge of how many moments were about to unfurl. How many times that boy would break my heart. How many instances I almost gave up forcing him to see me. How many fights I’d have to go through to snap him out of the role he’d assigned me.
I was his friend.
His replacement sister.
His responsibility.
Not that my father had helped in that regard whatsoever.
