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“Not getting into another debate with you, Neri. Just...promise me you’ll be safe, in all your endeavours, that’s all I ask.”
I nodded madly. “I promise. I promise.” I kissed him again before straightening and jiggling with pure happiness. I never in a million years thought he’d agree. This was massive. This was the first taste of freedom.
I could feel it.
This was the year when I’d finally be allowed to live a little. To ditch my constant chaperone and catch up with my school friends in their shenanigans. Perhaps I might even kiss Zara’s older brother, Joel, while we camped out in Daintree.
He’d been flirting with me at school, and I’d gotten sick of not living as recklessly as my fellow students. I’d been a good girl for long enough, and this camping trip was the start of a whole new me.
I flicked a glance at Aslan as he stood and started gathering up the dirty plates from dinner. I couldn’t recall the moment he’d started cleaning up after us, but I didn’t like it.
Now it was just his thing.
My parents didn’t put up a fuss as they always lost to his assurances that he wanted to. Whatever guilt he still felt for us rescuing him tainted everything he did...even three years later.
He did it so slyly, so quietly, that the dishes were done and the dishwasher was sloshing in the corner before Mum and Dad even realised the kitchen was sparkling.
It made me feel as if Aslan didn’t believe he was truly part of our family and kept himself firmly in the position of hired help.
Marching toward him, I tried to take back my plate. “I’ll do it. You just sit down and relax. You were complaining of a headache on The Fluke before. Not surprised with the number of hours you guys are putting in at the moment with the whale migration.”
His lips pursed, tipping over the little jar in my belly where I imprisoned all the butterflies he caused. The butterflies that weren’t permitted to flutter around with their annoying love-struck wings.
I’d done my best to stop my feelings for him.
I’d gone as far as to try self-hypnotism so I could forget about all the ways he made me feel and all the ways he trespassed on my dreams.
But...no matter what lies I told myself, or how I forced myself to form crushes on other boys, none of them were him. None of them were this honey-skinned, sable-haired, ebony-eyed, dark-humoured illegal immigrant who’d been gifted to me by the very same sea that I wanted to live in forever.
I’d never told anyone that my ultimate dream—the one thing I wished would come true more than anything—was one day figuring out how to live beneath the waves. I wanted to spend my life amongst the anemones and octopus. I wanted to open my curtains in the morning and wave to a humpback and not Mrs Starkins across the fence.
But I didn’t want to do it alone.
I wanted to do it with him.
With the boy who hated the sea for everything that it’d taken from him.
It hurt that he couldn’t accept that the yin to that yang was that it might have taken his past, but it had given him me.
I was there.
Just waiting for him to open his damn eyes and choose me.
“It’s fine, Neri.” His husky, accented voice wriggled through my blood like it always did. “It’s your birthday. No one expects you to do the dishes on your birthday.”
“And no one expects you to do the dishes every night, either, yet you do.”
He grinned and ducked from his tall height. Pressing a chaste, respectable kiss to my cheek—which somehow burned a hole through everything I was and made my tongue tingle for an entirely different kiss—he murmured, “Sorry I haven’t gotten you a gift yet. Each time we dock for the night, the shops are closed and—”
“It’s fine. I don’t need anything.”
Well, I do need one thing...but you’ll never give it to me. Just give me a kiss, Aslan—a single proper, ‘I need you more than air’ kiss, and you’ll never have to be alone again because I’ll be yours...through and through.
I shrugged, hiding my inner thoughts that I’d grown bored of. I was sick of falling so stupidly hard for this boy, only to splatter at the bottom of the cliff without him there to catch me. “Honestly, you don’t have to give me anything.”
“But I want to.”
Our eyes held.
The black depths of his gaze trapped me, and my stomach bottomed out like it always did. I stood there like an idiot trapped in quicksand, sinking into the abyss of his soul—the soul I wanted to capture in my butterfly jar and make mine forever.
Oh my God. Stop. You’re fifteen now. Enough of this childish infatuation. He’ll never look at you that way.
