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“It was a gift, Aslan—”
“I won’t let you buy me something so expensive.” Dropping the phone box on his pillow, he tossed the sheet away from his legs, revealing tight black boxer-briefs and an intoxicating bulge between his legs.
I leapt to my feet.
I shivered with lancing, breaking desperation.
It took everything I had not to throw myself at him.
I swayed toward him.
Selfishness to take what I wanted almost made me kiss him again.
But the idea of him being kicked out. Of him no longer living in the garden. Of no longer being so close.
I couldn’t do it.
I wasn’t strong enough to claim him, and I definitely wasn’t strong enough to lose him.
Torturous agony burned through me as frustrated tears welled. “Oh, shit. Would you look at the time? I better go.” Keeping my eyes firmly away from the one part of him I was breathless to touch, I collided into his door. “I, um...sleep well. Sorry I woke you. And eh, don’t forget to message me. And, um....happy reading!”
I fell over his threshold, almost crashed into the pool, and barely made it back to my bed before I screamed into my pillow and gave in to the rush of hunger.
Being sixteen sucked.
Being in love sucked.
Being wet and desperate and head over fucking heels sucked.
It all welled inside me.
Tears fell.
My heart heaved.
And as my hand disappeared beneath my sheets and between my virgin legs, I made the awful decision to try to move on.
I couldn’t keep doing this to myself.
I couldn’t keep pretending that Aslan would one day drag me before my parents, plant a possessive kiss on my lips, and announce that he was breaking his promise to stay away from me.
As long as he was not permitted to live in this country, he had no choice but to obey.
Pity I could no longer do the same.
Chapter Twenty-Four
*
Aslan
*
(Moon in Swahili: Mwezi)
ME: HERE IS YOUR EVIDENCE THAT I have, in fact, not fallen overboard.
I pressed send, along with a photo of the most stunning bay, beach, and palm trees where we’d been moored off, taking coral scrapings, water specimens, and drilling small core samples from the seabed.
The gathering of information had been requested and paid for by the Australian Institute of Marine Science for their yearly updates on the health of the reef and ecosystem. The Whitsundays attracted so many visitors with boats, pollution, diving, and water sports that it gave a good indication of what was working and what was not.
“Messaging Neri again, Aslan?” Jack asked as he carefully labelled, stowed, and secured the box with the latest samples we’d taken. He and Anna had spent most of the afternoon inspecting each sample under their expensive microscopes, making preliminary findings, and leaving the inputting of data into the laptop for me.
I nodded and shoved the phone Neri had bought me into the back pocket of my jean shorts. “She’s jealous. If I don’t keep her updated on what we’re doing, she sends me streams of angry emoji.”
“Jealous, huh? Not my passionate daughter, surely?” Jack snickered. “And I have no doubt she’s jealous. This is one of her favourite places. But...her exams come first, and she’ll soon be free of school and doing this for a living.” Patting me on the shoulder, he padded toward the chiller where most of the ice had melted from a long day at sea.
It didn’t matter how stunning this place was. How perfect the sun shone or how prettily the ocean glittered, I still couldn’t get over that somewhere, beneath all that perfection, my family were now a pile of bones, most likely with coral growing through their ribcages and fish swimming through their eye sockets.
“Want a bevvy?” Jack asked, holding up an ice-dripping can.
“Sure. Thanks.” I caught the ginger beer he tossed my way, and Anna smiled as he placed one for her beside the microscope where she continued to study a slide of coral scrapings.
“Gratias tibi,” she said, smirking.
“You could just say cheers instead of some fancy Latin, you know.” Jack planted an affectionate kiss on her upturned lips.
“But where would the fun be in that?” she asked, cracking open the can. “Almost all the creatures and plants we study have Latin names. I’m merely being polite by using their language.”
“Showing off more like.”
She stuck her tongue out at him. Their relationship was so playful and true, it made my gut twist for my dead parents.
“You might not get the thrill of speaking different tongues, but Aslan does, don’t you, Aslan?” Anna pinned me with a stare so similar to Neri’s, just darker.
I swallowed my mouthful of tart ginger beer. “Yeah, I get it.” Lately, I’d been using the app Anna recommended instead of completing countless sudokus. Thanks to my new phone, I had numerous ways to keep my brain active, and learning new languages had become a worthy challenge. Mostly, I learned numbers, so I could practice math in Chinese, Latin, and French. “It feels good to stretch the mind.”
