AllFreeNovel
Share Us
We kept a temporary fence around it at all times while it was being dug, doing our best to prevent nosy neighbours from tattling on us. Once there was water inside, it wouldn’t be as obvious, but right now, it looked like an asteroid had drilled its way into the ground.
“It’s been a daily battle to keep an eye on Ayla so she doesn’t fall in,” I said. “It literally keeps me up at night.”
Which I’m grateful for as I can’t have panic attacks about Aslan still alive, somewhere, out there...stolen from me.
Honey blanched. “Oh God, I can imagine. Especially now she’s walking.”
“She’s into everything.” I smiled and looked at my rascally daughter currently being bounced in Billy’s arms a few metres away with my parents. For such a gruff burly guy, Billy was one of the gentlest souls I knew and the best husband to Honey. We’d all married young, but...we’d all known we were meant to be. “Did Teddy tell you that her first word was ‘kitty?’”
“Kitty?”
“Yeah, she pointed at the lion mural in her room and went rarrww then, clear as day, announced it was a kitty.”
“Wow, that’s so cool.”
“Don’t tell your brother, but I’ve been secretly whispering that her dad was a giant kitty into her ear at night. I wanted her first word to be Aslan, but...” I shrugged.
She sighed sadly. “How are you doing? With all of this?”
“It’s been almost two years.”
“Two years is nothing with how deeply you guys loved one another.”
Honey was my best friend. We talked every day. We shared everything. I trusted her more than I ever trusted Zara, and I loved her with all that was left of my brutalised, broken heart, but...I didn’t have the strength to share my agony.
I doubted I ever would.
After my parents found me screaming in their corridor after Aslan was killed on the phone to me, I never wanted to reach that level of despair again.
I’d barely crawled my way out the first time, but that chasm was always there. An abyss inside me just waiting to drag me back. To pull me down into a screaming void that I could never escape from.
Ignoring her question, I leaned into her and squeezed her arm looped around mine. “I’m really glad you came to visit.”
She gave me a sad smile and a quick kiss on my cheek. “Me too. Annoying that we have to sleep in a tent in my brother’s back garden—seeing as all his rooms are full—but I love this for you. I love that you guys made a life together. It might not be the life you wanted or the life anyone foresaw, but...I feel as if I truly do have a sister now, living with my two brothers.”
“Do you mind?” I asked quietly. “That I live with them, and you live in Sydney?”
“Mind? Why on earth would I mind? You know I’m joking about the tent, right? It’s super hot, so it will be fun. To be honest, I’m rather looking forward to having some outdoor sex with my man.” She snickered. “I promise we won’t be too loud.”
I laughed to hide the painful pinch in my heart. I sometimes heard Teddy and Eddie making love through the thin walls. My heart would quicken, and my body would melt, and I’d lie in a different kind of nightmare to the ones that usually woke me up.
I missed having sex.
I missed having sex with Aslan.
I was almost twenty-two, yet the thought of ever being touched by another man turned me as celibate as a nun.
My desire to continue playing the happy widow faded, and I extracted my arm from Honey’s. “I’m going to get dinner started.”
Her face fell. “Do you want any help?”
I shook my head and kissed her cheek. “Nah, some alone time would be good. Keep an eye on my little moonbeam, would you?”
“Of course.” Honey grabbed my hand as I stepped away. “Nee?”
I raised an eyebrow, flinching a little as my heart chose that moment to skip erratically, almost as if someone had plugged me in and sent a surge of electricity through my veins, defibrillating me for no reason whatsoever. “Yeah?”
“I’m so proud of you. So proud of the prototype you guys have built and the endless hours you’re putting in to make this dream come true, but...I have to ask.” Stepping into me, she lowered her voice. “If you find a way to live beneath the ocean...are you ever coming back to shore? Are you running away, Nerida?”
I gave her the respect of thinking about her question.
But I couldn’t give her my truthful answer.
Smiling, I shook my head and gave a convincing lie, “Of course not. I’m exactly where I want to be.”
She let me go and headed toward Billy and Ayla, stealing my daughter off her huge husband and beaming at her.
