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I curled my fingers around Dad’s. “He hated that I was letting what Ethan did affect me. He begged me to get counselling. It was eating him up inside each day I refused.” My voice turned quiet as I confessed. “I used him to make it all go away. I went to him to make me forget. That’s what you walked in on. He was helping me, Dad. Nothing more. He would literally do anything I asked if he thought it would help me, and I was stupid to think you and Mum wouldn’t find us.”
“If that’s true, then he’s still the guy I thought he was. He’s still looking after you. Still protecting you.”
“All of it is true.”
“It still doesn’t change the fact that he lied to us, Neri. You both did.”
“I know.”
“If he comes back, we all need to sit down and have a serious chat to figure out this mess.”
“You mean you won’t report him if he comes back?”
“No.” Dad winced. “If he doesn’t report me for battery, of course.” Glancing at Mum as she turned into our street, he added, “We should go and try to find him. I hurt him pretty badly. I don’t want him running around in the dark, fearing he’ll be deported when he’s black and blue.”
“I know how we can find him,” I said, catching my mum’s eyes as she pulled into our driveway and killed the engine.
“You do?” She raised her eyebrow, turning to face me. “How?”
“There’s an app on his phone. I installed it there a few nights before you guys went to Whitsundays on that research trip. He’s kept it on ever since so we can track each other.”
“Bloody hell, there is so much we don’t know, isn’t there?” Mum sighed, glancing at the house with its shabby fence, faded grey roof, and all the lights still on, just as we’d left it a few hours ago.
Turning back to face me, she murmured, “How about we make a deal? No more secrets or lies, and your father and I promise to do our best to understand. To accept that you’re no longer our little girl. To see you as a woman in your own right, on the cusp of turning eighteen. I trust you enough to accept that if your heart is set on Aslan, then...we’re okay with that.”
My heart skipped as I nodded. “No more secrets.”
“Alright then.” Opening her door, she climbed out. “Now, let’s go get your phone so we can find Aslan. It’s our turn to save him.”
Chapter Four
*
Aslan
*
(Heart in Latin: Cor)
I WINCED AS THE THUD OF SLAMMING car doors set my heart racing.
Three hours.
Three unbearable hours where I’d run in fucking circles around suburbia, hiding in shadows, and listening for sirens, only to give into my pain and return to Neri’s street. I’d waited by the beach for a long time, watching the house where I’d lived for six years, waiting for signs that the police had set up an ambush.
But only soft silence reigned, punctured occasionally by the happy squeals of children playing with new toys and the quiet babble of Christmas movies.
I’d taken the risk and hobbled back home.
The house was quiet and welcoming as I stepped in through the back door. It was eerie being here without anyone else. My skin itched with wrongness. My heart beat pathetically.
What if I never see Neri again?
What if Jack and Anna took her far away from me and this was the last time I walked through their home as a free man?
With my heart in my throat, I raided the medicine cabinet for a fistful of painkillers, then did my best to mop up the oozing blood along my hair line and wipe away the dried rust painting my jaw. The image in the bathroom mirror revealed a haunted man who’d fought every day of his existence, doing his best not to succumb to inherited violence only to wear that violence from someone else.
From Jack.
My chest panged.
Regardless that my life hadn’t been easy since losing my family, I’d fallen for Jack and Anna as if they were my own. I loved him. I thought he loved me too. Yet as I poked at my black eye and ran my cut tongue over my split lip, I had to face the facts.
He didn’t love me.
Not really.
He would’ve killed me if Neri hadn’t knocked him out.
Fuck.
My hands gripped the sink as a crest of nausea struck me.
She loves me.
She chose me.
Over her own father.
My hands curled around the cold porcelain.
I don’t deserve her.
But I can’t live without her.
I wanted to leave this place but how could I without her? How could I survive a single day without her smile, her touch, her love?
I’d returned to this house that was both my prison and sanctuary with intentions to pack a bag and leave. To slink into the dark and figure out a way to live in this country without being seen or caught.
