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I’d come to this very spot.
In my mind, I’d returned to Port Douglas and clung to memories of this street, this town, this home.
And now...I’m back.
Really, truly...back.
I couldn’t breathe.
Couldn’t dare to fucking hope.
This is real.
I kept my promise.
I came back to her.
If the Jeep was in the driveway, that meant Jack and Anna were home.
Is Neri?
My heart hammered against my ribs.
For three months, I’d wanted to call her.
For three months, I’d been controlled by a different kind of master to the one I’d shot and killed. I’d spent a month in prison. I’d been kept solitary and trapped, and by the time I was dragged into some office to speak to some guy, I was half feral with rage.
I wouldn’t go through the pain again.
I wouldn’t let someone else carve pieces off me and whittle me into nothing.
They could kill me for all I cared.
I’d protected Neri and my daughter.
I’d ended Cem so all the girls at the Fairy House and the workers in the warehouse were free.
I didn’t care what they did to me as long as the pain was over.
But then, my life got...strange.
And now, I was back in a country that I’d spent eight years hiding in illegally.
My hand trailed to my pocket where my newly minted Turkish passport with its preliminary Australian residency visa gave me access, not just to visit but to stay.
I shuddered as disbelief tried its best to tell me my mind had snapped, and I was back in Turkey, dying in those catacombs, broken beyond belief. It took everything I had to trust that I wasn’t deranged, that this was real as I stepped off the sidewalk where the taxi had dropped me off from the airport.
I had no bags.
No belongings of any kind.
I was just a man dressed in a grey shirt and black slacks, sweating beneath the Australian twilight sun but refusing to roll up his sleeves or trade trousers for shorts because of scars, amputations, and tragedy.
I was hiding.
Not quite ready to show what I’d been through but so fucking ready to live again.
At least, I now walked like anyone else.
I didn’t limp or hop across the street to Jack and Anna’s house. I marched like a man and the click of my cane was the only sign that I had a secret beneath my clothes. Soon, I wouldn’t even need my cane anymore. In fact, I barely relied on it now, just like the doctors had said I would. Instead of the agonising, ill-fitted wooden leg that I’d refused to let Cem replace, this one fit like a tightly laced boot. A boot that felt almost normal even after just a few weeks.
My new transtibial prosthesis had a carbon pylon and foot, shock absorbers, silicone liners, and top-of-the-line technology. I’d run on a treadmill at the doctor’s request. I’d scaled an obstacle course at my physiotherapist’s encouragement. I’d jumped and lunged and was slowly building up faith in myself and the prosthetic. The only thing I hadn’t done was swim.
My heart kicked again at the thought of returning to the Great Barrier Reef.
Of watching Neri dive again, hold her breath like a mermaid again, of kissing her again.
For the first time in forever, my body stirred.
My belly tightened.
But then terror dampened my urges.
Five years is a long time...she might have moved on.
My chest squeezed; I marched a little faster.
I paused by their front gate.
Memories of sitting with her in Jack’s Jeep after I’d kissed her at the Craypot swarmed me. I’d known the moment she found me in the sea that I was hers. I would be hers until my dying day. But...if the loss of losing me—of spending the past five years thinking I was dead was enough to force her to find comfort with another, then...I would accept that.
I would let her be happy.
Because that was my entire purpose.
To make her happy.
My hands landed on the gate, but I didn’t push it open. The thought of knocking on the front door seemed too formal, too...cold.
I needed to see my old home.
I needed to step into the garden where I’d lived and fallen in love. I needed to smell the chlorine that clung to everything and feel the stagnant heat before I could trust this was real.
Biting my bottom lip, I skirted the front garden, bypassed the Jeep, and cut down the side of the house. The glitter of the pool blinded me as I stepped into the space where I’d spent so many dinners, so many nights, so many moments.
The vegetable garden Neri had kept thriving along the fence was gone, replaced with pretty flowers and grasses. The boulders around the pool were dusty with unuse, and the sala—
I froze and clutched my cane.
The sala that Jack had so kindly turned into a bedroom for me was...gone.
