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I’d taken the chance of paying cash so Neri wouldn’t see the transaction on our shared card and spent almost all of my earnings on my wonderful wife.
I’d gotten home before Neri and carried the many bags into the spare room that I’d painted, disinfected, and hung new silver drapes in. It wasn’t furnished as we had no need for a second room, but now...I had a plan.
Hiding what I’d bought in the wardrobe, I’d made Neri her favourite meal—pesto pasta with mushrooms and parmesan—then went online and found a perfect desk while she did her homework at our battered dining room table.
The next day when she went to uni, I distracted myself with chores around the complex, keeping an eye out for the delivery. The van turned up just before three p.m., giving me enough time to assemble the glass desk and set up the spare room with a brand-new microscope, glass slides, beakers, droppers, storage vials, labels, and a drawer full of litmus tests.
It wasn’t a full lab.
The microscope wasn’t nearly high-end enough for most of her studies.
But I wanted her to have a space to work, like her parents did in their house.
She’d leaped into my arms as I dropped my hands from her eyes and showed her what I’d done.
To say that I got lucky that night was an understatement.
Neri took one look at the home lab—as rudimentary as it was—dropped to her knees, yanked my shorts down, and had me down her throat before I’d even grasped the doorframe for balance.
It didn’t matter how many times we touched, licked, fucked, or kissed, we couldn’t get enough of each other.
I kept waiting for our need to simmer, but it never did.
It stayed just as hot, just as needy, and the daily separation meant I’d get instantly hard at the sound of her key in the door, and she’d get instantly naked as she found me scribbling down numbers or dripping in sweat from renovating.
By the time six months had rolled around, our apartment was fully done, and I’d begun work on the place two levels above us, I stopped on the stairs on the way to sign for yet another hardware and timber delivery and froze.
Somehow, life had lulled me into believing I was free.
That my signature on the deliveryman’s paperwork was as legitimate as Griffen Yule’s. That my ring on Neri’s finger made her mine in the eyes of Australian law. That the cash I was paid gave me permission to live and work here.
But none of that was true.
I might be anonymous.
No one might care that I wasn’t one of them.
The amount of work Griffen gave me might leave no free time to think about the day when this incredible fairy-tale blew up in my face.
But in that stairwell, the black whispers came back with a vengeance.
All the worry I’d been too exhausted to notice or too skilled at suppressing roared back into existence.
All the questions I’d refused to ask about how long I could remain hidden in this city crushed my heart like a six-tonne killer whale.
I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was waiting, just out of sight.
Something was coming.
Something was hunting.
Something was after...me.
Chapter Thirteen
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Nerida
AGE: 19 YRS OLD
*
(Love in Thai: R?k)
TEDDY: WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THESE schematics? I took your sketches of the underwater spheres and looked into what material they could be made from. The glass would have to be thick enough to withstand water pressure and the seals reliable enough to stay waterproof. But that doesn’t address how they could be secured to the reef, how they could be linked to other spheres, or even how oxygen could be circulated. This is a lot fucking harder than I thought. We’ve been at this for months and still have no idea how we can make it happen.
I paused chopping capsicum for our spaghetti bolognese and replied.
Me: I recently rewatched my favourite TV show as a kid, Ocean Girl. They have an entire research lab beneath the water attached to a rig on the surface. They have different water locks in case of flooding and different purification systems for waste, water, air, etc. I know it’s fantastical, and the special effects are old school now, but it has merit. You should watch it with Eddie. It’ll probably give you guys some ideas.
I smiled as I added another message.
Me: Plus, the main character is called Neri, and her best friend is a humpback whale called Charlie. My parents swear they didn’t call me after that character, but I always made up that I was an alien like her from a water planet and that I could sing whale songs.
Teddy: You are the biggest dork I’ve ever met. And if you want to be an alien, congratulations, you’re an alien. Never met anyone as odd.
