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By night, she studied heavy books full of chemistry and biology, learning the makeup of plants and ecosystems, gradually transforming from the eager-eyed child who wanted to be like her parents into a fully-fledged scientist in her own right.
Her hair changed colours with the tides, depending on if she spent time in the salt and sun, and she grew ever more beautiful every year.
For her nineteenth birthday last year, we’d gone out for a nice dinner and rented a hotel for the night that had an indoor pool.
We’d snuck inside once it was closed to guests and swam until one a.m., reliving those wonderful evenings in her back garden where I’d craved her, wanted her, but never touched her.
Now I touched her so often it was borderline obsessive.
Our need for each other hadn’t tamed. If anything, it grew more poignant between us as we left behind the last remnants of youth and stepped into the adults we were destined to become.
I loved growing with her.
I loved maturing with her.
I loved who we grew into because of each other.
On the night of her birthday, after we’d swum and petted beneath the water, I timed her breath-hold like old times.
She’d sunk to the bottom like a fallen starfish, and I’d dangled my legs off the edge. She’d only lasted four minutes and had been distraught that for all her practicing, the past two years of uni and not having a bath to practice in robbed her ability of going over six minutes.
I’d hated the despair in her eyes. That loss.
And I’d made it my mission to make her remember that all things came in balance. The more energy you put into something, the faster you got what you wanted. She could get her freaky ability to hold her breath again once she’d graduated.
For now, her focus was studying.
But that night, I made sure her only focus was on me.
We hadn’t slept.
And if the hotel staff knew what we got up to in that room, I had no doubt they’d burn the loveseat, bleach the carpets, and wipe down the windows. Neri’s handprint on the glass as I’d pumped into her from behind while we’d looked down at the city below was still smeared when we left the next morning, returning to the perfect life we’d carved out for ourselves.
* * * * *
I expected Neri home in an hour or so.
She thought it would just be a typical Friday night for us, but I planned on enacting a scene from one of her dirty romance books tonight in honour of her third and final year at university.
She’d been back at classes for one week.
We’d been back in town since last Sunday after spending the holidays in Port Douglas with her parents. It’d been an idyllic month of sex, sun, and sand. Neri had slept with me in my sala-bedroom, cuddled close on my old double bed, hidden from parental eyes in a gazebo that’d seen better days.
Almost eight years since I’d become an honorary Taylor and four years since I first kissed Neri at the Craypot. My ring on her finger hadn’t magically permitted us to get married, but our wedding beneath the moon was enough for now.
One more year and we could return to Port Douglas for good.
I shared Neri’s excitement at going home. As grateful as I was to Griffen for his faith in me, his generous payments, and the full-time job of running his tenants and property, I missed being outdoors. I missed being on the water—not because I’d finally forgiven the ocean, but because I preferred Neri sun-drenched and sea-dripping.
She belonged out there, and I belonged with her.
According to Neri, Teddy and Eddie had actively started looking for houses to buy in Port Douglas to be closer for when she finished her degree. They’d all been getting steadily frustrated with the lack of progression on their joint venture of underwater living, and Teddy decided he needed daily inspiration from the Great Barrier Reef if he and Eddie were ever going to come up with the building materials necessary to turn the impossible into possible.
Even Billy and Honey were looking at farms on the outskirts of Cairns, dabbling with the idea of leaving Sydney behind so they could be closer to Honey’s brother, brother-in-law, and us.
Neri and I weren’t the only committed ones in this strange six-some. Teddy and Eddie had gotten married last year, and Billy had proposed to Honey three months ago when he’d earned enough for a downpayment on a decent-sized property.
So much to celebrate.
So much to be thankful for.
Including my kinky wife.
Stepping into our apartment after spending the day installing yet another kitchen, I dumped my keys onto the bashed-up dining table that we still hadn’t bothered replacing.
Rolling out the kinks in my spine, I pulled out my phone and checked the time.
