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It was the way he looked at me. Plain and simple.
No one else ever looked at me that way.
He looked at me as if he already knew how our story would end because it was how it always ended. It wasn’t just fate but a strange kind of certainty that synced our hearts, merged our blood, and ensured we were born for each other. Over and over again.
It was his stare that undid me.
Every time I went home from sleeping with Joel, he seemed to know.
Every time he whispered hello and slipped from the house to the garden, his shoulders seemed a little more slouched.
Every time he caught my eyes and didn’t guard himself in time, his soul literally snarled at mine with a guttural howl and feral despair.
I felt more from just a look with Aslan than I ever did with Joel thrusting inside me.
And the longer it went on, the more I had to be honest with myself. I loved Aslan singularly, senselessly, and nothing I could do could stop it. Certainly not two teenagers fighting their hardest to pretend we hadn’t tripped into destiny well before we were ready.
Gathering up my crying pieces, I murmured, “After fourteen months of being Joel’s girlfriend, I could no longer pretend it was a fling. Joel whispered he was falling for me. Zara picked out her bridesmaid dress for our wedding. And even Joel’s parents joked at the dinner table that they better start saving to help us with a house deposit.
“I biked home that night with tears streaming down my face because I knew I had to break up with him.”
Settling back against the pillows, I smoothed down my dress and said as curtly as possible. “This is where things start getting hard...” I swallowed and braced myself. “I won’t sugar-coat anything. I won’t spare you a single moment of pain. Are you sure you want to continue?”
Dylan glanced at Margot.
Margot hunched and nodded. “Tell us.”
I didn’t pause.
I launched into the agony that I barely survived, needing to wade through it so I could breathe again. “The night I broke up with Joel was the single domino on a cascade of circumstances. One thing after another. One mistake leading to another and another...until they all crashed into the greatest mistake of all.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
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Nerida
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AGE: 17 YRS OLD
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(Sea in German: Meer)
MY LEGS BOUNCED WITH NERVES, MAKING ME fidget on the barstool. For a Thursday night, the Craypot bustled with customers ordering the famous mussel buckets and fresh sourdough bread.
I came here often with friends because the restaurant spilled out into a beer garden where the humid Australian air was kept at bay with freshwater misters and lush potted ferns, and the owner didn’t care we were underage as long as we didn’t drink. The décor with its craypots hanging from the ceiling and the lobster print uniforms gave off a homely vibe.
I wished I was in the beer garden where I could breathe a little easier. But I stayed where I’d told him I would be. At the bar, nursing a rapidly warming Sprite, begging him to appear so I could run.
“Neri?” Joel slipped through the crowd, his light brown hair tussled and bleached from being in the waves most of the day. A few eyes followed him appreciatively. At nineteen years old, Joel was starting to fill out in all the right places, leaving behind the lanky teenage stage and carving muscles into his trim physique.
Giving me a worried look, he pressed a kissed to my lips. “Everything okay? Your text sounded weird.”
I gulped and looked down.
I’d had no one to discuss this upcoming conversation with. My mum and dad weren’t options—as supportive as they were—and there was no way I’d ask Aslan for advice—not after the cold shoulder he’d been giving me for the past year. Ever since I’d turned seventeen, Aslan had withdrawn. I stopped visiting him in his room at night, and he stopped dangling his feet in the pool as I practiced my breathwork.
