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I couldn’t see him not coming with me.
We’d get a place together, just like he said. We’d use the money he’d saved from working for my parents, and I’d get a part-time job between studies. If and when he ran out of funds, then...?
Who knows...perhaps he can get a job where they don’t ask questions and pay under the table.
I hated that the deeper I fell into Aslan and daydreamed of our future together, the more scared I became as my eyes opened to adult things. We needed somewhere to live, a career to sustain ourselves, healthcare if we got sick, and documentation to get married.
We were so lucky that Aslan very rarely got sick. I had a sneaking suspicion it was from all the vitamin D and sunlight we received as a family on the open water. Apart from a couple of colds during the rainy season and a bout of stomach flu, he’d been healthy and happy for years.
But it just takes that one time...
A broken bone.
A serious illness.
And then he’d end up in the hospital, not able to provide a name, a Medicare number, or give any explanation on how he came to be here or where he’d been staying.
Stop thinking about what can go wrong and focus on what’s right.
I shook myself out of my funk and blinked at the stunning day before me. The ocean glittered turquoise. The sun beamed gold. The scent of salt and squawk of seagulls made my heart overflow as Aslan caught my gaze and murmured, “Deniz.”
“And because no one asked me, the word for sea is mare in Latin, hai in Chinese, laut in Indonesian, and meer in German.” Mum finished yanking up her wetsuit, kissing my dad on his cheek as he came over and zipped her up.
“Show-off,” he muttered, slapping her neoprene-covered butt.
“Give me another one.” Mum laughed.
Aslan chuckled where he sat at the table beneath the shade sail, tapping in whatever data the sonar pinged from where my father had placed it below. “You’re going to run out of languages soon, Anna.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I’m still getting the hang of yours.”
“You’re almost fluent.” Aslan gave her a genuine smile, and my heart burst. “I’m beyond impressed.”
“Can’t have you living with us and be ignorant of your culture, can I?” My mum blew him a kiss. “Your language is now our language because you are one of us.”
Aslan stiffened. He blushed. “You have no idea what that means to me.”
God, I did.
For so long, Aslan had held back his love as if he was being disloyal to his true family. But over the years, he’d fallen for my parents as much as he’d fallen for me, and as I stood there, with my father and mother and love of my life, I fought tears at how perfect it all was.
My parents adored him.
He was already practically their son.
Why couldn’t I tell them? Right now? Tell them that Aslan would be mine for the rest of my life. That we were fooling around directly beneath their noses, not because we were horny and stupid, but because we were happy and finally found.
My feet moved of my own accord, and I wrapped my arms around Aslan from behind.
He froze in the chair, shooting a wide-eyed look at my parents.
“Seni seviyorum,” I whispered into his ear, giving up one of the few phrases I knew in Turkish. I love you. I love you. I love you.
Standing quickly, Aslan laughed as if I’d said something unimportant and headed toward the cabinet where litmus test strips and beakers lived. “Ay. That’s the word for—”
“Moon,” my mum jumped in. “Luna in Latin, yuèliàng in Chinese, bulan in Indonesian, and...damn, I forgot what it is in German.” She didn’t look at us oddly. She didn’t narrow her eyes at me hugging Aslan because it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. Even Dad hadn’t raised an eyebrow because it was familiar, acceptable, right.
Frowning at Aslan, I put my hands on my hips. The strings from my black bikini tickled my fingers. “I didn’t ask what moon was in Turkish.”
