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It always ended with her tugging down my shorts and riding me, all while I murmured that she was safe, he was gone, and I was there for her in every way she needed.
She’d kiss me afterward, accept my offer to talk without talking, and then return to the main house where she’d fall asleep and return to the night where I couldn’t save her. The night where Ethan touched what wasn’t his to touch and hurt the one girl I would burn the world to fucking ash for.
I tried to pretend her refusal to talk to me didn’t hurt.
I didn’t put my own shit on top of hers.
I didn’t remind her that I knew what she was doing because I did it.
Every damn day since the shipwreck, I’d hidden from my ghosts and shoved them deep, deep inside me. I never let myself remember what my father had told me about Cem Kara and my true heritage. I pretended I was the biological son of a math’s professor because to contemplate anything else fucking crucified me. I couldn’t even admit I wasn’t a true Avci because that meant Melike wasn’t my sister and that was....that just wasn’t possible.
Over the years, I’d become so skilled at hiding, most of the time I forgot why part of me was always sad and twisted. I couldn’t recall why I would sometimes wake with pain in my heart or my head full of storms and screams.
I’d become a master at repression, and it fucking killed me to watch Neri learn the same skill.
For most of December, I let her work through her trauma her way. I didn’t believe I had any magic to fix her and did the only thing I could by being there for her when she wanted me.
I let her use me.
I let her confuse me.
I let her frustrate me.
But when her nightmares started tainting her days...that was when I started getting angry.
The first time she flinched, her mother had wrapped her arms around her from behind on the deck after we’d eaten.
I’d frozen solid.
That was huge.
That was terrifying.
That was a direct admission that Nerida Taylor—Nerida Avci—was hiding something right beneath her parents’ noses.
Well, two things, actually...but I could wait.
I planned on telling them right.
I’d even bought a ring.
A ring that cost more than I’d ever spent before.
A ring that I’d snuck into town and trawled every jewellery shop searching for.
I’d almost given up, but just like the necklace with a girl swimming with a sea lion had proven to be designed especially for Neri, a ring had jumped out that was made exactly for my perfect siren.
I couldn’t wait to give it to her.
I had it tightly trapped in a velvet box, buried in my sock drawer.
I wanted to get on bended knee in front of Anna and Jack, and propose to her all over again, showing with actions, not words, just how much I adored their daughter. And when Jack and Anna accepted my vow, then and only then, would I tell them we were already married in the only way we could.
I could never make Neri my wife here. She would never wear my last name in this country, but I hoped they’d see that no other man would love her the way I did. No other man would happily kill for her, kneel for her, go out of his fucking mind for her.
But the idea of proposing popped into a nasty bubble as Anna stiffened the moment her daughter flinched. She’d looked at Neri carefully, her loving gaze full of questions. I waited for Neri to break and tell her mother everything. But she made up a lie about seeing a spider and expected us all to believe she was suddenly afraid of Australia’s creatures when she’d spent her entire lifetime protecting them.
The second time she spooked, it caught Jack unaware. Their close relationship from when she was little still spilled over into her almost adulthood. Just because she was closer to eighteen instead of eight, it didn’t stop him from snatching her around the middle and dumping her in the pool whenever he felt like it.
