AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Shuffling to my feet, I groaned with agony as I forced my despairing body into a stumble. Limping into the lounge, I grabbed the ring box on top of the presents I’d bought for Jack and Anna, bit my bleeding lip as I almost rolled my ankle stepping out of the slider and onto the deck, and barely avoided falling face first into the pool as I cursed the uneven steppingstones to my sala.
I eyed up the three stairs to my door.
I swayed and blinked at the room where I’d slept for so long. The shingles were weathered. The plywood in need of replacement. The Perspex windows were now foggy and sun-damaged, but I’d never been so grateful for it.
I never stopped to truly see what Jack and Anna had put on the line for me when they kept my secret and hid me. They were good people. Good, wonderful people who loved their daughter enough to do whatever it took to keep her safe—
Footsteps sounded in the kitchen, ripping me around.
Vertigo scrambled my beaten brain, and I sat heavily on the wooden steps where Neri had found me eating a stolen carrot from her veggie garden all those years ago.
Cursing under my breath, I fisted the ring box. A ring that I’d give anything to slip onto Neri’s finger.
Sweat prickled my back as Jack headed to the sink in the brightly lit kitchen, poured himself a glass of water, and drank it down in one go. Anna hugged him from behind, her arms slinking around his waist as he put the glass down on the draining board and twisted in her embrace to hug her.
My chest squeezed where I sat hidden in the dark.
Why were they allowed a long and happy marriage, and I wasn’t?
Why did fate hate me so much to give me my soulmate and then do whatever it could to prevent me from claiming her?
Furious tears pricked my eyes as I cracked open the box and looked at the ring inside. At the golden waves crashing over the band, the crest of each sparkling with diamonds until they smashed together in the centre, splashing into one solitaire that wasn’t as big as I would like but was the greatest symbol of my commitment.
My commitment to Neri.
My absolute desperation to bind her to me for eternity.
Quiet footsteps stepped outside the slider and onto the deck, pulling my head up.
Time stood still as Neri fumbled with her phone, quickly swiping through apps, her entire focus on the bright screen in her hands. The darkness of the garden shrouded me. The solar lights around the pool had faded in recent years, failing to spread their light to where I sat in the shadows.
My heart picked up its beat, thundering to the same song it always did around her. Quick and sharp, hard and sure. She was mine. I’d known it from the moment she first touched me as I broke beneath raw grief. That same grief lapped at my ankles now, whispering of goodbyes.
I would give anything to just sit here. To always watch over her. To never be away from her. Fuck, I’d be happy to die and stay as a ghost, just so I never had to lose her.
How much longer before the police returned?
How much longer could I stare—
My phone vibrated in my pocket, making me flinch.
Had she text me?
Was she looking for me to keep me hidden or to say what she knew we had to say? Were the police inside the house, inspecting her bedroom again and seeing the chaos I’d unleashed? Fuck, they’d wrap me in chains and never let me free.
With a sharp cry, Neri suddenly lifted her head.
The blue glow of her screen etched her throat and chin, shadowing her eyes as if she’d sold her soul to step into the underworld to find me.
“Aslan,” she breathed as our eyes locked across the garden.
I couldn’t speak. Could barely move.
“He’s here! Dad, Mum, I tracked his phone, and he’s here!”
I flinched at how loudly she announced my location.
Perhaps she’d gone through all the scenarios I had and realised I would eventually be caught. That there was no point delaying the inevitable. Perhaps she was doing me a kindness by revealing where I was to the police so we could get it over and done with.
