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Eight percent of all the rent gathered, plus my time renovating.
Fuck me.
I’d never held so much in one pay packet.
And just like before, I had nothing I wanted to spend it on.
Nothing but Neri.
As I’d tripped in a daze back to our rapidly improving apartment, I’d been struck with an idea. Once Neri had gone to uni for the day, I ignored the risk of going out in public and headed downtown. The cash burned a hole in my pocket as I hunted through every electronic and science shop I could find before I stumbled on what I was looking for.
I’d taken the chance of paying cash so Neri wouldn’t see the transaction on our shared card and spent almost all of my earnings on my wonderful wife.
I’d gotten home before Neri and carried the many bags into the spare room that I’d painted, disinfected, and hung new silver drapes in. It wasn’t furnished as we had no need for a second room, but now...I had a plan.
Hiding what I’d bought in the wardrobe, I’d made Neri her favourite meal—pesto pasta with mushrooms and parmesan—then went online and found a perfect desk while she did her homework at our battered dining room table.
The next day when she went to uni, I distracted myself with chores around the complex, keeping an eye out for the delivery. The van turned up just before three p.m., giving me enough time to assemble the glass desk and set up the spare room with a brand-new microscope, glass slides, beakers, droppers, storage vials, labels, and a drawer full of litmus tests.
It wasn’t a full lab.
The microscope wasn’t nearly high-end enough for most of her studies.
But I wanted her to have a space to work, like her parents did in their house.
She’d leaped into my arms as I dropped my hands from her eyes and showed her what I’d done.
To say that I got lucky that night was an understatement.
Neri took one look at the home lab—as rudimentary as it was—dropped to her knees, yanked my shorts down, and had me down her throat before I’d even grasped the doorframe for balance.
It didn’t matter how many times we touched, licked, fucked, or kissed, we couldn’t get enough of each other.
I kept waiting for our need to simmer, but it never did.
It stayed just as hot, just as needy, and the daily separation meant I’d get instantly hard at the sound of her key in the door, and she’d get instantly naked as she found me scribbling down numbers or dripping in sweat from renovating.
By the time six months had rolled around, our apartment was fully done, and I’d begun work on the place two levels above us, I stopped on the stairs on the way to sign for yet another hardware and timber delivery and froze.
Somehow, life had lulled me into believing I was free.
That my signature on the deliveryman’s paperwork was as legitimate as Griffen Yule’s. That my ring on Neri’s finger made her mine in the eyes of Australian law. That the cash I was paid gave me permission to live and work here.
But none of that was true.
I might be anonymous.
No one might care that I wasn’t one of them.
The amount of work Griffen gave me might leave no free time to think about the day when this incredible fairy-tale blew up in my face.
But in that stairwell, the black whispers came back with a vengeance.
All the worry I’d been too exhausted to notice or too skilled at suppressing roared back into existence.
All the questions I’d refused to ask about how long I could remain hidden in this city crushed my heart like a six-tonne killer whale.
I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was waiting, just out of sight.
