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Damn this girl.
“Please, Ms. Taylor. Go. Away.”
“Nice try but nope.” Her teeth flashed white in the night. “Here.” Passing me a small velvet bag, she hitched up her legs and hugged them. Her pale-pink nightgown encased her body with frills and capped sleeves.
She looked every inch of fourteen, and my heart firmly behaved.
No strange kick.
No annoying tension.
I paused as a stray thought appeared.
Perhaps the reaction I had toward Neri was from her rescuing me...not because I felt anything that I shouldn’t. Perhaps now that I’d rescued her in return, that debt would no longer have any hold over me.
With hope unfurling, I took the little bag and bowed my head politely. “Thank you. But you really didn’t have to.”
“I know.” Her gaze burned into mine as she watched me undo the string and pulled out...a spiny shell.
I looked up. “A shell?”
“I dove down to grab it from the reef. I was stupid to leap in without a knife. I thought the shell’s spines would be sharp enough to cut the net.” She shrugged, struggling not to fidget. “It wasn’t, obviously.”
“You acted before you thought.” I ran my thumb over the smoothness of the shell and winced as I pricked my thumb on one of its sharp spikes. Its faint colours of peach and cream were barely visible in the darkness. “So this is what you were holding when I gave you CPR?”
“Yeah...crazy, huh? I never let go of it.”
I couldn’t look at her. The strangeness in my blood was back, bubbling with warning. “Just...promise me you won’t let your heart rule your head next time.”
She smiled softly. “My heart always rules my head. You already know that.”
I stiffened and placed the shell on my knee. “Regardless. Think next time.”
“Oh, I think a lot.” She plucked the shell from my leg and held it in both hands. “This is a spiny frog shell. I’ve forgotten the scientific name, and I was lucky its inhabitant no longer lives inside, but...when I woke up, thanks to you, I was still grasping it. I don’t know how or why but...I think...” She sighed and looked at me beneath her eyelashes. “I want you to have it.”
I held her stare, despite the prickles down my back. “Why?”
“Because...” She huffed and rolled her shoulders. “Kafami sikeyim, this is harder than I thought it would be.”
“Language,” I murmured. “Just because you said fuck me in Turkish doesn’t mean it doesn’t count.”
She laughed quietly before whispering, “I got it from the sea. I held on to it while I almost died. And...I had it when you brought me back to life. I think...I think you were meant to have it because it’s been in both worlds now. It might allow you to talk to your family. You can whisper whatever you want to say to them into the shell and hear them whisper back with the song of the sea.”
I reared back, my blood going cold. “They’re gone, Neri. I don’t need—”
“I think you do.” Resting the shell back on my knee, her touch soaked into my bare skin with a scalding kind of heat. Her fingertips lingered before pulling away. She stood gracefully. “How do you say thank you...in Turkish, I mean?”
My heart skipped a beat, but I forced myself to reply. “Tesekkür ederim.”
She smiled, and it wriggled painfully into my chest. “Tesekkür ederim, Aslan.” Her cheeks pinked. “How do you say I love you again?”
Words fled my tongue; I shook my head. “Don’t remember.”
She rolled her eyes. “Spit it out.”
“Nope. Sorry. Completely forgotten.”
Her hands planted on her nightgown-clad hips. “It was something like senee sevee or uum.”
