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I’d told myself again and again that it was nothing.
Each year, I hoped the unexplainable connection to her would fade.
Each year, it only grew worse.
And now?
I honestly didn’t know how much longer I could withstand the pain.
Chapter Twenty
*
Aslan
*
(Moon in Croatian: Mjesec)
GRABBING THE BOX I’D HIDDEN IN MY borrowed sleeping bag, I cracked it open.
I struggled to see anything in the dark tent, but smiled a little, knowing what was nestled in the royal-blue velvet.
The sun had well and truly gone to bed.
Most of the campground had joined it, and we’d already received one warning from other campers to keep it down as Joel and his mates steadily drank more and more, becoming less and less inhibited.
The friendly game of UNO had been traded for strip poker about an hour ago. I’d panicked about how to grab Neri and tie her up in the tent before she could flash everyone. But she surprised me in a good way by shaking her head and sitting the game out, sipping on a Sprite instead of a vodka mixer.
It didn’t mean I relaxed or stopped watching her every move, but I was grateful that despite her lies and reckless endangerment by agreeing to come out here with these older teens, that she was still the same sensible girl who would rather live in the sea than on land.
I’d caught her yawning twenty minutes ago and was insanely grateful when she disappeared into the tent, grabbed a plastic bag holding her toothbrush and night things, and walked across the dark-shrouded camp to the toilet block in the distance.
The urge to follow her had been vicious, but I’d forced myself to stay where I was.
The camp was safe enough.
The signs about dangerous wildlife and warnings to be crocwise in a rainforest full of crocs had hopefully instilled some common sense to be aware of her surroundings. She walked straight enough so she wasn’t drunk. And besides, she’d lived in this dangerous country all her life.
She knew far more than I did.
With her gone, I spied my opportunity to grab her birthday present so I could give it to her before another day passed.
I felt fucking awful last night for not buying her anything.
Last year, I’d settled with a heavy glass paperweight that looked as if it had a red and gold sea anemone trapped inside. It’d been one of the rare times I’d used the cash Jack and Anna paid me, doing my best to make up for the lack of a gift on her thirteenth.
But this year...this morning, when Jack dragged me to the huge department store that sold literally everything, piling a trolley high with things his daughter might need for safe camping, I’d snuck to the jewellery counter and looked at what they had.
I’d almost walked away before I saw it.
Saw the perfect present for the most perfect ocean-loving girl.
A girl who was the reason I was still alive and doing my damnedest to live a life my parents would be proud of.
Fisting the box, I ducked and stepped out of the tent.
I grunted as I ran straight into Rita.
