Unseen Messages(192)

Our lips never left each other as Galloway guided my hips up and slid himself inside me.

Our foreheads bumped as our bodies rocked and loved.

I hugged his shoulders, panting as my orgasm unravelled faster and faster.

And when he pulled back to watch me come undone, his release quaked through him so hard, so vicious, we tumbled off the couch to finish on the tiled floor.

It wasn’t until we came down from our high that I noticed he’d orgasmed inside me.

We’d agreed to stop doing that until I was on contraceptive because now we were back with vitamins and rich food, my cycle would no doubt return.

However...we were no longer on our own.

If I got pregnant this time, it wasn’t a matter of life or death.

A slow smile spread my lips as Galloway spread me on his chest and hugged me. “I know what I just did. And I’m not going to apologise.”

I kissed his throat. “I know.”

He stilled. “Do you mind?”

“About what?”

“You know what?”

“That you might knock me up again? Why would I mind?”

His reply was to squeeze me harder.

That night, after making love and dozing in each other’s arms, I woke up with damp eyes and tears drying on my cheeks.

I cried for happiness found in all corners of the globe.

I cried for the loss of Fiji.

I cried for a future we hadn’t decided on.

I cried for hope.

I cried for sadness.

I cried because, once again, our lives had changed forever.





Chapter Seventy-Nine


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G A L L O W A Y

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APRIL

I THOUGHT IT would be easy to slip back into society.

Easy to relax, be grateful, and embrace what we’d lost when we’d crashed.

It wasn’t easy.

We’d been back five weeks.

It’d been five weeks too long.

The only unfettered joy we experienced was when my father flew over and spent a fortnight with us. He rented a short-stay apartment in the same building we’d been placed in but spent every moment in ours.

Seeing him for the first time (even though I was skinny and recovering from illness) had been the best reunion of my life.

He’d cried.

I’d done my best not to.

But feeling his arms clench around me, after I’d given up hope of seeing him alive, was the only good thing about being in Sydney.

For days, he couldn’t stop staring at us, blinking with disbelief, demanding tale after tale of how we’d survived. We spoke until dawn one day, explaining the crash, my relationship with Estelle, and how free I finally felt from the guilt that’d hounded me.

Once the poignant reuniting was over, he helped us stalk the property market, searching for a new house to move into.

It was unbelievably good to see him again. But it made me sad that he was still just as lonely as he’d been when I’d disappeared. Just as heartbroken.

I caught him watching Estelle and me a few times with reminiscent adoration in his eyes.

However, he did find solace in Estelle (they got along as if she was his daughter rather than me his son), and he adored Coconut.

His trip came and went, and it was the hardest bloody thing to say goodbye.

Seeing him put ideas into my head that had no right to be there. Ideas that manifested to obsession. That kept me up at night. That offered hope while Estelle and I struggled with Coco to re-establish ourselves back in this unwanted world.

We’d been given free rent for exactly three months. Estelle thought it was overly generous and insisted on paying for utilities. Me...I thought it wasn’t enough after they’d tried to separate us.

A week ago, Estelle and I had a Skype conversation with Akin’s family and we sat in respectful silence for the dead pilot. We answered their questions about his resting place, and they granted peace by assuring us they didn’t hold us responsible. Akin had flown in worse weather and survived. It was just one of those things.

The newspapers continued to hound us for interviews and the paperwork required to reinstate everything was boring and frustrating. The lawyer was insistent on going through Estelle’s singing assets and advised her to arrange a pre-nup.

Needless to say, she stormed out of his office.

I wouldn’t care if she did ask me to sign a pre-nup. I had no intention of taking her money. But I also had no intention of ever letting her go, so that problem was void.

It didn’t help that every day Coco was stressed. She hated concrete and metal and plastic. She hated shoes and underwear and screeched if, God forbid, we ever tried to wash her blonde ringlets with strawberry-scented shampoo.

It had to be coconut or nothing else.

She refused to swim in the apartment’s tiny communal pool, and rightfully so after her skin erupted with a rash from chlorine. However, the moment we put her in the ocean (even though it was so much colder than our island), she transformed into the happiest child imaginable.

She’d build sandcastles and collect shells and roll around until she was covered in golden grains. She was at home on the beach because that was where she was born. She was birthed to the sea. She belonged to the sea.

How would she ever adapt to the bullying world of cities?

How would she cope with schools and being different?