But now, those fears vanished.
Those fears more than vanished; they detonated in a wash of lust as I unbuttoned his denim shorts and pushed aside the bikini bottoms beneath my white skirt. (I gave up with underwear and bras).
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
...............................................
G A L L O W A Y
......
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?
Would she forever be a free spirit or would she eventually grow up, don a suit, and become some big-wig corporate CEO?
Try as I might, I couldn’t visualize my daughter in an office with a demanding laptop. I saw her as a marine biologist, hair as white as Estelle’s as she tagged dolphins and tracked whales.
She was a daughter of the wild not a child of skyscrapers.
But that didn’t matter because this was our home now.
.............................
MAY
We tried to fit in. We really did.
We went out with Madi and some of her friends.
We did our best to introduce Coco to new things, even though she wailed with frustration.
We still hadn’t found a house, but strangely, we didn’t care.
Coco preferred to spend every waking minute on the beach and sometimes insisted we camp out beneath the moon.
It wasn’t as warm as Fiji, so we carried the blankets from our beds and slept on yoga mats on the sand. Beneath the splattering stars, listening to my daughter’s relaxed sigh, I couldn’t deny I was more at home here than I could ever be beneath a white ceiling and ugly chandelier.
The only thing that ruined our happiness were the dawn surfers sneering at us as if we were homeless and early beach-goers carting umbrellas and boom boxes.
It ruined the fantasy.
The fantasy that we weren’t truly here but there.
Days passed and we did the same thing.
We explored a little more of the city.
We forced ourselves to acclimatise, to go on trains, to attend open houses even though in my heart, I knew we’d never be able to sign such a commitment.
We were lost.
Only this time, our hearts were lost not our bodies.
Despite our problems, Estelle and I grew closer.
So close in fact, I left one night while she was bathing Coco, and headed to the jewellery shop in the local mall a ten-minute walk from our block.
I withdrew some money from the account my father had reopened with the meagre funds I’d earned from working in prison.
I spent all of it.
I bought her a ring.
And I went back to the apartment and got down o
n one knee and proposed.
Again.
Chapter Eighty
...............................................
E S T E L L E
......
Being surprised doesn’t mean awe or wow or even shock.
Being surprised doesn’t mean you’ll love it or hate it.
Being surprised means the one person you love knows you better than you know yourself.
And that is the ultimate sign of perfection.
Taken from the New Notepad of E.E.
...
GALLOWAY HAD SURPRISED me.
More than surprised me.
Dumbfounded me.
“I can’t believe we’re doing this.”
“Believe it. This way...it’s official. Forever.” Galloway smiled, looking so handsome in a black shirt and jeans. His tan hadn’t faded, ingrained into his skin after three and a half years of hot sunshine, and the black material popped with his bright blue eyes. His glasses glittered sexily and his lips curled in the perfect way, making me want to kiss him.
And kiss him and kiss him.
I wore a similar outfit of jeans with a black off-the-shoulder blouse. I’d fishtail-plaited my hair so it fell over my shoulder (no longer brittle from sun damage or unwashed) and secretly loved the white strands against the dark fabric.
It wasn’t exactly a wedding dress...but I didn’t want one. Or need one. As far as I was concerned, we were already married.
This was just a formality.
However, I adored my wedding ring.
I couldn’t stop twirling it.
There was no expensive diamond, no gaudy gemstones. Just a simple gold band with the words: You crashed with me. I fell for you. I love you.
It was beyond perfect and would never ever leave my finger.
Not even to hand it to the celebrant so she could instruct Galloway to place it on my hand with our vows.
No way. It was there to stay.
Madeleine stood behind me with Coco in her arms as Galloway turned and took my hands.
We stood in a small room resembling a beige box with an Australian flag hanging limply in the corner.
The celebrant moved to stand in front of G and me. “Are you ready?”
We nodded.
Looking at Galloway, she said, “As this is just a simple formality, I’ll ask the simplest but most important of questions.” She grinned. “Do you take Estelle Marie Evermore to be your lawfully wedded wife?”
Galloway licked his lower lip. “I do.”
Her gaze switched to me. “And do you take Galloway Jacob Oak as your lawfully wedded husband?”
My nerves drained away. “I do.”
The celebrant clapped. “In that case, I now pronounce you husband and wife. For the second time.”
We kissed.
We celebrated.
We ignored the pain of missing Pippa and Conner.
They’d been there the first time we’d got married.
Now, they were gone.
We didn’t have the children, but we did have that coveted piece of paper.
And the very next day, my last name changed from Evermore to Oak.
It was legal.
Chapter Eighty-One
...............................................
G A L L O W A Y
......
A MONTH AFTER we got married, we still hadn’t settled.
We’d done our best.
We’d given it a shot.
We’d been open-minded and appreciative and hopeful.
But now, I was over it.
I was over not being happy.
I was over being father to a cranky two-year-old who begged to return to a place that (to most people) only existed in fairy-tales.
Why should we bow to what was normal? Why should we believe that to excel in life we had to have the fanciest house, the most expensive of clothes, and the most stressful job?
Why couldn’t we be honest? Why couldn’t we admit that our wants and desires weren’t in flashy cities and gourmet restaurants? They were in the wild open spaces of archipelagos and turtle nurseries?
That night, Estelle and I walked along the beach at sunset. Coco played behind us with her sandcastles, chatting to her stuffed turtle, and finding happiness that she couldn’t find anywhere else.
The gentle swish of the tide over our toes called to me more than concrete or glass. Something intrinsic had changed forever, and I couldn’t get rid of it.
I didn’t want to get rid of it.
I glanced at Estelle, my heart quickening at how beautiful she was in her loose white dress and unbound hair. Her period had come last week, which meant she wasn’t pregnant but her body was able to.
The thought both excited and terrified.
If we gave up on this life and returned to where I wanted, we couldn’t have another child...unless...
The ideas that’d kept me company for months kept evolving, twisting, growing. I hadn’t shared any of them with Estelle, but I couldn’t hold them back any longer.
Once the paperwork was finalised and our world reinstated, Estelle stole Madi from her job as a personal assistant to a CEO and hired her to run the empire she didn’t even know she had. The lawyers released control of the trust back to Estelle, but Stel made Madi joint beneficiary for her honesty and loyalty.
The record company had been in touch and requested more songs, more lyrics, more of everything. And if she wanted it, Estelle could have the career she’d always dreamed of.
And I knew she dreamed of it because I’d caught her playing the baby grand in the foyer of a hotel we’d had dinner at while she waited for me to pay.
She looked just as beautiful as she did on the YouTube video. However, something was fundamentally different. Whereas music had been her outlet and passion, now it was second place to what she truly wanted.
What I truly wanted.
What Coco truly wanted.
What we all bloody wanted.
We wanted to go back to our private paradise.
We wanted to give it all up for what we’d found there.
But we didn’t have the courage to say it aloud. Didn’t have the balls to admit we were willing to give up plumbing and electricity—not brave enough to say that wealth and social standing wasn’t worth as much as the quality of life we’d created.
If we continued this way, we would spend the rest of our days wishing we’d been strong enough to admit what we truly needed.
I wouldn't let that happen.
I wouldn’t live another day without having what I absolutely desired. I wouldn’t let my daughter scream herself to sleep because she couldn’t see the stars through the smog, or paddle in the temperate sea to tickle fish with her tiny fingers.
I won’t do it.
Dragging Estelle to a stop, I placed both hands on her shoulders. “I have something to say. Something wild and stupid and crazy and so bloody right I can’t not say it.”
Her eyes widened; goosebumps broke out where I held her. “What is it?”
I looked back at our daughter. She raised her head, waving with a piece of driftwood rather than the bright plastic spade we’d bought her. She hated the slimy feeling of manmade toys, preferring the carved starfish I’d done last week on the balcony.
“I think we should go back.”
“What do you mean? Go back?” Her eyes narrowed. “You want to be stranded again? With no help. You want to cut us off completely?”
“I said crazy. Not ludicrous.”
“Then what?”
“I have an idea.”
“Well, share it before I pass out from waiting.”
I smirked. “The money from your singing...how willing are you to spend some of it?”
Her head tilted. “What do you mean?”
“I mean...if I asked you to trust me as your husband, would you?”
Without hesitation, she nodded. “Of course, I would.”
“Okay, I have
an idea.”
“What?”
“Trust me?”
“You won’t tell me?”
“Just trust me. Give me a few days. Then I’ll tell you.”
It was a lot to ask, but Estelle gave me those few days.
I made it worth her while.
.............................
“I’m not asking if it’s the correct business decision. I’m asking if it’s possible?” I clutched my cell-phone as the Fijian national on the Board of Government Assets and Sales mumbled something unintelligible.
I’d pulled every dirty trick I could to get this conversation. But it also helped that we were minor celebrities in Fiji after finally agreeing to do a small article about our life on the island.
Our glowing praise and gratefulness of such a country had gone down well with the tourism bureau and earned us a call from the Fiji president himself, expressing welcome to his great nation anytime we wanted.
Well, I wanted.
Very much.
But I didn’t want a temporary vacation.
I wanted residency.
I wanted an island.
“So...is it possible?” I prompted again.
“It—it is possible. I have to ask what sort of monetary compensation it would require.”
“Ask away. I’ll hold.”
“You want me to ask, right now?”
“Yes. This very moment.”
“Uh...okay. Hold please.” Annoying music filtered into my ear.
Pacing the balcony off our tiny apartment, I tapped my fingers against my thigh. Estelle had popped down to the beach with Coco to find shells for a sea-inspired chandelier.
Coco had spent the morning pouting and crying for the salty waves. She refused to play on the smooth surfaces of ceramic tile, preferring the roughness of nature and inconvenient reach of microscopic sand.
Come on. Come on.
I wanted this phone call finished before Estelle caught me.
I wanted this to be sorted before I told her.
Before I informed my family of what our future could be.
Finally, the hold music changed, followed by a short cough. “Mr. Oak?”
I slammed to a halt. “Yes.”