AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“This looks and smells amazing,” I tell him.
“Thanks, it’s one of my favourites.”
“I’ve never had a dish like this before.”
“It’s from our homeland,” he explains.
“Which is not…from around here,” I hedge.
“Correct.”
“Is that all you’re going to say?”
“I think we should wait until everyone’s present to have these conversations. Do you want some water?” He leaps to his feet and grabs three bottles from the fridge. I pull a face.
“No thanks, I’ll stick to pop.”
“You don’t like water?”
“Notthatwater.”
“What’s wrong with this water?”
“It makes me feel funny.”
“Funny, how?”
I shrug, not wanting to get into it. “Maybe we should wait until we’re all here to have this conversation too.”
Reef narrows his eyes at me for a split second and then lets it go. He leaves one bottle of water in the centre of the table and takes a drink from the second, watching me the entire time. When he’s done, he passes the other bottle to Cove, who hesitates and then pushes it away.
“I’ll join Malia on the soda,” he says. Reef shoots him an amused look but doesn’t say anything as Cove gets up and grabs us both a can of coke from the fridge.
“Thanks,” I say when he passes one to me.
Then an awkward silence descends. It’s the first time I’ve really been uncomfortable around either of them, and I can’t think of anything to say.
Finally, Reef breaks the silence. “We should talk about what happened,” he says, his voice low and serious.
I nod, relieved that someone else has brought it up. “Do we have any leads?”
Reef hesitates before answering. “Not yet. With everything that happened with Bhodi, the professor didn’t have a chance to fill us in before he left.”
I frown. “What about the police? Did they find anything at the scene?”
Reef shakes his head. “We didn’t involve the police. We’re under enough scrutiny as it is right now, and we didn’t want to give them an excuse to come investigating further.”
I glance down at my plate, suddenly losing my appetite. “What do we do now?”
“We keep looking,” Cove says firmly. “We can’t give up until we find out who was behind the attack and why.”
Reef nods in agreement. “And we need to be careful. We don’t know what we’re dealing with yet.”
A knot forms in my stomach at his words. “Would it help if I told you guys my version of events?” I don’t want to rehash it all, but if it could help, I can set my discomfort aside. It’s the least I can do considering Bhodi was probably attacked because he was trying to protect me.
“That could be really helpful, if you’re feeling up to it, Malia,” Reef tells me gently.
“Okay. So it was late and I’d fallen asleep, but loud noises woke me up. Bhodi was gone so I assumed it was him or you guys returning…” I launch into my story, pausing often to recall details or answer questions from Cove and Reef. I’m shocked by how patchy my memory is, because every time I close my eyes I can see my abduction playing out as clear as day. I struggle to remember the name of my captor but when I explain how I recognised him from the police station, Reef and Cove give me blank looks. Maybe the professor didn’t fill them in on the two ‘lawyers’ confusion. Even when I try to prompt them for a name, they come up blank.
