Page 115 of Under the Waves
The voices in my head grew louder and louder with every passing second. My heart was beating so rapidly as if it wanted to claw its way out of my chest and abandon me too.
I never asked to be responsible for everyone.
I didn’t even have a father who could teach me how.
“I told you not to call me that. You’re drunk Jasper. I should be asking what happened to you.”
Lines appeared across his forehead as he frowned.Weird.Normally, I was him and he was me in this scenario. He drank so much I found it hard to believe his liver was still functioning. Normally, he was the one drunk off his tits and always doing stupid stuff that I had to talk him down from doing.
“You look like Xander when you do that with your brows. He’s always serious. Too serious, even.”
“Go and get water and sober up, asshole.” He rolled his eyes, picking up water from a silver platter as one of his millions of waiters passed us. He threw the bottle at my chest, and I only barely managed to catch it. “Where’s Poppy, anyway? Shouldn’t she be here? I invited her, she’s really cool.”
“She’s gone.” Every inch of happiness the alcohol had given me since I’d gotten here drained from my body. “She left.”
His spine straightened. “What did you do?”
“Why are you assuming I did something?”
He shrugged.Fucking smug bastard.
“What are you doing man,” Jakson sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. The harder I tried to focus on his face, the more I started to notice how much older he looked tonight. Almost like he was a slowly dimming star. Maybe it was because he wasn’t smiling at me or trying to get me to laugh so all my worries would slip between my fingers and get carried out to sea. “If I had a lightsaber right now, you better believe it would be shoved up your—”
“I told her I wished I’d never met her and that she should’ve stayed far away from here,” I gulped, the words leaving a bitter taste in my throat.
“Why the fuck would you do that, Jas? You know she’s like Lia, how sensitive they are about their pasts. Did you even ask her why she moved? Why she came back? Do you even know anything about her past?” He pinned me with a look. ThePoppy Wellslook.How had he perfected that so perfectly? “What thefuck were you thinking?”
He yelled at me like he knew something I didn’t.
Something inside my heart broke, again.
Did she trust him more than me?
The questions andwhat ifsplagued my thoughts until I felt like I was drowning beneath their weight.
“Iwasn’t!” I yelled, my fists scrunching at my side as something inside me broke like a dam bursting free. “I wasn’t thinking. I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry for not being perfect all the time. I’m sorry I’m not good enough for you, or for Lia, or for Poppy.Hell, for the entire team, why not. B-but I’m trying, okay?” My voice shattered as I held onto whatever strength I had left to stop myself from crying like a little kid who finally realized that he was never going to be like the others who had fathers.He was always going to be different. “I’m t-trying so f-fucking hard right now.”
“Hey,” his eyes softened as he planted a firm hand on my shoulder. “Don’t even think, for one second, that we aren’t proud of you—that you aren’t good enough for us. I know you’re trying,” he whispered, but I could still hear his voice louder than the music chorusing around us. “I know you are, Cap. I’m your biggest fucking supporter on this planet, don’t you ever fucking forget that, or I’ll slice your balls off with my lightsaber.”
I laughed but it sounded more like a sob.Jakson Calloway had my back. Through thick and thin, he would be there for me. I didn’t think I had ever needed to hear his words more than I had right now. I could feel my legs giving up on me before I realized Jakson had already lowered us both to the ground. It was like he knew before my own body could compute just how I was feeling. He was the closest thing I had to a brother, and I was so fucking grateful to have him in my life.
“Why can’t I cope? I’ve been doing it all my life. Why am I suddenly breaking now?” I gasped, breathing in air in chunks. “I can’t be broken, Sonny. Poppy needs me to be strong, she needs me to be whole, just like you, and little Lia, and everyone else.”
My words hit Jakson with such force it rendered him speechless.
“You’re not broken, Jasper,” he said quietly.
“I am,” I whispered, “and she’s the only one who seems tonotice all the cracks in me.”
“You aren’t broken, Jasper,” he repeated again, louder this time as if the increase in volume would somehow knock the sense back into me. “You’re my best friend, okay? I was yours before I was anyone else’s. You can always turn to me, Cap. Always.”
Every questioning thought I had about my place in his life fell apart at the seams as he whispered those words to me.
“We don’t look much like big, strong men right now,” I breathed, my body shaking.
“Fuck the patriarchy,” he said, completely dead-serious. “If you want to cry, then fucking cry. Anyone else who thinks differently can go shove it up their—”
I pinned him with a look, and he just shrugged.