Page 149 of Under the Waves

“Wellsy,” I breathed, stepping towards her slowly until she was all that I could breathe, “you make me feel like the luckiest guy in the. Entire. Fucking.World.”

“You can’t possibly mean that…” She whispered, diverting her gaze.

I stepped closer. “I do. Every word of it.”

She looked at me then—those big, sad green eyes glistening with uncertainty and…something that I couldn’t decipher. Her lips parted slightly, chest rising and falling to the same rapid rhythm of my own heart. Softly, I traced the side of her jaw with my fingers before cupping her cheeks in my palms.

Poppy Wells was magnificent, scars and all.

“Jasper,” she breathed, tongue sliding over her lips in one smooth motion. Never once did her eyes leave mine. Rising onto her tiptoes, her fingers slid behind my neck, ever so gently scratching it whilst letting strands of my hair filter through the gaps in her fingers. She was so close to me now that she was all that I could see; every corner of my vision was filled with the art that was her beauty. “I’mscared, Jasper—of this, of surfing, oflife. I don’t know how to do any of it anymore.”

“Surfing is our thing, Wellsy,” I whispered, letting my eyes flutter closed as our foreheads rested against one another. “It always has been ours. I won’t be in your corner because I’ll be by your side every damned step of the way. You’ve got me, Wellsy. Lean on me. I won’t let you fall under the waves.”

“What will they all think of me, now?” She pulled backwards, eyes searching mine. “What if I’m terrible, Jasper? What if I just make even more of a fool of myself by exhausting myself over a sport that was forced upon me since before I could even walk? How can I be good at this sport if it can’t even love me back? Why should I break myself to please my father when he’s the one who abandonedme?”

Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes as her breaths came out in heavy chunks. So delicate. So uncertain. So completelyand utterlybeautiful.

“Screw everyone else,” I countered, gripping onto the string that seemed to tie us together. “If you want to be a quitter, then fine,quit, but I won’t give up on you, Poppy Wells, because you areworthhaving hope for. You hear me? You havealwaysbeen worth it. You might have been competing for him, but you were surfing foryou,Wellsy. You and I, wearethe ocean. We are the water beneath our boards and the sand between our toes. They are just as much a part of us that we are of them, and there is no giving that up.”

Every word I spoke was truthful. The ocean ran through our veins—there was no faking a connection like that: so intimate, so delicate. We were mere atoms learning to breathe in a world that tried to starve us of oxygen. So we became each other’s lifeline. She was as valuable to me as the oxygen I breathed in each day—there was no surviving without her. We were supposed to be competing against each other, but instead, we found ourselves competing for each other.

“I’mtrying, Jasper,” her voice broke just a little, those iron walls around her heart beginning to crumble. “I am. I promise.”

A single tear slipped from the corner of her eye just as I caught it with my thumb. I smeared the salty droplet across her skin as I pulled backwards just a fraction to look at her wholly.

“I know,” I breathed, repeating it over and over again as I lowered us both to the ground, stroking the back of her head as she buried herself into the crook of my neck. Tightly, I wrapped my arms around her and didn’t once let go. “I know.”

“I’m sorry,” she sobbed, afraid to even look at me. “I’m sososorry.”

“You’re safe,” I soothed in an attempt to reassure her, “you’re okay, Wellsy. Forget about the final competition, you’re more important to me. We can take these lessons one step at a time, Wellsy. I’m on your team. You’ve got me,always.” I chuckled a little, adding, “besides, who else is going to keep me as humble as you do every day?”

She sniffled a little, shaking her head softly. “I do love knocking your ego down a few pegs…”

I smiled. “See. I’d be lost without you, Wells.”

“Yeah,” she laughed, avoiding my gaze, but Iknew.

I knew her. I knew her laugh.

“You laughed just then but it wasn’t your laugh,” I frowned, pulling backwards slowly, searching her eyes for answers.

“How did you know it wasn’t?” she questioned quietly, eyes slowly sliding to meet mine.

“Because Iknow you, Poppy Wells, even though you don’t want me too. I could tell apart your fake laugh from your real laugh even if I were deaf. I could tell apart your eyes from the millions across the world even if I were blind. There is no inch of you that I do not have memorized.”

“Sounds stalker-ish to me,” she raised her brows suspiciously at me, a small smile playing on her lips.

I sighed, messing her hair a little with my fingers, tugging on it gently. “I’m slowly learning that I would go to the ends of the earth for you.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” I breathed.

A moment later, she replied—a small whisper at that, barely audible to most, but I heard her

“I’d go to the ends of the earth for you, too, Spiderman.”

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