Page 159 of Under the Waves
After a second had passed, I leaned backwards. “I’m sorry.”
He sighed. “I forgive you, Wellsy.”
“You shouldn’t,” I shook my head.
“I’m not likethem, Poppy. I won’t hurt you just because you made amistake.”
Them.My parents.
“Someone hashurtyou, Wellsy.Theykeep hurting you. I know something isn’t right, Iknowit. It consumes my every waking thought. What they’ve said to you…It’s not right, Wellsy, you have to know that! I’m sorry if I’m off base here, but from what you’ve said…what I’veseen…on your body…the marks, the bruises, thescars…I…” He shook his head, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Look, if you need somewhere to stay, if you need—”
I couldn’t breathe.
I couldn’t—
His eyes searched mine as I took a step away from him. Then another, and another, until we were almost an ocean apart. Every part of my body felt hollow in his absence.
Abort, abort, abort, the thoughts in my head chanted.
He knows too much.
He knows…
He…
“I’m sorry, I didn’t…” Jasper started to speak but his words were lost to the night as our gazes burned into each other. “Poppy, I–”
“It’s okay,” I repeated his words from earlier. “Don’t worry about me, I’ll be okay. I hope you get home safely, Ridge. And I’m sorry, again. About your competition.”
He knows. He knows. He knows.
Abort. Abort. Abort.
Scrunching and flexing my fists, letting my nails dig into my palms, I forced myself to smile and wave as I began to walk up the beach and back towards the home that still had its tentacles wrapped around me, even now.
I ruined everything I touched, and I refused to let myself ruin him too.
“Why can’t you stop running for one second, Poppy? We’re supposed to stick together through all the hardships, not abandon each other!” Jasper yelled halfway across the beach to where I stopped dead in my tracks. Despite the distance between us, his words managed to pierce through my skin so deeply as if he had wielded the blade himself.
“Because I don’t knowhowto stop!” I replied, turning around frantically to face him, trying to keep myself from falling apart at the seams—I’d survived too much to let it all be undone by the words of a man. Nothing about my life had ever been linear, and I’d known from the start that recovery wouldn’t be any different.
I was doing this formyself—I was healing the child inside of me who burnt herself out trying to please her father, thinking her only worth came from his validation.
“We’re supposed to do a lot of things, Jasper Ridge.”
Like not fall in love with each other.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he rasped, looking at me with these saddened, hopeless eyes. It took everything in me to look away from him then. Every inch of my strength.
“Nothing. It doesn’t matter, just forget I said anything,” I breathed, shaking my head.
Just as I turned to walk away, Jasper jogged up the beach and reached for me. His fingers barely grazed my arm before he pulled back, stepping away from me.
“Please, Poppy. Juststop,” he rasped, refusing to look away from me. “You don’t have to run away from this. You don’t have to run away fromme.”
“I can’t!” I yelled back, throat burning. “It’s all I know how to do!” I took in a breath trying to calm myself down before I said something I couldn’t take back. “You were right…we shouldn’t do this now—”
“At least come home with me,” he pleaded. “We don’t even have to speak to each other until tomorrow if that’s what you want. Just come home with me. Don’t go back there, Wellsy. Don’t—”