Page 160 of Under the Waves

“I’ll be okay,” I whispered, tears building in the corners of my eyes. “Don’t worry about me, Ridge.” I shrugged out of desperation, shaking my head. “I’m stronger than I look.”

“Ican’t,” he rasped. “My entire heart is inside of you, Wellsy.”

I shook my head again, tears staining my cheeks. “Then take it back. I don’t—”Don’t say it, don’t say it, don’t say it.“I don’t want it. I don’t want us—”

“You’re lying,” Jasper barged forwards with such force and precision, it took all the air out of my lungs. “Wellsy—”

He reached for me.

He reached for me and I stepped away.

“Poppy…”

“I can’t,” I said, voice breaking.I’m sorry, Jasper. I’m sorry.

I took a step backwards.

And another.

“You don’t get to do that!” He choked, jabbing his finger in my direction just as I flinched backwards. “You don’t get to pretend like you’re the only broken one of the two of us! But you know what I think? I think you like feeling sad and broken all the time. You’re addicted to feeling sorry for yourself, Poppy. It’s sick. You’resick. Just like he was.”

I recoiled backwards as if I’d been physically slapped across the face.

Just like him.

Jasper paused, biting down on his lips.

“Poppy—” he sighed, stepping forwards.

I flinched.

My hands shook violently by my sides as my ears rang, chanting those three words over and over again until it became all that I was.

Just like him.

Just like him.

Just like him.

“Don’t run away from me, Wellsy. Run towards me, please,” he pleaded with me, trying desperately to reach me despite the growing riptide between us, pulling our bodies apart in different directions. “Promise me, if you ever get tired of being alone, you’ll remember that I will always be right here waiting for you. Shout at me, yell at me…I don’t care, Wellsy. Just come home to me.”

Pick. Pick. Pick.

My fingers frantically dug into the skin at the back of my neck, ripping apart old wounds whilst creating new ones, diggingstraight to the core—straight to the error that was me. I couldn’t hear him.

The ocean was so far away now, so distant. A sweet, echoing lullaby.

“Maybe we should’ve stayed strangers,” I cried, letting the words rip me open—letting the weight of them tear me apart until the pain consumed me. The sand beneath my feet faded into those old, too familiar floorboards, and with each step away from him, I felt my heart shatter. Piece by piece.

That way I wouldn’t have ruined you, too.

53

Poppy Wells

All my life, I’d been trying to fix the unfixable mess that was me. To piece together all the puzzle pieces so that they resembled some sort of functioning human being. Time felt like it was slipping through my fingers. That each second I spent pacing up and down in my small room was just another day that house had stolen from me.

I was going to die in that house.