Page 167 of Under the Waves

The weight crushing me.

This was it. This was it. It was all over.

“Mom, please…” I croaked out, scrambling to get out of her tight hold as a stream of red trickled down my eyes and dripped into the cracks in the floorboards below. I barely managed to push myself onto my knees, my legs violently wobbling. My malnourished body was giving up. It was finally failing.

“It should’ve beenyou,” she gritted out, pure malice shining in those lifeless eyes I didn’t even recognize anymore. “All these years…It should’ve been you. He was so pure, so innocent…he was nothing like the monster you are. It should’ve been you.”

She gripped the back of my hair, dragging me up from the ground to hold me in place as she hit me over and over andoveragain. I coughed up the blood caught in my throat, feeling it drip down my lips and onto my clothes. I clawed at her, kicking and screaming my throat raw until I felt my body slowly give up on me, little by little. My movements became sluggish like every muscle inside me had already accepted defeat. I desperately tried to gasp air into my lungs, to try and fill them up enough to fight for even one second more.

Just keep fighting.

Just keep fighting.

Just keep fighting.

I repeated the words over and over again like a mantra every time she hit me with the force of years of pent up anger. She spat at my feet before her elbow jutted into my ribs so hard I saw stars. I lost all focus as I barreled over, spouting and coughing up dark crimson blood all over the floor.

I was dying.

My eyes rolled back into my head, each hit coming like a tsunami wave.

Where are you, Jasper?I thought, wasting whatever was left of my energy on him…I really need you right now.

My heart was thundering in my chest in a desperate attempt to get the rest of my blood around my body, but the more I coughed up, combined with the streams dripping from the multitude of open scars and wounds that decorated my skin, the more it started to slow. I tried to picture Jasper’s face. His touch. The scent of him…anything that I could hold onto.

I didn’t want to be alone.

You’re never truly alone, Wellsy, Jasper’s voice rang in my ears, instantly sending a wave of calmness through me.

“Please don’t leave me all alone,” I whispered back.

Just close your eyes, Poppy. It’ll all be over soon.

I wasn’t feeling any of her hits or kicks anymore. I wasn’t feeling anything at all. Nothing except the warmth of his voice. The softness that cradled me as my eyes fell closed.

The victorious gleam in her bloodshot eyes was the last thing I saw before my entire world went black; a sense of peace washed over my body, as if death was cradling me, welcoming me home.

You won, mom.

I’m sorry.

57

Poppy Wells

One day

“Iwant to see the world,” I whispered, glancing up at Jasper, who tugged me closer to his chest. “Someday.”

Golden hues, mixed among rays of lavender and orange, painted the fading sky as it settled above the waves. I hadn’t fought him when he snuck me out of my own bedroom window, nor when he pulled me down onto his lap, my back tucked against his chest as his arms looped around my stomach.

“Yeah?” He asked, golden eyes shining under the fading sunlight. I loved those eyes. “We’ll go together,” he promised, squeezing me tightly. “All of it. We’ll see it all.”

I giggled, nuzzling my head beneath his chin, my gaze lost far out to sea. His laugh knitted each wave, the echo of it still ringing in my years as if it were yesterday. Oliver diedall alone. Scared. Frightened. He’d never have a childhood. Go to college. See the world beyond Hawthorne Hills borders.

But I would. I’d make sure of it. And wherever I went, I’d take a piece of him with me. Every ocean. Every star. Every corner of the world.

Neither of us would ever be alone again.