Page 43 of Under the Waves

Lia cringed.

“I—”

Belle interrupted me. “What’s a fetish?”

I grinned, looking at a horror-stricken Jakson.

“Yeah,Jakson,” I coaxed, “what’s a fetish?”

I could bet a million he was mentally flipping me off right now and I was enjoying every second of it.

“So, Princess, how was your surf lesson today with that big idiot?”

Logan gasped. “You said a bad word!”

“So? It’s just a word Logan,” Lucas bit back.

Belle grinned, plunging into a monologue about how the surfing lesson was. “—and Poppy was there too, and she gave me a big girl job. You should’ve seen me Uncle Jak, I was amazing!”

Lia and Jak stared at me at the mention of Poppy’s name at the exact same time. It was so in-sync it could’ve fooled me if it wasn’t rehearsed. It was like they were tied together with an invisible string.

“Poppy was there?” There was hope in Lia’s voice as she straightened in Jakson’s lap.Weird. He managed to convince her to sit with him then. I swear, if you were a stranger and you looked at them in a passing glance, you’d think they were for sure made for each other.

“Yeah.” I hummed back, not really wanting to relive what happened with her—mostly because I knew Lia would be disappointed in me for how I acted towards her.

“Well?”

“Wellwhat?” I snapped.

Tension suffocated the air as soon as the words left my lips. All the Davis siblings simultaneously flinched or sunk into the couch.

Fuck.

“Don’t snap at her like that asshole. She was just asking a damned question,” Jakson gritted out, his arm tightening its grip around her shoulders and waist.

“Sorry, can we just—I don’t know. Just talk about something else.”

Jakson continued glaring at me for the next forty minutes. The twins and Belle were both asleep on the couch, and Sonny and I left Lia and Hudson in the lounge as we carried them up into one of the spare rooms that Lia used on the rare times when she stayed over. Jakson went and got the baby monitor and set it up upstairs before we both closed the door and walked back into the lounge. Hudson was fast asleep in Lia’s arms, and she was looking straight out the window, face blank and distant.

Jakson jumped onto the couch next to her and lightlypinched her cheek. She slapped him without thinking before her eyes widened and we both gasped. Well, I gasped-laughed because seeing Jakson get bitch slapped was beyond amusing.

“I know you don’t want to talk about it, Lils, but we need a plan for what to do next,” I said as I slumped down against the couch.

She couldn’t even meet my eyes as she tried to scramble out of Jakson’s arms. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t think about you guys and we’re literally protruding into your home and I’m so sorry we stayed this long, and I honestly didn’t mean to, it was just Belle and the twins. They were having so much fun and their little faces were all happy and you wouldn’t even be able to tell that only half an hour ago they witnessed—”

Jakson pulled her into his lap, tightening his hold on her. “Breathe, Blue.Breathe.”

After a few slow inhales and exhales later, she looked between us with a pained expression. “I’m sorry,” she winced.

“Lils, it’s okay,” I reassured her, “this is what friends do. They’re there for each other, you know? And we will always,always, be here for you.”

Jakson nodded at my words, but her expression hardly changed. As If sensing her thoughts, he picked up the remote and flicked onLetters to Juliet. Lia loved that movie. Jakson despised it. I smiled watching the opening credits roll on screen. He’d watch it a hundred times for her if she asked him to. Hell, he’d probably do anything if only she asked it of him.

Hours passed in a blur. I managed to convince them to watch the Spiderman trilogy with Andrew as Spiderman because if we’re being honest, he was the best Spiderman. Jakson usually chose a gory murder mystery or action movie, but this time, he used his turn to put on frozen.

Yeah, that was right.Frozen.

Lia laughed as soon as he searched for the film and he cracked a joke and shrugged like he didn’t have a care in the world, but thelookhe gave her when she laughed—you could see in his eyes, on his cheeks, in his fucking veins flowing through his entire body. There was no doubt he was utterly in awe with her. The entire world could tell from one single glance between them. It was a miracle that the two of them were so oblivious.