Page 97 of Under the Waves
The secret I’d been keeping all my life.
My sad, pathetic life.
“Ha fuckingHa, Wellsy.” His hand rested against the wall beside my head as his other gently brushed my cheek. I repressed the urge to flinch. “Come on, what do you have to lose?”
My breath caught in my throat.
I hadeverythingto lose.
If anyone found out what happened inside my house…
My parents loved me. They did. Iknewthey did.
They just…had their own way of showing it. That was all.
“I should go…” I whispered, slipping out from under his grip. My heart was pounding in my ears as I gulped down air as fast as I could breathe it in.
“Wait,” Jasper rasped, gripping my wrist and pulling me flush up against him. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
I gritted my teeth, pushing myself away from him. “Let me go.”
“Answer the question, Wells.” He ground out, tugging me back, even closer than before. My wetsuit clashed with his bare chest.Of-fucking-courseit did.
I edged my chin up, not backing down. “I won’t ask youagain, Ridge.”
His fingers gripped my jaw, eyes locking onto mine. “Poppy.”
“Jasper.”
For a second, we just looked at each other.
Eye to eye.
Heart to heart.
Jasper sighed, stepping backwards and releasing my chin from his grasp. Every inch of warmth left my body as he did. “You’re a tough kid, you know that?”
“You’reoneyear older than me. And don’t call me kid, asshole.”
He chuckled that time, clearly tired of hiding his amusement.
“Stopthat,” I gritted out, waving my hand in his face to dismiss him. “It’s unnatural.”
Jasper stepped closer, despite my best efforts at being a bitch to him in hopes that he’d get the hint andleave. “You might be tough, Poppy Wells. Rough, determined, and quite frankly a bit of abitchsometimes, but no matter how many people you might’ve fooled with that act, you willneverfool me.”
And in one swoop, before I could even process his words, Jasper Ridge had scooped me up in his arms and thrown me over his shoulder. Ass in the air and everything. Like a perfectly sane human being, I started smacking and hitting his back as hard as I could so that he would put me back down again, but the asshole just grinned like he found my fruitful attemptsamusing.
I was going to kill him.
“Jasper Ridge, so help me god, put me down!”
“Tell me the truth and maybe I’ll consider it.”
I groaned, letting my head fall into the crook of his shoulder. “The truth to what?”
“About how you’re really feeling right now.”
I laughed, the sound anything but humorous. “Annoyed, angry, and just a little bit, I don’t know, pissed off?”