Frozen in place, heart thudding so hard I thought it might split my chest open. All I could do was watch helplessly. The only thought in my head… He had finally found me.
He didn’t stop when the water hit his shoes. Or his jeans. Or his knees. He waded straight in, eyes locked on me as he crossed the channel to the cove we were in.
“What the hell are you doing?” he demanded. “Do you have any idea?—”
“Don’t,” I snapped. “Don’t start.”
“Start?” His voice broke on the word. “I’ve been calling you for two hours.”
“So?”
“So I thought you were dead!”
“That’s dramatic,” I scoffed.
“Is it?”
My friends were suddenly gone, leaving me exposed and alone. I didn’t even see them go. It was just us. The ocean. The darkness closed in like a fist. The space between us hummed—raw, tight, and waiting.
“I told you I care,” he said. “I’m trying to help you.”
“You don’t get to help me and reject me in the same breath,” I shot back.
“I didn’t reject you.”
“You said not like that!”
“Because you deserve better than something that comes from confusion and pain!”
A laugh slipped past my lips. A sharp, broken sound. “Well congratulations,” I ground out. “You’re too late.”
Sand fell away as I turned and ran away. Not away from him. Away from the feeling in my chest. The pain in my heart. Away from the blackness that was seeping into my mind and blurring the edges of my vision.
He caught me at the base of the dunes before I could make it far, momentum crashing us both into the sand as we tumbled down the bank. He wrapped his arms around me without thinking, without asking, like instinct had finally won.
I thrashed against him, but it wasn’t just the fall—it was everything. The saltwater, the cold, the chaos of the party, the weight of losing Mom, Dad’s absence, the hollow ache for Anthony that had been building like a storm in my chest. Words tumbled inside me like shattered glass. I couldn’t outrun any of it. Every splash, every roar of the surf, every laugh that wasn’t mine reminded me how untethered I was—how close I was to breaking.
The pain came back harder than ever. Bile surged up my throat stealing the breath from my lungs. And I cried harder as I drowned on dry land.
“I’m sorry,” I gasped. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to—I just—I don’t know how to do this without her, and he left, and I don’t know how to want you without ruining it?—”
“Hey,” he said, urgent and soft at the same time. “Hey. Breathe. I’ve got you. I’m here, baby boy.”
He held me tighter. And the word slipped out before I could stop it. “Daddy.”
The word barely made a sound. It slipped out like a secret. Like a wound begging to be kissed.
But it had a weight. The night seemed to hold its breath. So did he.
My stomach sank. I wanted to crawl into myself and disappear, to swallow the word back down before it could exist. I could feel the heat rise in my cheeks, the shame pressing in like water in a tide. My skin was suddenly too tight for my body, like I was trying to escape myself and couldn’t.
And then the flinch came. Just a subtle shift in the circle of his arms, a tightening of his chest against mine, and suddenly the heat and connection we’d shared cracked like glass. I felt it instantly—a wall rising between us, cold and impenetrable. My stomach fell, a hollow pit where hope had lived seconds ago.
“Oh,” I whispered, small and exposed. “I—I didn’t mean—it just—forget it. Okay? Just forget it.”
He didn’t pull away like he was hurt. He pulled away like he was afraid. Like if he stayed where he was, something in him might split open too.
Not far. Not fast. Just enough to hurt in the most brutal of ways.
