Without thought.
Without choice.
That terrified me most of all.
The cold crept in slowly. It slipped into me like a decision my body made without asking my mind. My fingers went numbfirst. Then my toes. Then the place behind my knees that always ached when I was tired.
The ocean kept breathing. I didn’t. Not properly. My breaths came shallow, too small for my lungs. The sand pressed cold and damp into my clothes. My muscles stopped holding me together.
I sagged sideways. My cheek touched the ground. I remember thinking distantly that I should have cared. That I should have moved. That I should’ve gotten up before it got worse. But my body had already chosen stillness. Chosen quiet. Chosen to stop.
Darkness crept in at the edges of my vision, thick and soft like fog. I let it take me…
My body swayed like I was adrift the ocean as consciousness slowly kept in. It took my mind a while to register the arm under my knees and the arm around my shoulders. The absence of the cold against my back as warmth slowly replaced it.
Smoke, cedar and sea salt surrounded me as my head lolled against the warm skin of his neck. My eyes fluttered, and I saw him in pieces. His bearded jaw. His throat swallowing so hard his Adam’s apple bobbed. The curve of his shoulder as he shifted me in his hold. My body reacted before my thoughts did.
An involuntary sound—small and broken—worked its way up my throat. Something between a sob and a breath lingered between us.
“Hey, sweetheart,” he whispered immediately. “I’ve got you.”
How many times had I heard him say that before? The world tilted as my vision fractured. I cried silently. Tears leaked out of me like my body didn’t know how else to respond to him holding me. Like it was unable to trust him even though everything in me begged for this time to be different.
“I’m sorry,” I stuttered, barely a sound.
His jaw tightened. I felt his tension as it rose through his chest. “You have nothing to be sorry for.” He sucked in a pained breath. “You were hurting.”
Unable to answer, I nodded against him.
“I’m sorry I pushed you away,” he said. It felt like I cost him everything to say that but it did nothing to dull the ache he’d left behind.
He carried me like I weighed nothing. Like I wasn’t the burden he’d led me to believe I was. Like the anger I’d felt from him had dissipated.
The house was too bright when he walked through the back door. Too loud. Too much after being lost in the darkness for hours. The tremble that had been rolling through my body morphed into something harder. More violent as it ripped through me.
Everything was catching up with me. Not just the cold. But shock and exhaustion. My teeth chattered so hard they hurt. Anthony didn’t hesitate; he took me straight up to the bathroom.
Steam started to fill the room as he ran me a bath. He kept me wrapped in his arms the whole time. A safety that felt like a luxury I didn’t deserve. The sound of running water soothed my aged edges.
He moved slowly as if he was afraid to startle me into breaking again. His quiet focus. Gentle and controlled thawed something inside me.
He set me down on the toilet seat. “Okay,” he murmured. “I’m going to help you out of these wet clothes, alright?”
I shrugged. Barely. My voice didn’t work. My hands didn’t want to cooperate. My fingers felt too big. Numb and clumsy.
His hands worked efficiently. Every movement was deliberate, like he was trying not to bruise something fragile. He avoided eye contact as he worked. Not because he was ashamedof what he was doing but because he was concerned. The depth of the lines around his dark eyes told me all I needed to know.
A gasp was wrenched out of me when he tugged my hoodie off, pulling on the fresh wounds on my arms. Anthony froze as he took in the damage I’d wrecked on myself the past few weeks.
“Oh Elliot.” The pain in his voice trickled across my exposed skin
He sucked in a breath like he was going to say more but didn’t. Instead he bit his bottom lip and shook his head and turned his attention to the nearly full tub. Quietly focused on turning off the faucets and adding some of my lavender bath salts.
“Up,” he said mechanically and stripped off my wet sweats, without looking at my body. Like he was holding himself to a line he refused to cross. “Take my hand.”
My feet wobbled underneath me as I stood and took his hand. His strength was the only thing that made it possible to get into the bath without falling and cracking my head open.
Warm water enveloped me as I stepped in the bath and submerged myself. Relief hit me so hard it hurt. My shoulders dropped. My breath evened out. And my eyes fluttered closed as I sucked in a lung full of warm air. My body finally let go of the fight it had been holding since the beach.
