Chapter 14 Emory
EMORY
Istare out at the waters ahead, a frigid chill sweeping down my spine, thanks to my nerves. It’s somewhere in the mid-eighties. With summer slowly fading and autumn trying to take over, Coralhaven has been stuck in this hazy purgatory between both seasons, especially in the late afternoon.
The sun hangs above the horizon, glimmering like a tangerine beam, its rays pointing and laughing at me. Humiliation sneaks in, embarrassment coloring my cheeks in a way that would have anyone thinking it’s from sweat.
Oh, how wrong they are.
The man beside me stands tall against the wind that pushes off the waves. He’s a brick wall made by one of the best masonry men in the world.
While I…am the opposite.
I’m deathly close to breaking, to shattering to pieces and being swept away by the surf as I face down today’s exposure therapy session. It’s the only time I’ve seen Dawson two times in one day—once for my regular appointment and again for this meetup.
“I don’t think I can do this,” I whisper, my heartbeat pounding. It’s almost all I can hear as anxiousness sweeps through me.
Something skims against my hand, and I glance down to find Dawson’s entire palm enveloping mine. I almost allow myself to take a breath.
His voice is gentle, not at all commanding. “You can do this. The ocean isn’t your enemy, Emory.”
“No? Then what is?”
I can feel his stare on the side of my face when he says, “You are.”
“You almost sound like them.”
Like Lance. Larissa. And those other voices that penetrate through my dreams, convincing me that what happened is all my fault—not because I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but because I wanted to fall into that water and have all the air stolen from my lungs.
“They’re wrong,” I mutter, as if I haven’t already told him this. “This isn’t what I wanted.”
“I know that.”
I squeeze my eyes shut as tears collect in the corners of them.
I’m fragile in this moment, just an outline of the human being I once was.
God, I wish I had my old self back. The one that was built with confidence and sureness undertow.
The one who knew how to get through difficulties without her whole nervous system shutting down.
Dawson steps forward. We’re not that far from the water. Every half minute or so, the sudsy waters rush up as high as they can go. They’re calm compared to the day I went out on those rocks, but still, my chest heaves with insecurity as I tread ahead.
I open my eyes and yank my wrist free from Dawson’s grasp.
His gaze stays trained on me, but all I can see is what’s directly ahead—a deep blue limitless stretch of sea.
“No, no, I…”
Dawson doesn’t push me. He just casually stands there, sans shirt, looking devilishly handsome. My eyes track his bronzed skin, and when they drop to his chiseled abdomen, I spot the discolored skin that looks a lot like a scar.
He must notice my gaze set there because he says, “I needed to have one of my kidneys removed as an unexpected result from the stabbing. One of them was punctured, and there was no way for them to repair it.”
My eyes move back up to his. “That must have been…ungodly scary.”
He shrugs. “It certainly wasn’t as enjoyable as eating a piece of birthday cake, but I got through it. Just like you will with this.”
“I don’t know…”
“What you went through was an accident that almost ended in tragedy, but you are safe, Emory. Your heart is beating, and your lungs are breathing in the salty air surrounding us.” He sucks in a sharp breath, pulling in a deep inhale to encourage me to do the same.
“Feel what it’s like to live without the constraints of your fears tackling you to the ground. ”
I breathe in, but it’s nothing compared to Dawson’s inhale. “My fears feel insurmountable. Like there’s nothing I can do to overcome them. Jesus, I’m right back in my bedroom. Back in those nightmares where water fills the room, and I can’t escape.”
“You’ve escaped every single time,” he says softly, and for some reason, that makes me look over at him.
His hair is windswept and mussed, the intermittent breeze sweeping through and playing with the strands.
His brows push in toward one another, his expression matching the conviction in his voice.
There’s nothing I can do to refute what he’s saying because—he’s right.
I have escaped.
“If I go out there, all the effort I’ve put in…could totally wash away, and then it’ll be like starting from ground zero. I don’t want to do that,” I whisper, emotion clawing at every word. “I don’t want this to always feel so hard.”
He holds out his hand. “Then I encourage you to take your power back, rather than give it away. Only you can do that.”
I offer a small nod and look down. Slowly, I kick my sandals off my feet and sink them into the sand beneath me.
It’s gritty and smooth all at once. I drop my bag along with it, trying not to pay the people around us any mind.
The beach isn’t as busy today, but that probably has a lot to do with the fact that school is back in session and people are back to their usual routines.
“That’s it,” Dawson praises, waiting patiently as I slip my swimsuit coverup over my shoulders and head. I hold onto it for a moment as I steady my breaths, breathing in for a few seconds and holding it until I release it.
I can’t believe I’m actually going to do this.
I can’t believe I’m about to walk into the open waters after they tried to kill me.
“I can do this,” I say to myself, though Dawson replies as if I’m saying it to him.
“That’s what I like to hear.”
Finally, I release my coverup, revealing the black one piece underneath it. And then I take small steps with Dawson until the water soaks my feet. My breath hitches in my chest, and my heartbeat staggers.
Dawson holds his hand out again, and I grasp onto it like I’m hanging over the edge of a cliff and he’s my lifeline. Don’t let me go, is what I want to say to him. Somehow, I think I know he won’t.
He has that look in his eye that tells me he wouldn’t have me out here unless he believed I’d be okay. His confidence in me makes my own peek out of the dark closet it’s been trapped in.
We keep walking, and soon, the water is up to my knees.
I crouch down and skim my fingertips over the salty whitewash.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve always loved the ocean.
The way it appears to go on for days. How it’s filled with so many different unknowns.
Unknowns that, as humans, we have the ability to conjure up to whatever we want them to be.
In my mind, there was always an abundant amount of good disclosed deep below.
And then it swept me off my feet. Almost as if to tell me to grow up. To tell me that I wasn’t a little girl anymore who should believe in fairytales.
“I used to believe in mermaids,” I tell Dawson out of the blue as we sway with the water. It licks at my upper thighs while it hangs out around his knees.
“As every little girl should,” he says, moving out a little farther.
I follow, but my heart hiccups, because one of my feet slips out from under me. I quickly try to feel around to find my footing, but the water pulls out into the abyss, bringing me along with it.
My mind goes right back to that day when I fell. How, one minute, I was on that rock, and the next, there was nothing but ocean water beneath my feet. “W-Wait. Stop.”
I struggle to breathe. To pull in air as the water climbs higher up my body. There’s nothing below me, and while I could swim back to shore, it’s like my body turns into a boulder. Pretty soon, I will sink down, down, down to the depths of a hell I’ve dreamed about countless times.
Save yourself, this voice says in my head.
I’m trying!—I want to shout, but then the memory of that saltiness hits the back of my throat, and I want to gag. I want to upheave what I ate for breakfast this morning—which, admittedly, wasn’t much because I knew we’d be coming out here today.
Why did I tell him I’d do this?
Why did I believe I could?
I’m stupid, and now I’m drowning all over aga—
“Breathe, Emory,” is what I hear next. In a deep voice that I’d love to reach out to and get lost in. That really would be the nicest thing in the world right about now. But I can’t. Not when my brain is muddled with the sounds of a frantic heart.
Warmth spreads out in front of me, and I know it’s Dawson. Somewhere along the way, I squeezed my eyes shut again—probably when I lost my footing—and I haven’t opened them again since.
“Kick your feet and inhale.”
“I’m t-trying, but I—”
“Try harder,” he says in a stern voice, though he’s not being rude about it.
More so direct. “You’re trying to convince yourself that you’re in danger right now because you’re feeling similar things to that day, but this is different.
You didn’t fall into the water. You willingly walked to where you are right now. And you’re not alone.”
I understand what he’s trying to tell me—that I’m in control, that I’m safe.
Even though it’s the last thing I feel.
“I’m here with you.”
“I don’t know why you are,” I randomly mutter. “You should be in your office. We should be there.”
His hands brush over my arms, and it’s then that I realize he can’t feel the bottom either with the way he touches me, the water ebbing and flowing around us when I peek an eye open and cling to him.
I’m so swept up in being out here again that I don’t think—I just twine my arms around his neck as I tread water.
“There are lots of things we should be doing, but right now, we’re doing this because you’re important, Emory. You’re also strong and resilient. Believe in yourself.”
I scoff, then swallow through the nerves continuously sparking off inside of me as water laps at my arms. “That’s what you think.”
“That’s what I know.”
My words are whispered in defeat when I say, “I don’t see how.”
“Look around you,” he says on a breath. It almost feels like he pulls me closer, though I can’t really tell if that’s him or the current.
“You’ve been having debilitating nightmares about this very thing, and yet, here you are—swimming in the Atlantic.
Because you aren’t willing to let your trauma define you or rule your life. ”
I blink.
Holy shit.
“I-I’m swimming in the ocean.”
He nods, a small smile playing at the corner of his mouth.
“You are, and what a beautiful fucking sight it is to see you thrive under the weight of what tried to destroy you.”
I laugh at that moment. Loudly. Ridiculously.
I almost can’t believe I’m doing it. That I’m overcoming a fear that felt so deeply intertwined with my being.
“If it weren’t for you—”
“No,” he says. “If it weren’t for you.”
I bite the corner of my lip, emotion clawing at the back of my throat, and look around me. A few people are milling about when I look back at the beach. Ironically, we’re not very far out. It was just my mind telling me we were.
This is a huge step forward for me, a bright light in the direction I want to keep moving in. And I will, because I have what it takes. Today has shown me that, even if I don’t plan on coming out here on my own for awhile yet.
Minutes go by without us speaking. I continue to hold onto Dawson, enjoying the feel of his muscles below my palms as time fades away and the setting sun beats down on us.
I’m still tense, but my body relaxes some.
I realize it probably has a lot to do with the man who’s out here with me, the man who has willingly made me a priority.
I know, down to my bones, that he doesn’t do this with everyone.
There’s no way in hell he lets all his clients cling to him like a goddamn koala because they’re dead scared of slipping away and being claimed by the Mariana Trench.
Laughter ricochets, and I jerk in surprise.
“It’s okay,” Dawson reassures me. “Just a few kids running around in the sand.”
I nod, our gazes one as I murmur, “Please don’t pull away. Not yet.”
“I won’t, honey.” His hand comes up and palms the back of my head, gently caressing my scalp through strands of reddish-brown hair. “I’ve got you. Just breathe and enjoy what it feels like to conquer the parts of you that were once helpless.”
“Can I tell you a secret?” I ask.
“You can always tell me anything.”
“I never want to feel that helpless again.”
“You won’t,” he says, his eyes trailing over my face. My hands outline his neck, my thumbs brushing just below his earlobes. Droplets of water trickle down his skin. “Not as long as I’m here with you.”