Chapter 35
WILLOW
Iwas so nervous during Weston’s final heat I think I may have drank an entire gallon of water during the twenty-two minutes he was out on the waves.
I don’t know what I thought it was going to do to help calm my nerves—it must’ve been something about the lifting of the bottle to my lips and the act of swallowing.
Helped my mind focus on something other than him getting injured again.
He surfed flawlessly though. According to Liv, there is no way he won’t place first today.
“How long do you think this is going to take?” I ask Liv, hopping on my heels because I need to pee so goddamn bad, but I don’t want to risk missing Weston’s placement on the podium.
She glances around, chewing on her lip. “I think you have time to go.”
I sigh in relief, slipping off my shoes so I can run through the sand easier. “All right. I’ll be back.”
I maneuver through the sea of people until I reach the end of the crowd gathered around the stage.
The bathroom building is just down the beach, but I break into a jog so I can ensure I’m back in time to see Weston place first. When I break out from the rumbling noise of spectators, the sound of crashing waves and seagull calls take over, and just as I slip through the door of the women’s restroom, I swear I hear someone call my name.
I exit a few minutes later to the muffled sound of an announcer over the intercom near the ceremony stage. I can just make out the third-place winner stepping onto the podium. “Shit,” I mutter to myself, stepping off the concrete to run back toward the competition.
Though, just as my toes sink into the sand, a chilling rasp sluices through my bones. “Willow.”
His voice clatters off the walls of my chest as my organs shrink in on themselves, my blood turning frigid, my limbs freezing as I slowly turn to face him.
When my eyes meet his—that soft brown gaze I thought I’d be looking into the day I got married, the eyes I envisioned my children having—a tear rips down the center of my torso, all of my innards splattering at my feet.
I’m left hollow and gaping—the emptiness quickly filled with fear.
Those soft brown eyes I once loved fiercely are simmering with loathing now. The jaw I once ran my lips along in the depths of night is now tense with contempt. Hands I once believed were made for healing—only to hurt me in the end—drag through his brunette hair with contention.
“Why are you here?” I ask, my voice so fractured it’s near inaudible.
“I’ve been looking for you all day.” His nostrils flare, gaze running the length of my body, nausea crawling up my throat as he makes his perusal. “I’ve been trying to reach you for weeks.”
“I have nothing to say to you,” I whisper, wrapping my arms around myself. I glance over my shoulder, lungs heavy with apprehension as I realize I’m so far from the safety of my family. Of Wes. I face him again, swallowing down the bile to add, “How did you even find me?”
“Found out you were attending this competition, and I was in Monterey visiting my parents so I figured I’d make the trip.” A sickly-sweet smile spreads across the mouth that used to feel like home to me. “You moved on quickly, by the way. Did you start fucking him before or after the abortion?”
My breath hitches, mouth dry and coated in revulsion, like my tongue wants to leap down my throat and hide within me, but it’s stuck to my teeth.
Parker spews the words like venom-tipped daggers, slicing through my skin and coating me in acid sting. They seep into my veins, flooding me with the guilt I’ve fought so hard to dissolve—the humiliation I thought I’d escaped.
“I’m leaving,” I say in a choked and ragged inhale, stumbling back.
“Bullshit.” Parker grips my arm, and my vision blurs.
Flashes of his last touches blanket my mind.
His touch doesn’t frighten me—I never feared him that way.
Though now, it’s just wrong. The aftermath of that night is all I feel now.
The manipulation, the disgust, the lies.
All the memories I’ve worked so hard not to see each time I close my eyes come flooding back with a vengeance.
“You’re going to explain why you didn’t tell me.
Why you didn’t give me the basic fucking decency of knowing the decision you were making, let alone allowing me to have a say in it. ”
I almost clam up again. Like I did that night with him, like I did with Camden at the beach, but my instincts fight harder this time. They know better. Nobody is coming to save me at this moment.
I shake out of his grasp, gaze cast to the ground.
“Look at me, Willow,” Parker snaps. “Look me in the fucking eye and tell me you were pregnant. Tell me to my face you had an abortion and that you kept it from me.” His voice breaks, and it’s enough for me to lift my chin, finding a hint of emotion glistening in his hostile gaze. “You owe me that.”
Those eyes lift, focusing on something behind me as the sound of heavy breath filters through the air.
His voice is rough and low—a menacing beacon. “She doesn’t owe you anything.”
Weston’s chest presses against my back, his fingers brushing over my knuckles where my arm hangs limply at my side—a simple reminder that he’s here. The rock I can lean upon, even when there is no doubt he heard the harsh truth spewed from Parker’s lips.
All the secrets I’ve been keeping, all the most painful pieces of my past, now lingering in the air around us. Another thing Parker has taken from me.
My jaw is tight enough I fear it may shatter, trembling with all the words I’m holding back, as silent tears slip over my eyes, cascading down my cheeks.
Parker huffs a disgusted laugh, shaking his head. “You’re a horrible fucking person, Willow. I hope it eats you alive.” His gaze flicks to Weston. “Watch your back with this one. She’s a snake.”
Shame slices through me. I hold no guilt for my choices, no sympathy for Parker.
His hatred isn’t landing the way he’s intending it to.
It’s the fact that Weston is witnessing it, hearing the truth from a mouth that isn’t mine.
That he’s experiencing the raw disdain radiating from a person who was supposed to love me—that I’m capable of being despised so excruciatingly.
That, perhaps, I’m not worth loving at all.
“I’m not worried.” Wes chuckles harshly. “I’d never put her in that position to begin with—by assaulting her.”
Parker’s jaw drops, brows shooting into his hairline with utter disbelief before he barks a laugh. “That’s how you’re justifying it? You told this guy I assaulted you?”
“You know exactly what you did,” I whisper.
Recognition flashes over his eyes before he scoffs, rolling them. “We were together for two years, Willow. I didn’t need to ask permission to come inside you.”
“You are a such a piece of shit,” Wes growls, moving to step past me.
I halt him with a hand on his stomach, and he doesn’t fight it. He immediately stops, moving back behind me.
Parker watches the interaction, a triumphant grin on his face. “You are so stupid,” he says, the jab directed at me. “Throwing away our entire future together only to end up with a damn criminal.”
“Oh, good. So, you researched me then?” I hear the smile in Weston’s tone. “You should know exactly what I’m capable of. I’d urge you not to speak to her like that again. Better yet, I wouldn’t speak to her at all, if I were you.”
“Threatening me?” Parker grins, baring his teeth. “That would be a probation violation, no?”
Wes laughs. “I’m not on probation, you worthless fucking—”
“He’s not threatening you,” I rasp, reaching behind me and pressing my palm into Weston’s ribs.
Probation or not, I won’t allow him to put himself at risk by having this interaction turn physical. Weston's future means too much, and Parker means nothing at all.
Lifting my chin, I channel everything I’ve longed to say to Parker in the past five months.
Every ounce of rage and despair and anguish that I screamed into my pillows in the depths of night.
Every thought of self-loathing echoed through my mind when I looked in the mirror.
Every wave of nausea in my gut when I thought of him.
I look him in the eye, just like he asked. I open up the shadows I’ve been hiding within and offer him all the pain he’s caused me.
“I won’t explain to you what you did, because you know.
I won’t justify my reason for having an abortion because you know that too.
I won’t apologize for the choice I made or for keeping it to myself.
You lost the right to know anything about me when you took away my right to choose how my body would be treated.
You’re the reason I had to go through that—and the reason I had to experience it alone.
” My voice shatters, right along with the rest of me.
I don’t wipe away the tears streaming freely down my face.
I don’t erase the hurt. “I know you can’t comprehend the trauma you’ve caused or the way it’s haunted me.
I don’t think you even care enough to try.
But I hope, deep down, you feel it.” I swallow down the sob clawing at my lungs, determined to have these words ring clear.
“I hope you hate yourself a little more each day, even if you never understand why. I hope you have a daughter someday, and I hope she never has to experience what I have because of you, but I hope you think of me every time you look at her. I hope the guilt sinks its claws into you and refuses to let go, leaving scrapes you don’t recognize the meaning of until you take your last breath. ”
I can no longer see his hateful eyes through my blurred vision, but I’m not sure I want to.
I’d rather never know how this is affecting him.
Taking a shuddering breath, I release one final thought in his direction, deciding that I’ll never think of him again after this. “I hope it eats you alive too.”
I don’t steal a glance at Parker, and I don’t have the strength to look at Weston’s face as I turn, gaze planted on my feet as I whisper, “Can we go, please?”
I can’t raise my eyes when Weston takes my face between his hands, unable to look at him as he presses his lips to my forehead. “Yes, love. Go find your cousins, okay? I’ll be right behind you.”