Chapter 9 #2
“That’s the worst part,” Dix murmured. “Not knowing if they’ll fight for you.”
“I don’t think he knows how.”
“Maybe he’s as scared as you are.”
“Then we’re fucked.”
Mia laughed softly. “Probably.”
The fire popped, and for a while no one spoke. I watched the sparks float into the night like fireflies and wondered how many more pieces I had left to give. How long I could pretend that grief wasn’t swallowing me whole.
Someone passed me a joint again. I took it this time with more confidence. Let it numb everything. Let it blur the edges of him.
But even high, even half-drunk, he was still there.
Anthony, in the spaces between my ribs. Anthony, in the silence between songs.
Anthony, in every echo of not like that.
I checked my phone without meaning to. No new messages.
Of course there weren’t. Of course he hadn’t reached for me.
My chest tightened, every thump echoing like a warning.
Somewhere deep down, I hated myself for needing him.
For wanting him. For imagining he might cross the dunes and fix the fragments of me I couldn’t reach on my own.
And yet I couldn’t stop picturing him. The way his fingers twitched when he thought I wasn’t looking. The curve of his jaw in the soft morning light. The warmth that always seemed just beyond my reach. Every memory stung sharper after the alcohol.
Time stopped meaning much after midnight.
It blurred into something softer and stranger—the music distant now, just a low thud behind the crash of the ocean.
The bonfire had burned itself down to glowing ribs of orange and red, embers breathing instead of flames.
The party thinned into silhouettes and laughter that felt too loud for how tired everyone was.
A few stragglers had stumbled away, their laughter fading into the hush of waves. The air had grown colder, biting at my skin, but I barely noticed. Hours could have passed, or minutes; I had lost all sense of time.
I didn’t feel tired.
I felt hollow.
The surf slapped my legs and chest with icy force.
My hoodie clung to me like a second skin, jeans heavy with water.
Each step felt like running through molasses.
The cold burned my lungs as much as the alcohol burned my throat, but I welcomed it.
The combination hurt in a way that felt clean.
Pain meant edges. Edges meant it was real.
Mia and Jet chased me in the shallows, laughing when a wave caught me off guard and knocked me sideways. Someone grabbed my wrist to keep me from falling. Someone else splashed me deliberately. The salt stung my eyes, and the wind scrapped my skin raw.
The world spun. I laughed, but it was hollow, jagged at the edges. The waves hit me like reminders of everything I couldn’t hold onto. Of what couldn't be held. Of what kept slipping away. Mom, Dad, Anthony.
The aching inside me came with wanting something I’d never be worthy of. It wasn’t sharp, just deep. A weight where something should have been.
The waves knocked into me again and again. The water soaked me to the bone. I let it drag me down. Let it pull me away.
Mom would have loved this. The ocean. How it could wash away all your secrets, leaving you with a clean slate.
The thought landed too hard, my breath caught.
Mom was dead.
Dad was gone.
And the one thing that still felt solid had already started to fracture.
Anthony.
The only warmth left that felt real. The only thing that still felt like home. And even that had slipped out of reach with one word—one look—one impossibly heavy not like that.
I stumbled back out of the water, laughing too loudly at nothing, heart beating wrong in my chest. Mia was on the sand now, wrapped in a blanket, passing a bottle back and forth with Drax.
“Elliot!” Jet called. “You’re gonna freeze your ass off.”
“Already numb,” I shouted back. “It’sss fine.”
That was a lie. It wasn’t fine. Nothing was fine. I dropped onto the sand hard enough to knock the air out of me. Someone handed me the bottle, and I took it without a second thought. I drank too much, and I choked. The burn was savage, but I welcomed it.
Drax squinted past me, frowning. “Hey,” he said. “Your phone’s been lighting up like crazy.”
My eyes snapped in his direction but there were two of him. “W-what?”
He held it up. “This guy. Anthony. He keeps calling.”
The name cracked something open in my chest. “I—” My voice broke before I even finished the word.
It all rushed out at once.
The world tilted. My lungs felt too small.
My throat closed. The waves, the fire, the music—all of it faded into a white-hot panic, a weight pressing me into the sand.
I could feel my own pulse in my temples.
Everything I had been running from—the hospital, Dad’s absence, the way Anthony’s soulful brown eyes had looked, the way “not like that” kept echoing in my head like a verdict—collapsed into that one name.
I didn’t even realize I was crying until Mia was suddenly in front of me.
“Oh. Oh, hey, hey,” she murmured, dropping the bottle and crawling closer. “Hey, sweetheart.”
Her arms went around me before I could protest. Warm. Firm. Steady. I collapsed into them like they were a safe harbor.
She shushed me softly. Her hands sank into my scalp, fingers threading through my hair with a patience I didn’t know existed.
Each press against my temples, each gentle tug, felt like it could hold back the tide of chaos in my head.
I let myself float in it for a moment, even as the sobs ripped through me.
Her warmth was a tether to a world that hadn’t completely abandoned me. I let the tears fall freely, hot and unrelenting, and for one fractured moment I almost believed someone could care without demanding anything in return.
She pressed my forehead into her shoulder. “It’s okay. It’s okay. You’re okay.”
Salt flooded my mouth as I shook my head. I wasn’t okay. But her hands made it feel like maybe I could be for one second.
My name was carried in the wind. “Elliot!” It sounded far away.
I tried to turn my head toward it, but Mia shifted with me.
Her face was suddenly too close. Her breath warm.
Her eyes searching. Then her lips brushed mine.
The world stalled. It didn’t feel wrong in my body—it felt distant, like watching someone else through glass.
I didn’t move. Didn’t kiss her back. But I didn’t pull away either.
The kiss burned into me, not like desire but like a warning flare. My mind screamed, but my body, dulled by alcohol and grief, couldn’t respond. Then I saw him—Anthony, moving like a storm across the sand—and everything froze, every nerve in my body screaming his name.
Time stretched and expanded before snapping back to the here and now.
Mia pulled back, licking her lips, brow furrowed. “Oh,” she said quietly. “I guess I misread that.”
Before I could answer, everyone's head jerked in one direction. Someone was moving fast down the beach.
“Elliot!” He snarled in desperation.
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.
Enough that the heat between us broke. Enough that the circle of his arms fell away. Enough that whatever had been holding us together gave way.
It felt like falling out of a moving car. Like one second I was inside something warm and human, and the next I was standing on the side of the road watching it disappear.
Fear was what lived in his eyes—not disgust. Fear of what my wanting might do to him. Fear of what he might become if he didn’t stop it. Fear that he couldn’t hold me without being broken. And in that instant, I realized he might love me, but he was too terrified to prove it.
It happened automatically, folding in on myself. My shoulders caved. My spine curved. Anything to make myself smaller than the need that had slipped through my mouth.
He didn’t reach for me again. He didn’t say it was okay. He didn’t tell me I hadn’t crossed a line. He just… stayed still.
And somehow that hurt more than if he’d pushed me away. The space between us thickened. Heavy. Loud.
I stared down at the sand, at the dark wet patches where my tears had fallen, at my hands shaking uselessly in my lap. “I’m sorry,” I whispered again, but quieter now. Flatter. Like an apology to the universe instead of to him.
He didn’t answer. Not because he didn’t care. But because he didn’t know how. And the silence filled with everything we couldn’t say.
Everything I was.
Everything he was afraid of.
“Right,” I said finally, my voice too steady for how bad I was breaking inside. “Okay.”
I pushed up onto my feet and he let me without uttering a word. That was the part that stayed with me. Not the flinch. Not the pause. Not even the word.
The fact that he didn’t stop me from leaving.
My feet moved silently as I took a step back, then another, the cold air rushing in where his warmth had been, where I had been held just seconds ago like I mattered.
“I didn’t mean to make it weird,” I said, forcing a crooked little breath of a laugh that hurt my throat.
“I’m just… d-drunk. And…and fucked up. And b-bad at this. ”
That was the lie. The truth was that I wasn’t bad at it. I was too good at wanting. I needed it. Needed him.
When he finally looked at me, I saw something breaking open in him that he didn’t know how to survive. Which meant he couldn’t survive me either. “I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he said quietly.
I nodded like that fixed it. “It’s fine.”
It wasn’t. I turned before he could say anything else that might stay with me forever branded into my skin. Before he could say something kind that I’d cling to. Before he could say nothing. Again.
I walked back toward the dunes, the party noise rising around me once more, the ocean roaring like it was laughing at how small I felt now.
Behind me, he didn’t follow. That was how it became a wound. Not because he pulled away.
But because he didn’t pull me back. Once again I was alone. Abandoned. I thought he was different.
But it was all a lie.