Chapter 16 #2
“I’ve never heard that he has a girlfriend. He’s supposedly phenomenal in bed though. My friend Gillian told me she met him at a party, like, a year ago and he rocked her world. I mean, he had to be single, right? He doesn’t strike me as a cheater.”
“No way! I’ve talked to him once, you know? He’s, like, super nice, but I bet he’s a beast in the sheets. He’s like the kind of guy who would carry your bags for you, but then fuck you so good he’d throw your back out.”
“Mmm, I’d pay good money for that ride. I’ve got an awesome chiropractor, so I can take it.”
The shrill female laughter grated on my nerves like a dentist’s drill. My jaw popped under the strain of holding back a scathing retort at their lewd comments. I hated them for talking about Dawson that way. My Dawson. They didn’t fucking know him.
My stomach roiled at the thought of him fucking someone else. It was hypocritical as fuck, but it didn’t stem the nausea one bit.
One of the girls sashayed over to Dawson, interrupting his conversation with a hand on his elbow. He gave her a warm smile as she flashed a flirtatious grin and looked up at him through heavily lined eyes. Who the fuck wore makeup out on the lake anyway?
She laughed prettily at something he said, slapping him lightly on the arm before rubbing that same spot. I could practically feel my skin turning green as my face heated with jealousy. Ugh, could she be more fucking obvious? Gross.
She then gestured to one of the jet skis moored to the boat and Dawson helped her into a lifejacket, slipping one on after her. Dark thoughts overwhelmed me watching them, lacing my veins with fury, fear and helplessness.
“You really gonna race a girl, Daws? How ungentlemanly of you,” I heard myself saying.
I hadn’t realized I’d walked over until I was standing next to them, and I hoped the slur in my voice wasn’t noticeable.
I gave him a grin to hide the emotion broiling under the surface and his mouth pinched in annoyance.
“Actually, Heather asked me to take her out for a ride since she didn’t feel comfortable by herself,” he corrected me. One look at the chick confirmed she knew exactly what she was doing. Her face lit up as Dawson settled on the watercraft and held a hand out to help her down.
The second their skin made contact, panic zapped me like a cattle prod.
Disturbing images of them tangled together in bed struck me when her chest met his back, her arms wrapping around his waist tightly.
An icy sensation blanketed me when I saw her hands splay across his abdomen and I wanted to vomit.
Please stay…don’t leave me here. Don’t ignore me…
I heard the jetski take off and in the next second, I was climbing onto the other one after haphazardly throwing on a lifejacket, not bothering to buckle it. Voices called out to me from the boat as I shot off, but they were quickly drowned out by the roar of the engine.
Heather’s blonde hair waved behind her as Dawson drove at a leisurely pace, and her laughter carried as I caught up to them. Dawson threw a look over his shoulder, his brows crashing together in a double-take upon seeing me.
“What the hell are you doing?” he shouted over the whine of engines and crashing water.
“What’s the matter, Mercury? Afraid you’ll lose?” I taunted loudly, gunning my jetski.
The spray of the lake hit my face and in that split second, I felt free.
Free of the voices, the gloom, the constant buzz under my skin.
My vision wavered at the edges and my hand slipped on the throttle a bit, but I shook it off and kept pushing.
Dawson drifted into my periphery and I caught the shake of his head and pursed lips before he sped off, the chick shrieking in laughter and tightening her grip on him.
My heart squeezed painfully and a lump bobbed in my throat.
Don’t leave—see me—stay with me—give me your eyes—give me you…
The voice screamed in my head, desperation clawing at me for his attention.
Every inch of space he put between us was a stab between my ribs.
All I saw was him running away from me, leaving me behind.
I squeezed the throttle in a vice and the jetski lurched forward violently.
A wave of dizziness washed over me and I could just make out Dawson’s jetski ahead of me as I raced by them.
The craft pitched sharply to the left and I was suddenly airborne, flipping ass over head before crashing into the water. A pain shot through my shoulder as the lifejacket ripped off me as I broke the surface. White noise filled my ears while water filled my lungs.
I was so disoriented, I didn’t know where the surface was. I wasn’t sure if I was immobile or flailing. The only thing that registered to me was quiet.
Nothing but quiet and darkness.
It was peaceful.
I wanted to sink into it.
And never come up.
A crushing force anchored under my arms and around my chest, yanking me upwards and a small voice told me to fight it. To stay in the quiet.
Cool air rushed over my head as we cleared the surface and I instinctively dragged in oxygen to my depleted lungs. Hoarse coughs wracked me as water was forced from my body and my head pounded from the effort.
“It’s okay, I’ve got you. Breathe, Theo, you’re okay,” Dawson gasped out.
I choked out his name, the fear that was curiously absent before slamming into me all at once.
That I had even been tempted to let go horrified me because in the quiet, there was no Dawson.
He was music and song, and that didn’t exist in the cold silence.
“Shh, it’s okay, you’re safe. Can you help me kick? There’s a stretch of shore close by.”
His voice was strained and rough from the struggle.
I didn’t know how far away he was when I went down or how deep I’d sunk before he grabbed me.
He draped my arm around his shoulder and started swimming us toward the shoreline.
His lifejacket was gone and even the thought that I could have endangered him had dread coursing through my system.
I tried my best to kick and paddle us closer, but my limbs were heavy and fatigue was setting in fast. It seemed an eternity before my feet hit the silt at the bottom and we were able to stagger out onto the muddy bank.
Dawson kept a tight hold of me until we were far enough away from the water before releasing me, and I wanted to cry at the loss of his touch.
I fell to my back gracelessly, that old dizziness swirling as I stared up at the sky and tried to catch my breath. Dawson dropped to his knees beside me, his warm hands cupping my face and forcing me to look at his worried blue eyes.
“Christ, are you okay? Does anything hurt? Can you breathe alright?” I hated the fear that shook his voice, knowing I put it there. But I couldn’t help the sense of victory that swept through me at having every ounce of his attention on me. Dawson was here with me…where he belonged.
“Heh…I win…got you…” I panted through a weak smile. Dawson’s face scrunched in confusion as he peered down at me.
“What do you mean ‘win’? What are you talking about?”
My eyes slid shut as I tried to will my thoughts back into order. “Y-your…eyes. On m-me…not her…I got you back.”
Dawson scoffed loudly and my head lolled towards him.
He stood and angrily brushed off his legs.
I slowly sat up and willed my stomach to settle.
Whether it was the beers on the boat, the crash, or the nerves of making Dawson angry, my gut gurgled uncomfortably.
He finally spun toward me, his hands fisted at his sides and his chest heaving.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” he growled at me. “You climbed on that freaking thing after God knows how many drinks and took off like a bat out of hell because you were jealous? Seriously?”
I wasn’t entirely sure it wasn’t a rhetorical question, so I stayed silent. I couldn’t exactly defend myself. That was what I’d done after all.
Another fuck up for the books. If he only knew this was all I was destined for, he never would have pulled me out of the water.
“Theo, what the hell were you thinking?” he snapped, but there was no hiding the tremor in his voice. “You scared the ever-loving shit out of me back there! Do you have any idea what that was like? Seeing you go under like that and not come back up? Goddamnit, I just got you back!”
His face twisted in a grimace as his voice cracked. It was clear he hadn’t intended for that last part to slip out, but that single sentence made my heart soar.
“I’m sorry I scared you…” I said shakily.
“Oh! You’re sorry. I guess we’re all good then,” he sneered.
“I didn’t mean—”
“You had no reason to be jealous. Nor did you have a right to be. She was harmless. It’s not like I screwed her on your bed and then got her number afterwards,” he finished bitterly.
His pointed reply spiked my temper. I didn’t need the reminder of my massive screw up. I already hated myself enough for driving that wedge between us that I could never take back.
“That’s not fair,” I ground out, standing up on shaky legs. “I’m not exactly proud of it, but I was fucking rolling that night. I didn’t plan for that to happen and we weren’t together at the time.”
“We aren’t together now,” he bit back. The comment drove straight through my sternum. I understood logically it was just the truth and not thrown out to hurt me, but it did. Fuck, did it hurt.
“Why not?”
The question rushed out on a rough whisper. Dawson’s eyes flared in surprise before his face fell, regret lining his features. He abused his bottom lip while avoiding my gaze and my heart sank further than I had at the bottom of that lake.
“You know, there are times when I look at you and all I see is that loud, wild-haired boy who used to bribe me with sour skittles to play my guitar for him and sang along at the top of his lungs. The one who drew a Freddie Mercury mustache on me the night before my recital when I accidentally fell asleep beside him in the hayloft.”
Pressure built behind my eyes and stung with tears. Vivid memories assaulted me and I mourned for the boys we were. They had been so happy, blissfully ignorant of just how much they stood to lose.
“But then there are times where…I don’t even recognize you anymore,” he confessed thickly. Those cornflower blue orbs rimmed with red and I ached to go to him. I wanted his arms around me again to hold me together before I fell apart.
I opened my mouth to respond, to promise him that I was still the same Theo he knew, the one he loved.
But my throat locked up, sealing the words away as though my body protested the lie.
I wasn’t the same. I’d told him as much.
I couldn’t even be sure that version of me was the real one, or if this fragmented, labile mess was who I was always meant to be.
“I would have given anything to get you back after you left. I spent night after night in that barn waiting for you. I screamed at the stars to bring you back to me. I promised my voice, my instruments, my goddamn soul to whoever the fuck was up there in exchange for you…but you never came back.”
The anguish in his words cut to the bone, tearing through nerves until I was shredded and ruined. His face was wet with tears that mirrored my own.
“The worst part was that when you finally came back, I realized it wasn’t to me. You were back, but you weren’t mine. And I made peace with that. You didn’t leave me much of a choice, but I did it.”
“I am yours,” I grated out. I stepped towards him only for him to retreat even further away.
“But you’re not,” he smiled sadly. “You’re holding something back from me. I don’t know what or why, but I do know there’s something.”
“I’m not,” I swore, yet it didn’t even sound convincing to my own ears.
Dawson let out a long, exhausted sigh, his shoulders sagging under an invisible weight. A weight I placed there with my secrets. A dull buzz of an engine drew our gazes to the lake and we saw Bash and Nate making their way towards us on the jetskis we’d abandoned.
Dawson ran his fingers through his hair, looking more defeated than I’d previously seen him.
“And that lie right there should answer your question,” he replied dully. He pinned me with glassy, miserable eyes. “What’s even sadder about this whole thing is that it didn’t have to be this way. You’re your own worst enemy, Theo.”
I was cemented in place by the raw truth in his words. Dawson couldn’t even begin to understand how right he was. This hell was of my own making. There was no outside force, no man or woman that was as much a threat as the one that lurked inside me.
Everything I truly had to fear was in every fiber that made up my body. My own being worked against me, an enemy within my veins.
Sometimes there was no battle like the one fought within your own mind.