29. Jasper Ridge

29

Jasper Ridge

P oppy had been watching me for the past half an hour and I felt like an absolute idiot .

I was itching to ditch these desperate parents and start my surf lesson, and normally, I would’ve, but Poppy had been staring at these moms like she wanted nothing more than to split daggers between their eyes. And for some reason, seeing her jealous over me made my heart beat just that little bit quicker.

When they finally said goodbye, letting their kids wander through the surf school doors and into the changing rooms down the hall, I turned away and walked in behind them.

“Shouldn’t you be over there with all your dedicated fans?” She muttered, not looking up from her screen, tapping harder than necessary on the keyboard.

I shrugged. “I had to check up on my favorite one.”

She glared at me, fierce and unyielding. Just the way I liked it.

“Try again, Ridge. I am not your fan.”

“No, you’re just my girlfriend .”

“ Fake girlfriend,” she corrected, still avoiding my gaze.

“You wound me talking like that.”

“Just go and do your lesson, Ridge.” She huffed, rolling her eyes, but that slight biting of her lower lip told me that she was anything but annoyed with me right now. The thought made my smirk even wider, the sight of it irritating her even more.

Running my fingers through my hair, I caught her eyes lifting just a fraction from her screen to watch me leave. Just as I was about to retort with another snarky comment to try and make her smile, a girl burst through the surf school’s doors with Daniel on her heels.

“Ah, perfect timing!” Daniel clapped his hands together, motioning to the two of us. “Poppy, Jasper, as you know business has been kind of slow these past few years, so my dear wife and I have decided to put our school on the Gram!”

I cringed a little internally as the girl face palmed, shaking her head as she tried to smother a laugh. She lightly patted Daniel on the arm as she smiled up at him. “ Instagram , Dan. Not the Gram. We talked about this.”

Dan? Who the hell was this girl?

Daniel’s puzzled face smoothed into a smile. “Ah— well , yes. That. The Instagram that all you young kids are using these days.”

“Is there a point to this?”

Imagine my surprise when I looked over to Poppy and found her asking the question that was only mere seconds away from leaving my own lips. I repressed the urge to smile.

That’s my girl.

“Sorry, yes, there is. Meet Saskia Atreya,” he praised, gesturing to the girl.

Why did her name sound so familiar?

She must have sensed my wandering thoughts as she said, “My dad and I run Atreya’s Adventures, the forest adventure rope course near the national park. Oh, and I work as a Camp Hawthorne camp councilor during the summers too! Proud leader of Apollo cabin for the last three years in a row and member since I was five years old. ”

Shit . That was probably why she seemed so familiar—Jakson, Lia and I had gone to camp a few years ago when we were kids. That summer had been one of the best summers of my life.

“I remember,” I clicked my tongue, leaning back against the wall, crossing my arms across my chest. “You were our cabins greatest rival in dodgeball.”

She practically beamed at my comment. “What can I say, being competitive is in my blood. You know, you should come down to the rope course sometime. Bring your friends. The more the merrier!”

“Yeah, maybe,” I glanced towards Poppy, who had her head down, pretending to finish her work. Someday soon, I’d take her there.

I’d show her everything in this town she never got to experience.

“Anyways, Daniel offered me the opportunity to be the surf school’s new social media manager, which basically means I’ll be capturing the school in its brightest light and maintaining that family friendly atmosphere to try and attract new customers! I’ll be working with you and Poppy, taking shots of you teaching and the excitement of the little ones, too. I can’t wait to start,” she beamed, smiling widely at us both. “Oh, and please call me Kia, none of that formal nonsense.”

“Sure thing, Kia,” I smiled back, shooting her a double thumbs up to which she did the same back to me. Poppy still hadn’t said anything, pretending as if we were all invisible to her. As Daniel led Saskia through the hallway, I stood up and walked over to the desk where she was sitting at.

“Go away Jasper, I’m busy.”

“The computers turned off, Wellsy,” I mused with a grin.

She rolled her eyes, folding her arms across her chest with a huff. “What do you want?”

“To annoy you.”

“Well, you’ve succeeded, now can you leave?”

I shook my head, still grinning. “What are you doing later? Wanna get a smoothie from Sunny’s hut?”

“Goodbye, Jasper,” she said as she stood up, walking round the desk in an attempt to shoo me off.

“What about the records store? I’m sure they have some Harry’s House vinyls. ”

“Jasper,” she frowned, those little dimples appearing as she tried to suppress a smile.

“Poppy,” I mused playfully, wrapping my arms around her waist and pulling her close to me. Her heartbeat sped up beneath my touch, eliciting an inch of something primal deep within me.

Those big green eyes looked up at me in fear and uncertainty, her breaths coming out in bated patterns. “What are you doing?”

I shrugged at her words.

What was I doing?

I had no idea, but I knew I needed her close. She made the world stop spinning.

“We have classes to teach,” she retorted, trying to slip out of my grip, to which I picked her small frame up and held her close to my chest as I spun us both around. She yelped in surprise before playfully whacking at my chest.

“Jasper Easton Ridge put me down!” she laughed, barely a hint of annoyance in her voice.

“Not until you smile.”

I stopped spinning us both. Poppy had wrapped her legs around my waist, her chest pushing right up against my bare skin. My body felt like it was buzzing, high on adrenaline as I glanced down at her. Even though she was perched on my waist, I was still a few inches taller than her. Her eyes were wide as her chest rose and fell in sync with mine. My gaze dropped to her lips as she bit down on them.

“Poppy, I—”

The bustling sound of impatient little kids ushered down the hallway, causing us both to jump backwards from each other like we’d been caught red handed doing something we shouldn’t have.

“I—” she whispered, breathlessly, before turning and walking away.

“Wellsy?”

She turned around quickly, eyes locking onto mine despite the growing distance between us.

“Keep watching me teach. I love it when you watch me surf.”

I didn’t need to turn around to see that she was blushing. I felt like the proudest fucker in the world. With that, I left and slipped into my wetsuit, pulling it up just enough so that it hung around my waist. I had no idea what I was doing with her just then but I didn’t think I’d ever felt so at peace than when she was in my arms, her legs wrapped around my waist and her curly brown hair spilling across my chest. But whatever that was couldn’t happen again. This between us was strictly fake.

Even though part of me wished it wasn’t.

Exhaling deeply, my fingers scratching my jaw, I itched to pick up my phone and message Lia to ask how Jak was doing. It had only been a week since he’d nearly drowned yet it felt more like an eternity.

All those minutes searching for him felt like hours. I remembered it all too well. How Lia was shaking against Poppy, both of them a crumbled mess of limbs on the sand. The pure, undeniable fear in her eyes. I was haunted by the hope in her gaze as we all came back to shore just to see it disappeared as soon as she noticed our empty arms.

I knew Jakson was alive because Lia was still breathing and so long as she was, he would always fight to find his way back to her. Hell , he’d fight death itself if it meant having barely even a minute more time with her. Broken knees. Shattered wrists. Jakson Calloway would always find his way back to her because that was just who he was—he never stopped fighting for her .

Jakson coped with humor, that was his thing. It was what he’d always done. With everyone he knew, he plastered on a smile and pretended to be okay because that was all he’d ever known—how to shut people out.

Hurt people, hurt people.

His own parents shut him out, so he shut others out.

He learnt how to stop people from seeing just how badly he was hurting deep down inside.

But not with Lia.

Since I’d known him— Hell , since the very first time he attempted to climb over my fence back in second grade but actually ended up in Lia’s backyard, he was instantly in awe of her.

Lia was the only one who could bring his mind out of whatever strangled grip his past had on him. She turned his reddened rage into a burst of colors. He never had to pretend with her. He never had to make himself a laughingstock, a cocky playboy just so she would pay him the attention he was starved of .

All he had to do was be himself and she’d smile for him.

Jakson looked at her like she was his moon, and his very life orbited her. He treasured her. Loved her with every inch of his heart and soul. He let Lia in and the bond they shared was beyond anything I could even begin to understand.

My fingers began to tremor by my side, the flush of memories coming back to me, dragging me into their riptide.

The determination in Xander’s eyes as he refused to stop searching.

The way Lachlan and Kai were bringing themselves near unconsciousness from holding their breaths so long, refusing to resurface if Jakson wasn’t with them.

Blazing sirens.

Shattering screams.

Then,

it

all

went

quiet .

Lia took off down the beach, not wasting a second looking back at us. She wasn’t running away from someone…she was running towards someone. It wasn’t until Jakson emerged from the waves, each of his arms slung around Kai and Xander’s necks, did I realize why she had left in such a hurry.

“ Lia ,” Jakson gasped, brows drawn and lips pinched in anguish. “My Blue.”

Ten meters Lia had ran down that beach, brown hair flowing wildly in the breeze.

Ten meters that had felt like a lifetime.

“I’m here,” she sobbed, “I’m here, Jak.”

I watched silently as Jakson stumbled, turning patches of sand into rivers of red tears that leaked from the multitude of open wounds tattering his skin.

“Blue…” He breathed, reaching out towards her like she was his lifeline.

In a world of black and white, she was his stroke of color.

Kai and Xander helped tug him back up to his feet, but it was like his whole body had given up, stumbling like a painful fallen mess across the sand in a last desperate attempt to reach her, almost like his soul begged to feel the touch of her love one last time before surrendering to the darkness once and for all.

“You are an idiot,” she shouted, hitting his chest. “A pig-headed idiot and a goddamned fool, Jakson Calloway. Don’t ever do something like that again, do you hear me?”

“You’re here,” Jakson replied in disbelief, his eyes scanning over every inch of her unharmed body as if she were the one in pain. “Blue…”

Any frustration that stemmed from the fear of losing him was washed away the second he called out to her . Lia rose onto her tiptoes, gently cupping his torn and scraped cheeks in her hands.

“I’m here, Jedi. It’s really me, I’m here.”

A sob wrenched its way up his throat as he repeated, blinking, “Blue…My Blue.”

“ Yes ,” Lia breathed, smiling as her thumb brushed over his redden skin, “your Blue, Calloway.”

Sobs identical those of her Jedi’s erupted from Lia’s lips as Jakson’s hands grasped around her waist, lifting her up in the air and twirling her around. His brows itched together in pain, lips pulled into a wince.

“Jakson Calloway, I swear to Naboo if you don’t put me down —” Lia gasped, lightly smacking his back in an attempt to get him to put her down for his own sake, but Jakson wouldn’t let go of her. He continued to hold her body against his, never once letting go.

Tears fell from the corners of his eyes, merging with the blood dripping down his cheeks from the slash across his forehead. The mixture of blood, sweat, and tears dripped onto her favorite cardigan, but Lia didn’t even bat an eyelash at the mess he was creating.

She loved that folklore cardigan, but she loved Jakson Calloway more .

Lia was laughing and sobbing and grinning like a madwoman, and Jakson? He was crying along with her. They completed each other. And that, right there , was a love I wanted to have someday. A love that I wished was possible for someone like me.

I doubted I’d find it. I wasn’t made for such childish things.

I was meant to be everyone’s to love but no one’s to keep.

It sucked, of course it did, but I couldn’t change it.

It was just who I was.

None of us were breathing. Xander and Kai stood rooted to the ground just watching the two of them grip onto each other as if the world was about to tear them apart. It could try, but nothing would ever separate them. Xander’s cold glazed eyes, as dark as iced whiskey, narrowed in on them. I didn’t think either of them had known a love like theirs—something so undeniable, so infinitely unconditional, surpassing the highest heavens and the darkest pits of the earth…but I think they wanted to.

I think everyone wanted to find even a sliver of what Lia and Jakson had together.

Medics attempted to rush down the beach to where Jakson and Lia stood tangled in each other’s embrace, except Kai, Xander, and Lachlan created a barrier between them, preventing the medics from reaching them just yet—almost like they all somehow knew that the reassurance of each other was all the medicine Jakson needed.

“Who are they?” one of the medics asked, looking almost in awe at the mess of pure and raw emotion Lia and Jakson had become tangled up in.

“Jakson and Lia,” Lachlan sighed, eyes fixed on them.

Peter Pan gave Wendy an escape from that house, just as Jakson offered his own home as a solitude for Lia and her siblings. He was her Peter Pan, her Jedi protector, and he would always be there to try and take away her pain, even if it meant losing himself in the process.

“The Jedi and his little blue moon,” Kai finished for him, almost like it was the title of a fairy tale. And in someways, it truly was.

The medics eventually pushed past them, trying to persuade Jakson to let them help him, but he pushed them away.

Something changed in his gaze as it met mine from across the beach.

His golden smile cracked in half.

He wasn’t dead. He wasn’t .

Jakson Calloway was standing right before me smiling like he hadn’t just scarred me for life, worrying my ass off about him.

With trembling fingers, I grasped at my chest.

It was beating too fast.

It wouldn’t slow down.

It wouldn’t stop .

My breaths rushed out of my lungs, tearing and clawing their way out of my throat so violently I almost doubled over.

Lia slipped out of his embrace as he walked up the beach towards me, flipping off the medics on the way. As soon as I saw those familiar eyes through the blur, my legs gave out from beneath me.

“I’m okay,” he whispered, arms wrapped tightly around me, stopping me from hitting the sand as he collapsed alongside me. “You’re okay.”

“Why did you have to be so fucking r-reckless,” I cursed through rushed breaths. My throat felt like it was too small, and each breath became a struggle to gulp down.

Xander, Lachlan, and Kai were my teammates, my friends, and I’d walk through the deepest pits of hell for each of them, but Jakson was the only one I knew would walk through hell and back for me .

I needed Jakson in my life; he wasn’t just like family, he was family .

“I’ll let you give me a matching black eye after, ‘kay?” he jested. “I’ve got you, Jas. I’ve got you.”

He repeated the words over and over until he blacked out against my chest. The guys rushed over to stabilize his head and spine as the medics loaded his limp body onto a stretcher. His fingers, a pale blue in color, draped idly by his side, almost dragging against the sand. Lifeless and limp.

As they walked up towards the ambulance parked on the road, Lia didn’t even waste a second before following them closely behind, keeping her fingers interlocked with his.

I stared at the scene unfolding before me. I hadn’t even known Poppy was the one holding me upright until her voice registered in my mind.

She’d been humming the lyrics to Iris by the Goo Goo Dolls.

And I’d give up forever to touch you because I know that you feel me somehow.

You’re the closest to heaven that I’ll ever be and I don’t want to go home right now.

Just the sound of her voice was enough to calm the frantic beats of my heart.

“Poppy, I—”

When everything’s made to be broken, I just want you to know who I am .

Her hand ran down my shoulder, tracing patterns across my skin.

“Just focus on my voice and breathe. I’ve got you.”

How could I focus on anything else?

She was the kind of girl you couldn’t take your eyes off even if you tried.

Yes , she had scars that ran deeper than others.

Yes , she was snarky and angry and pushed people away.

Yes , she was tough to love and hard to understand.

But that was what made her her .

What made her Wellsy.

My Wellsy .

So she was tough to love? I’d stand there by her side every day, accepting every single sliver of her guarded self that she offered. So she was hard to understand? I’d let her open up in her own time and listen so that she knew I was right there for her if she ever needed me. I had no plans to be anywhere else.

Poppy Wells was sharp and brave and strong and a fighter .

I’d drop everything in a heartbeat if only she asked me to.

“I guess you’re not the only broken one, Wellsy.” I laughed but I didn’t recognize the half sob that it turned out to be.

Some people in this town would always look at Poppy and see tragedy—see her parents in her. It wasn’t fair. She was so much more than that. She deserved so much more than that.

Her movement stilled. Voice quietened to near silence except the echo of her breathing.

“You aren’t broken,” she whispered. “And stop calling me that.”

“You love it though.”

“I really don’t.”

“Liar.”

“Shut up.”

“Make me.”

Poppy went silent.

Shit. Shit.

I just said that— oh fuck.

Way to make things awkward, Jasper.

“Would that help?” Her voice was barely audible above the bustling crowds gathered for the surfing heats. She cleared her throat, her body completely still against mine. “I mean—If I kissed you, it would be just a one-time thing, right? To get it out of our systems. To help take your mind of Jakson.”

My mouth fell open. “You think I’d only kiss you right now because I need a distraction from what happened?”

She nodded slowly. “That’s why you said that, was it not?”

I wanted to punch someone. Anyone. Anything . Poppy Wells thought that the only way I could possibly stomach the thought of kissing her was if it was all a distraction. That she was nothing more than a distraction, a pit stop before the main event. Just something to pass the time. How could she not see how much more she was to me than that?

“Poppy—”

“Hey Jas, are you coming? The heats start soon, and coach wants us to warm up before we get called up,” Kai yelled, not waiting for an answer before he turned back and walked over towards coach and my teammates were warming up already.

“You should go,” Poppy said, stepping back away from me and wrapping her arms around her waist. “They’re waiting for you.”

“They don’t matter, this does.”

I reached towards her but just as my fingers brushed against her arm, she flinched and pulled away.

“Jasper.”

“Poppy.”

“ Go ,” her eyes turned cold and sharp, narrowing in on me. Gone was my Wellsy, replaced with the rival I’d known all these years. “We can talk after your heat.”

I didn’t get a chance to speak because she was already walking away from me. I watched her blurred figure disappear into the crowd and beyond. My chest heaved as I warmed up, this pressure building up inside of me.

I ended up winning that heat, but it didn’t feel like I’d won anything because she wasn’t there with me. The one person who had always been at my competitions wasn’t there, and even though my best friend was in hospital, why did that feel so much worse?

Maybe that made me the worlds shittiest friend on the planet.

Maybe after all these years, they’d finally realize how much of a disappointment I really was.

I couldn’t do this any longer .

I was breaking under the weight of their expectations, and nothing was keeping me from falling apart except her …but. S he . W asn’t. There .

Poppy Wells was gone, beyond the horizon, far away from the mess that I’d become.

She’d avoided me the entire week since then.

Even at work, I never caught her long enough to explain myself. Until today…and she’d barely even looked at me. I riled her up by resorting to that easy back and forth we had but, apart from that, she wouldn’t even acknowledge me.

I hated it. Dreaded it. Wanted to fucking burn it.

“Do you think he’s trapped in space? You know, like you see in those cool alien movies.”

“You mean Star Wars?”

“I love those movies! Me and Jasper watch them all the time. Jakson is super obsessed with them, even more than us. He loves Anakin soooooo much.”

“Pepe who’s Anakin?”

“ Ugh , come on Juni, it’s literally Darth Vader but in his Jedi era!”

“Clone wars Anakin is my favorite.”

Three little kids wrapped up in wetsuits that were back to front stared up at me with gaped expressions like I had whipped cream on my nose.

“What are you three doing, mm ?” I mused, signing the words at the same time, trying to act as cool as I could muster right now. “Your wetsuits are all back to front.”

Pepe crossed his arms over his chest and glared at the other two. “See, I told you,” he said, signing, too.

I laughed, ruffling the back of his hair. “You too, kid.”

His small brows crossed as he huffed, storming back into the changing rooms. I chuckled and ushered Juniper and Rhys back into the changing rooms. After I double checked all the kids had their wetsuits the right way round, I started the lesson.

For the most part, it ran smoothly. We spent most of our time on the sand learning how to stand up correctly on our boards. A few of the kids mastered it within a couple of tries, and no matter how much they begged me to let them try it out on the waves, I refused. I needed to be confident in them, trust them enough to know that if I let them out there on the open ocean, they wouldn’t panic, because that was when accidents happened. Fatal or not, it didn’t matter. They’d be stuck on the sand for now until I knew in my bones that they were ready.

Most of the kids rushed back up to the surf school before I even finished giving the end of the lesson recap. I didn’t mind though, I got why they did it. I was once them too and I wouldn’t be that kind of coach who trained through fear and punishment—how I had been coached.

Pepe stayed behind and nagged me all the way back to the school about wanting an extra few hours of practice on the waves. He was a good kid, and I loved him like a brother, but I couldn’t stay behind and watch him.

I had plans to meet Lia at the hospital to see Jakson. According to her, he was being a whiny, needy little baby . That voicemail made me laugh when I first heard it. Jakson stole the phone off her and proceeded to go into a full on fifteen-minute rant about how he wasn’t needy and how if he was, which he wasn’t , it was completely justified after all he’d been through.

I didn’t have to be there to know that Lia was glaring at him.

How could you argue with him after he nearly died?

Especially if he brought it up every five minutes either to jest or to get out of doing something. That was how he’d cope though. We both knew that.

I never really thought that Jakson would ever take such a possessive and protective approach when it came to Lia. His reckless, daring desire and humorous golden retriever personality was like balancing two sides of the same coin. You never really knew with him which side you’d get until you were in that moment. He was like a wildfire wreaking havoc on the world—unpredictable and destructive, but with Lia? He was like a completely different person. Those flames turned into a mesmerizing blaze of warmth and comfort. It was like she was able to tame that wildness with only her mere presence.

Jakson Calloway lived in his own little world, I’d known as much since we were little, but what I didn’t know was that Lia Davis also shared that world with him.

“Where’s she gone?” Jakson mumbled, deliriously, gripping onto the sides of the white linen bed. The sheets crumpled in his hands as his knuckles grew white.

“Where’s who gone buddy? ”

“The blue girl, of course. My little Blue Moon. The one who looks like starry night skies and smells like blueberries. She glows, Cap. She can’t see that, but I do. I see all of her even though she tries to hide it from me. Why does she do that? Why does she hide herself from me?”

I paused. “I—you mean Lia?”

“If she’s worried I won’t like her, she’s wrong. She’s so damn wrong, okay?” He grasped onto my wrists with such force I thought my circulation was temporarily cut off. Jakson Calloway was looking at me with these terrified, widened eyes like he needed me to know just how desperate he was to make sure I knew that Lia was wrong—that the only certain thing in the world was that he loved Lia Davis and would rather carve out his own heart than allow it to beat for someone else.

“I would never leave my little Blue. I don’t need any other color in the world when I have her.”

The rest of his words were slurred and jumbled up as he drifted into unconsciousness. Nurses came in and out of his room for hours on end checking his vitals and monitoring his progress. It had taken nearly three grown hospital guards and myself to drag Lia out of that room when he coded a minute within getting there.

Lia Davis was the tiniest girl I’d ever known, but in that moment, it was like she had the strength of a hundred warriors. The fierce determination in her eyes as she tried to crawl her way back to him was striking. Security guards enveloped each of her arms, dragging her out of the room, but she fought—she fought with every tendon, every bone in her body to get to his side. To hold his hand.

I’d only ever seen that look once before in her eyes; the night she and her siblings were taken into foster care. She changed after that. It was like someone had erased her wholly and left only the outline of her behind. Sonny and I spent years trying to help her reach for colored pencils—to try and encourage her to see in color again after her world had been locked up in black and white.

Lia and Jakson were tethered together with some sort of invisible string.

They were wholly opposites yet completed each other perfectly.

Their love was so loud you could hear it in the silence.

It was the heartbeat of the earth .

I had no idea why they were drawn to each other in the ways that they were, but I didn’t think I’d ever not been grateful for it.

They saved each other, in a way.

Without Lia, I doubt I’d ever see Jakson sober again, and without Jakson… Hell , let’s just say I was forever grateful that they had each other and whatever bond it was that they shared so intimately.

Even if it meant I became their backup friend.

So long as they were happy, it was good enough for me.