37. Jasper Ridge

37

Jasper Ridge

I hated myself. Those three words had haunted my thoughts for the last three or four hours…I couldn’t remember. I’d lost track. It was probably the shots. Or the beers. Or just the alcohol in general.

Ever since my episode on the beach, I hadn’t been able to fill this gaping void inside my chest, as if someone had pulled out a piece of me. I hadn’t had a panic attack since I was a child. I barely even remembered having them. I didn’t get them, period. Not anymore…or so I thought.

I was so fucking weak, it was pathetic. I was pathetic. I could barely even keep myself standing at this point, all the pressure finally starting to crush me. I was useless beneath its weight. Absolutely fucking useless . Coach just had to go and remind me before our qualifying session that I was a fucking screw up who wasn’t even good enough to score points higher than a three- year-old.

His words stuck to me like glue, eating me alive. Doubt flooded through my veins whenever I saw him at practice. It was like he looked at me and only saw all the ways I’d failed. That I was nothing more than the mistakes I’d made. I was so fucking sick of it. I didn’t know how much longer I could hold on…

Hence the drinking. I wasn’t a big drinker but today I was feeling extra fucked up that drowning my sorrows in liquid suffering seemed like a good fucking choice. I’d probably regret that tomorrow morning but oh well .

I just wanted my brain to stop. For one damned minute. That was all. Anything to get the sound of Poppy’s voice out of my head. She didn’t deserve any of that, I knew. I fucking knew, okay? She was everything this miserable world wasn’t; she was a quiet moon among a thousand blinding stars. Captivated by her light, I could’ve watch her for days on end and never once tire of the sight.

In conclusion, as Jakson would’ve said, I was completely, royally, and abso-fucking-luetly fucked. To the highest degree.

As if my thoughts summoned him, I saw Jakson barely through my blurred vision.

“Sonny!” I cheered, bashing into people drunkenly swaying their hips to the bursting music. I pushed my way through the crowd until I tripped into him. His hands grasped my shoulders as he helped haul me to my feet. “What are you doing here man?”

His brows crossed. “I live here.”

Sloppily, I traced the side of his face with my finger. “There’s no light in your eyes anymore. No happiness. Why aren’t you happy anymore, Jak?”

He pushed me off him and I winced as my back hit the wall. I wasn’t usually this weak, was I?

Pathetic.

Absolutely pathetic.

How can you protect everyone now, Jasper?

Not when you can’t even protect yourself.

Coach was right about you.

You are useless.

You are weak.

You are a pathetic excuse for a captain .

The voices in my head grew louder and louder with every passing second. My heart was beating so rapidly as if it wanted to claw its way out of my chest and abandon me too.

I never asked to be responsible for everyone.

I didn’t even have a father who could teach me how .

“I told you not to call me that. You’re drunk Jasper. I should be asking what happened to you.”

Lines appeared across his forehead as he frowned. Weird. Normally, I was him and he was me in this scenario. He drank so much I found it hard to believe his liver was still functioning. Normally, he was the one drunk off his tits and always doing stupid stuff that I had to talk him down from doing.

“You look like Xander when you do that with your brows. He’s always serious. Too serious, even.”

“Go and get water and sober up, asshole.” He rolled his eyes, picking up water from a silver platter as one of his millions of waiters passed us. He threw the bottle at my chest, and I only barely managed to catch it. “Where’s Poppy, anyway? Shouldn’t she be here? I invited her, she’s really cool.”

“She’s gone.” Every inch of happiness the alcohol had given me since I’d gotten here drained from my body. “She left.”

His spine straightened. “What did you do?”

“Why are you assuming I did something?”

He shrugged. Fucking smug bastard.

“What are you doing man,” Jakson sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. The harder I tried to focus on his face, the more I started to notice how much older he looked tonight. Almost like he was a slowly dimming star. Maybe it was because he wasn’t smiling at me or trying to get me to laugh so all my worries would slip between my fingers and get carried out to sea. “If I had a lightsaber right now, you better believe it would be shoved up your—”

“I told her I wished I’d never met her and that she should’ve stayed far away from here,” I gulped, the words leaving a bitter taste in my throat.

“Why the fuck would you do that, Jas? You know she’s like Lia, how sensitive they are about their pasts. Did you even ask her why she moved? Why she came back? Do you even know anything about her past?” He pinned me with a look. The Poppy Wells look . How had he perfected that so perfectly? “What the fuck were you thinking?”

He yelled at me like he knew something I didn’t.

Something inside my heart broke, again.

Did she trust him more than me?

The questions and what ifs plagued my thoughts until I felt like I was drowning beneath their weight.

“I wasn’t !” I yelled, my fists scrunching at my side as something inside me broke like a dam bursting free. “I wasn’t thinking. I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry for not being perfect all the time. I’m sorry I’m not good enough for you, or for Lia, or for Poppy. Hell , for the entire team, why not. B-but I’m trying, okay?” My voice shattered as I held onto whatever strength I had left to stop myself from crying like a little kid who finally realized that he was never going to be like the others who had fathers. He was always going to be different . “I’m t-trying so f-fucking hard right now.”

“Hey,” his eyes softened as he planted a firm hand on my shoulder. “Don’t even think, for one second, that we aren’t proud of you—that you aren’t good enough for us. I know you’re trying,” he whispered, but I could still hear his voice louder than the music chorusing around us. “I know you are, Cap. I’m your biggest fucking supporter on this planet, don’t you ever fucking forget that, or I’ll slice your balls off with my lightsaber.”

I laughed but it sounded more like a sob. Jakson Calloway had my back . Through thick and thin, he would be there for me. I didn’t think I had ever needed to hear his words more than I had right now. I could feel my legs giving up on me before I realized Jakson had already lowered us both to the ground. It was like he knew before my own body could compute just how I was feeling. He was the closest thing I had to a brother, and I was so fucking grateful to have him in my life.

“Why can’t I cope? I’ve been doing it all my life. Why am I suddenly breaking now?” I gasped, breathing in air in chunks. “I can’t be broken, Sonny. Poppy needs me to be strong, she needs me to be whole, just like you, and little Lia, and everyone else.”

My words hit Jakson with such force it rendered him speechless.

“You’re not broken, Jasper,” he said quietly.

“I am,” I whispered, “and she’s the only one who seems to notice all the cracks in me.”

“You aren’t broken, Jasper,” he repeated again, louder this time as if the increase in volume would somehow knock the sense back into me. “You’re my best friend, okay? I was yours before I was anyone else’s. You can always turn to me, Cap. Always.”

Every questioning thought I had about my place in his life fell apart at the seams as he whispered those words to me.

“We don’t look much like big, strong men right now,” I breathed, my body shaking.

“Fuck the patriarchy,” he said, completely dead-serious. “If you want to cry, then fucking cry. Anyone else who thinks differently can go shove it up their—”

I pinned him with a look, and he just shrugged.

“I miss her,” I whispered quietly after a while. Groaning, I pinched the bridge of my nose. “I miss her, and I hate myself because of it. We were never supposed to get this close, I was never supposed to fall—” I shook my head. “Whatever. What’s done is done, right?”

“That’s a pathetic excuse, Cap, and you know it.”

“I—”

“No, you listen to me , Jasper Ridge. If you want to quit on her, fine. Quit . Take the easy road out. But you and I both know that you have too much love and generosity in your heart to simply stop believing in her. You’ve never once given up on Lia, or me, or any of the guys. So don’t start now. Don’t start with her.”

Fuck . Did he even know how much he sounded like Lia just then?

I glared at him. “But she hates me.”

Jakson groaned. “I don’t know Poppy very well, Cap, but I do know that girl is more in love with you than me, and that’s saying something.” He winked at me, to which I elbowed him in the chest. “She’s just hurting right now, rightfully so, you big idiot, but that doesn’t mean she won’t come around later. You just have to give her time. This is Poppy, no matter how far away she runs…she’ll always come back.”

“How can you be so sure?” I asked.

He wiggled his eyebrows at me, a grin playing on his lips. “Call it Jedi intuition.”

I elbowed him again for that comment alone, even though my stomach was full of laughter and my heart felt a mountain lighter.

“Poppy…she’s got these sad green eyes, Sonny,” I breathed in, the air around me still tainted with the scent of the ocean. Of her. “And this hair—man, her hair is curly and messy in a sun kissed way…”

… and like an idiot I learnt how to take care of it in case she ever trusted me enough to let me get that close to her. No kidding, I’d lost countless hours scrolling through YouTube watching videos about the best ways to wash curly hair and how to properly take care of it to ensure it stayed healthy. It wasn’t a burden, it was a part of who she was, and I wanted to know everything about her.

Poppy Wells was beautiful and broken and everything in between. She was like nothing I had ever seen before, and I hadn’t known I was a man starved until I met her. I wanted to be hers for real this time. No more fake pretending, even though I knew we probably weren’t doing a good job of it anyway.

I wanted to be hers for real more than anything in between.

Just then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a flash of brown curly hair and my heart jumped in my throat.

“That’s her, Sonny,” I grasped onto his arm, directing his gaze towards the girl of my dreams. “That’s the girl who stole this.”

I sighed contently, my hand resting atop of my heart.

It beat for her.

Only her.

“Your heart is on the other side, Cap,” Jakson snickered, shaking his head with a smile.

“Oh,” I muttered, switching sides quickly. “I don’t ever want it back.”

Poppy Wells was ethereally beautiful, with those dark rosy lips and thick onyx lashes that covered those mesmerizing forest-green eyes. Those green eyes that burned their way right through to my heart, momentarily causing it to stop beating whenever she looked my way. I never knew someone could have that much power over me…but she did. She always had; even when she used to look so angry at the world, covered head to toe in that black and white Orca-like wetsuit, she looked like the rarest pearl in the entire ocean .

The same Poppy Wells who used to laugh when she got pistachio ice cream on the tip of her nose, whose freckles came out in the sunshine, dancing across her tanned skin, looking like a collection of stars. Messy curls that fanned down her back and tight little denim shorts with matching white and blue tennis shoes. That was the Wellsy I missed—the Wellsy who had streaks of paint in her hair and across her forehead, who grew her own strawberries and danced in the falling raindrops from the sprinkler in the front yard. The one who hummed the lyrics to Harry Styles on her way to school and wasn’t afraid to stand up to people who tried to keep her quiet.

Poets could’ve written sonnets about her. If they didn’t, I would. I’d do anything to hear her laugh. Anything at all. Even pretend to be her fake boyfriend, apparently, but then again, it had never felt fake to me. She probably wouldn’t even recognize us as friends, yet she was everything to me.

I was a desperate man when it came to her.

“You don’t know, Cap. What if she’s already given you hers and you just can’t see it? Poppy might not give herself to you physically, but that doesn’t mean she hasn’t already let you keep pieces of her that she only wants to belong to you.”

“Yeah,” I sighed. “Maybe you’re right.”

Jakson lightly clapped my shoulder, gripping my skin with a tight hold. “Of course I am,” he grinned, “it’s the Jedi in me. The force is with me, Cap, I’m telling you.”

My vision swayed as I chuckled. Every drop of alcohol I’d consumed suddenly started to catch back up to me.

“I want to give her a vinyl,” I slurred. “She likes them. I like that she likes them.”

Jakson chuckled, lips tugged up into an amused grin. “Does she now, Cap?”

“ Hmm ,” I muffled. “I was thinking of getting her one by the Goo Goo Dolls. Dizzy up the girl. There’s a song on it that…I don’t know. It just reminds me of her.”

Of us.

“Which one?” He asked.

I sighed, scratching my jaw. “Iris.”

I don’t want the world to see me,

‘cause I don’t think they’d understand.

When everything’s meant to be broken ,

I just want you to know who I am.

“She isn’t unlovable, you know?”

She was anything but that.

He turned to face me then, seriousness and understanding glinting in his eyes. “I know she isn’t, Cap. I believe you.”

“She thinks she is, though,” I groaned. My heart ached for this girl—this little surfer girl with the big green eyes and a heart so fractured it was falling to pieces at her feet.

She was my rival. My nemesis. My enemy.

Yet Poppy Wells wasn’t just my childhood rival anymore. She’d become so much more than that. I found myself wanting to sew each fragmented piece of her broken heart back together delicately by hand. Wanting to stitch closed every gaping wound left by the hands of another and show her the pure amount of strength lying beneath her scars.

Because if she was a canvas, she would’ve been the universe’s greatest masterpiece.

I just wished she saw herself that way too.

But that was what she had me for now.

I’d look after her.

“I’ve never seen someone so convinced that they don’t deserve to be loved, to be fought for.”

Jakson grasped my shoulder. “Then show her that she isn’t any of those things. Help her fall back in love with living , Jasper. Show her that there is more to life than just surviving each passing day.”

Show her that she isn’t unlovable.

“Yeah, I could do that,” I nodded, cogs turning inside my mind as I pieced together a plan for Mission: saving Wellsy. I wouldn’t let her fall under the waves. The world would have to tear me apart limb by limb to stop me from reaching her, but even then, I’d find a way to crawl home to her.

When I finally looked back at Jakson, he was grinning like an idiot. My cheeks heated as I pushed his face away.

“Shut up,” I groaned, hiding my face in my hands. “Go away.”

“No, don’t you dare,” he chuckled so hard he ended up grasping at his chest, “let me get a camera, I have to show Lia how hard you’re blushing right now.”

“Where is Lia, anyway? I haven’t seen her around. ”

Even though we both knew Lia shouldn’t be here, we were both tied around her little pinkie finger enough to know that she’d definitely bribed her way into coming tonight. That , and Jakson didn’t have the heart to tell her no.

“‘ Living vicariously through Novie,’ ” he air quoted with a sigh. A puzzled expression must have painted my face because he clarified, “She’s just talking to Nova about ballet. Apparently, her and Emmeline, you know, the blond-haired figure skater who runs Bookmarked? Well, they’ve started teaching junior classes at Halle’s ballet studio. I think Lia wants to go back to the studio, you know? But every time I try and talk to her about it, she shuts down on me. I don’t know what to do.”

“Maybe just give her some space to try and figure out what she wants to do in her own time? Who knows, maybe having Nova back in town will help her? And speaking of a certain Spaniard, I didn’t know she was back in town.”

Nova was Lia’s childhood friend like Jakson and I. They met through ballet as they ended up going to the same studio when they were little. When you heard Dancing Queen blasting through the speakers at four in the morning, you knew that Nova Collettò was wide awake, probably dancing around the kitchen in the refrigerator light making a smoothie bowl. And making a mess all over the counter tops, glasses falling down her nose and brown hair barely held together by a little red bow, as she used a wooden spoon as a microphone.

That was just who Nova Collettò was—a witty, Rachel Green reincarnate who danced to any kind of music and could solve equations faster than you could blink. And if she wasn’t dancing ballet, she was terrorizing her classmates who couldn’t keep up with her bustling mind. Little miss tutor girl turned little miss terror. I wouldn’t deny that she was smart as fuck, though. That girl pulled A* out of the sky.

Jakson stared past the crowds of people to where I assumed the girls were gossiping. “Nova’s here to stay, apparently. For good this time.”

“What?” I stuttered.

He hummed. “Yup. She flew in from Spain a few weeks ago. Transferred to Hawthorne Hills Elite Academy, too. She’s going to be starting there in the fall.”

I paused, considering his words. “Does Kai know she’s back in town?”

We both went silent.

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah,” he sighed. “ Shit .”

“Has anyone told him?” I asked.

He shook his head. “I don’t know. I tried bribing Lia into telling him, but she refused.”

I couldn’t stop myself from laughing. “Nice tactic.”

He shook his head. His eyes kept straying towards Lia like just being apart from her, even within the same walls, was giving him hives. I swore those two were always connected by one way or another.

“You should go and find her. You know, check on her. See if she’s okay.”

He hummed, nodding, but he wasn’t present. Not really. “Yeah.”

Just as Jakson jumped to his feet, some girl slipped between the two of us.

“Hey, Jasper,” she purred, kneeling down in front of me, not giving Jakson a second of her attention. “Let’s have some fun tonight, yeah?”

Her fingers brushed against my cheek as I recoiled.

No. That’s not right. You aren’t my Wellsy.

“Shhh,” she soothed, continuing to brush my cheek, “I’ll take care of you real good tonight.”

“Fuck off, Miya. He’s drunk and you’re taking advantage of him,” Jakson growled, forcing himself between her body and mine. She didn’t even bat an eyelash at him.

“You want me, don’t you, Captain?”

I think I was going to be sick.

“You have three seconds to get out of my house before I drag you out by those fake as fuck blond extensions.”

“Oh, for fuck sake, Jakson. Go and take a look around your empty house,” Miya cackled just as Hanna Saint-Hayes, her little minion, appeared behind her as if on cue. “Not even your own parents loved you enough to stay. Money sure can buy a lot of things, but apparently not love!”

“Back the fuck up, Miya!” I roared, jumping up to my feet just as Lachlan and Xander appeared beside me. All our fists clenched in unison as we stood there like an impenetrable force to protect Jakson, who hadn’t even managed to crack a smile.

“Miya, this seems too far. Maybe we should go…” Hanna spoke quietly, her eyes as dark as death. A little black satin dress pooled around her hips, tightly hugging every curve, as her smoky black eyes narrowed.

“Oh, shut up !” Miya whined. “Honestly, you’re useless. I’m so sick and tired of your little emo routine, Hanna. Its pa-the-tic. Just like that Milla girl was.”

One moment, Hanna was stood beside Miya, brooding and silent, but the next minute, she was on her like a lion going in for the kill. Hanna clawed and ripped at Miya’s hair, throwing a few punches to her cheeks and jaw. Blood, thick and crimson, seeped between the gaps between Hanna’s fingers as it dripped from every freshly opened cut on Miya’s face. She fought like she wanted to kill her. But the look in her eyes—the hatred —it was more than that for Hanna. She was mauling her.

Lachlan jumped in, wrapping his arms around Hanna as she screamed, raw and guttural. It was the most horrifying noise I’d ever heard. The world silenced itself, everything and everyone frozen in place as her screams echoed in the dry air, ricocheting off the walls.

“You don’t get to even mention her fucking name, do you hear me? You fucking bitch , I’m going to kill you for what you did to her!”

Hanna clawed and screamed and tried to pry herself out of Lachlan’s grip, but he held onto that girl like he was afraid that if he didn’t, she’d drown under the weight of her own darkness. Her entire body was shivering.

“You’re okay, Han,” he whispered to her, over and over and over again. “You’re not back there. You’re not with him.”

The fight inside the girl with darkness bleeding from the corners of her eyes slowly died out like a flickering light. Lachlan managed to calm her down into a stable enough state that she could walk away on her own two feet without losing control. But in a second, she was in his arms, and he was holding her close to his chest as she shivered and panicked. Lachlan walked away without another word.

The way Hanna had reacted made me wonder if she had known the little red head who’d disappeared years ago without a trace.

I’m going to kill you for what you did to her.

Those had been Hanna’s exact words to Miya…so what had Miya done that Hanna wanted to kill her for? And what did this all have to do with sweet little Milla Brzezinski?

“How could you just stand there and watch her fight me like an animal?” Miya gasped, eyes wide and reddened. Gashes and cuts of all sizes marred her face as disheveled strands of hair stuck to little rivers of blood that trickled down her cheeks.

“I will never defend you,” Jakson said coldly. I almost flinched at the quiet yet deathly tone of his voice. “I will never forget.”

“But we had so much fun together, didn’t we, Jak?” She purred, turning away from me and advancing on him. “No matter how hard you try, you won’t ever be able to forget that night.”

Jakson paled at her words, going as still as death. Lia appeared then, as if she had somehow sensed that Jakson needed her.

“Oh, good, little Bambi Lia is here too.” Miya sighed sarcastically. “This shit just keeps getting better and better.”

“ Leave. Her. Out. Of. It ,” Jakson growled, voice lethally quiet. In all the years I had known him, Jakson had detested violence. He was the biggest believer that talking was much more effective than fighting…except when it came to Lia .

She was worth sacrificing his beliefs for.

He’d protect her, always .

“Whatever,” she purred. “I don’t have time for this.”

None of us said anything as she strutted away, stumbling in her heels. Xander and I glanced at each other, but when we turned around, Jakson and Lia were gone.

That was the thing about those two–people like Jakson and Lia buried their wounds so deep down inside of them that the people who loved them most had no idea what was truly going on inside their heads. Hell , the only people who knew just how deep Lia and Jakson’s scars ran were Lia and Jakson.

After all, he was her Jedi and she was his Blue, what more was there to it but that?

“Gentlemen,” Kai cleared his throat as he neared us, smoothing down the beige linen shirt he was wearing. Seriously, who wore a linen shirt to a party? A blond-haired girl hung onto his arm with the biggest of smiles on her lips. The scent of vanilla cupcakes and tulips hit me. “Let me introduce you to—wait, why do you both look like someone just died?”

I glared at Kai. Neither of us wanted to answer that question, that was for sure. Except, when my eyes slid over to Xander, he was intently watching Kai’s friend. Those whiskey eyes locked onto her, mentally padlocking her soul to him. His face remained blank of any expression so I couldn’t get a read on exactly what he was planning, but from experience, I knew it was nothing good.

Xander wasn’t a knight in shining armor by any means. He was silent, brooding, and had a dark as fuck aura about him, and no matter how many girls threw themselves at him, whining to their daddies about how they could fix him, they never could. He’d never be their silver prince. Not when he’d been damned to Hell his entire life.

“Anyways, let me introduce you to my girlfriend,” he smiled, pushing his glasses up his nose as he glanced at the girl. There was hope gleaming in his gaze as he looked at her. Soft and delicate. Something that looked a lot like love.

“Hi!” she beamed, “I’m Emmeline Villeneuve, but you can just call me Emme—everyone does. It’s nice to finally meet you both.”

The blond girl— Emme —had a really thick French-Canadian accent as she smiled at the both of us, waving her small hand. She must be the blond-haired figure skater who ran Bookmarked. Hundreds of tiny freckles covered her cheeks and the bridge of her nose. I mentally noted the small pink bow tied in her hair, and I instantly thought of Lia. She loved those things.

Xander said nothing. He looked up and down at Emmeline, only once, before turning to Kai, not giving her even a hint of recognition. Her self-confidence seemed to dissipate at his gesture. A pair of big, hopeful eyes met mine.

“Hey,” I smiled, nodding towards her. “I’m Jasper.”

She smiled back. “Hi.”

Kai and Xander remained staring at each other like life was just one big chess game to them both. Like Emmeline had unknowingly become Kai’s queen. His move.

After what seemed like forever, Kai’s stone-cold face slipped into a smirk, and to that, Xander grabbed Emmeline’s arm, despite her protest, and pulled her away from him as they both got lost in the crowd around us.

When they were gone, I turned to Kai. “What the hell was that all about?”

He just grinned, his eyes pinned on the trail they left through. “Fate, Cap. They just needed a little nudge .”

I shook my head, pressing my fingers against my temple, fighting a headache. Every time I thought I knew those two, the more I got proven wrong with every passing day. It was like they were in some secret club that Lia, Jakson, and I were denied access into.

Did that make me a bad Captain?

If I had known, would I have been able to intervene just then?

The room swayed as I lost my balance, crashing into a random girl who was dancing like she hadn’t a care in the world with her friends.

“What the fuck!” she whined, “you just split my drink all over my new dress!”

“Sorry,” I muttered as I tried to stabilize myself.

Please not now.

Please not now.

Please not now.

My whole body started shaking as I regained my balance, my chest rising and falling quicker than the beat of a drum.

No. No. No.

“Cap, you okay?” Kai’s voice drifted through the distance, but it was like it couldn’t reach me. Nobody could .

Without thinking, I pushed my way through the crowd, making a headline straight to the bathroom. By the time I got there, my hands were sweating so much I couldn’t even grip onto the handle. After a few attempts, I finally yanked it open and slammed it closed. My legs wasted no time before giving out on me, my knees buckling as my back hit the wall of the door. The raging noise of the party was silenced by my own damning thoughts–my stupid, cancerous thoughts that were eating away at every available inch of me.

It’ll pass. It’ll pass. It’ll pass.

I chanted the words over and over again inside my head, imagining Poppy was here saying them to me with that soothing voice of hers. I imagined I could hear her heartbeat, that steady rhythm.

What was it that she did?

That breathing exercise.

How long did I hold it for?

I think it was three.

Or was it four?

What about exhaling?

How long was that?

Where are you, Wellsy? I thought, pulling my knees to my chest as my teeth chattered together. I really need you right now.