Page 13 of Break Your Fall

I’m ignoring it when my phone vibrates again.

Beach, Reyna’s text reads. One word to let me know her location, to let me know she still wants me there.

On my way,I think back as I steer myself to the road, chewing myself out for not having looked at the beach in the first place.

The sun is going down by the time I find her on the sand. One arm hugs her knees, one arm holds up her head, her fingers buried in her hair, the tips rubbing at the strands, her eyes out at the ocean. There are no grains to hand over, no problem she wants me to take away.

I can’t dwell on everything that’s different with Reyna. It’s physically impossible when all I ever want to do is know her. To never lose a place in her head, and in her heart. We’re all changing because of what’s happened, but there’s nothing Reyna could go through that will change the way I feel. My love for her isn’t going anywhere. My friendship isn’t going anywhere. And as long as she wants to keep showing herself to me, I’ll never stop wanting to see. She changes, I learn her new ways. She needs me, I’m here.

So I wait. I sit beside her, stretch my arms out over my bent knees, and I wait for her to give me her problems. They’re deeper, harder to pick up and toss away, heavier than anything we’ve had to deal with before, but I’ll show her there’s nothing she can hand me that I can’t hold.

I listen to the waves, feel their rush against my efforts to be patient. I listen to the pull of Reyna’s breathing, dragged in each time she starts to say something, then sighed out each time words fail.

I look at her, watch her eyes shift over the horizon, down to the water, down to the sand at her feet. She slides her hand from her hair to hug her knees closer to her chest when she finally speaks.

“I really wanted to push you away.” Her voice is strained with the struggle it took to not text me the second time, and my heart both sinks that she questioned me and soars that she knows me well enough to know I’d be here. “I really want to pusheveryoneaway.”

“You don’t have to push me away,” I tell her even as she knows. She wouldn’t have reached for me if she didn’t.

“And why not?” she scoffs out, meeting my stare with the challenge. The last falling rays from the sun highlight her reddened cheeks, her wet lashes, and her glossy eyes as they search mine for a certain answer. An answer she can believe in.

I wanted her to be happy. She’s always loved Julian. She’s always wanted Julian. In ways I’ve always loved and wanted her. And if I ever had the chance to be with her, to know what it’s like to have her, even if it would break my heart in the end, I wouldn’t want anyone trying to take that away from me.

I couldn’t take Julian away from her.

As warped as my thinking has been, as much as I’ve messed up by not trying to prevent all of this shit when I know I should have, and as much as part of me kept my mouth shut holding to the fantasy that one day Reyna will see me, too, I was thinking about her.

But I’ve already told her a form of that—without the added humiliation of my unrequited feelings.

Reyna knows why I’m here. She knows why she wanted me here. She has to look inside herself and know why she picked me. Why she’s still picking me. I need her to see on her own.

“You know why not,” I say, the words soft and imploring.Please tell me you know. You know me.

“Right,” she scoffs out again, looking back at the choppy ocean before looking back at me, her eyes filling with tears. “I know everything about everyone, don’t I, Tommy? Who do I have to blame but myself, right?”

An argument plays in my head, a rerun of the arguments I’ve had with Julian about Reyna. She doesn’t have a blind spot. She chooses to look past the bad to see the good. The good is what she holds to. She’s going to believe the people she loves love her back when they express that love. Who wouldn’t? But someone like Reyna is easy to take for granted. And that’s a choice you make yourself.

Theymade the wrong choices, not her.

“No, you blame them. You blame me,” I add with the determination to let her know I’m on her side. “But Reyna, youknowme.” I shift to face her, hold her blinking stare. “I made one big mistake. And no, one doesn’t excuse it, but … you know me,” I repeat, reaching out to swipe a fallen tear from her cheek before pulling back as soon as it’s gone so I don’t get swept up in touching her as I say my next words. “Think about us. You and me. Everything we’ve been through.” Her gaze softens, and while I know she didn’t ask me to, and she wouldn’t give me that ultimatum, I still let her know, “If I ever have to make a choice, I’llalwayschoose you. If you feel like there’s no one, there’s me. I’ll be here for all of it.”

A breath parts her lips as more tears build, and she crumples, the tears streaming down her cheeks, and my swallow is tight as I realize why. Something I should’ve known at the lighthouse, from the very beginning, from the first moment I decided to stay out of Julian’s drama, in every moment I chose to keep lying to her after. We all expect shady shit from Camille, and on some level, especially now, we expect it from Julian, but not from me. Reyna never expected me to play a part in her pain.

I let her down the worst. I hurt her the worst.

“Reyna. . .”

“I had sex last night,” she exhales through gasps, pain cutting through her voice. I’ve seen her this tormented before after Valerie finally cracked under Reyna’s pressure to tell her about her father. Only, it wasn’t what Reyna expected to hear; it didn’t fit with the picture she painted in her head, erased every comforting thought of who her father could be, that he could possibly love her. Valerie told her he just didn’t want them. That’s why he left and never bothered to come back. Reyna had never felt more worthless, more unwanted.

More like her mother.

I couldn’t take that one away. And I can’t take this one away. I can’t even pretend to.

My body has gone still, a thick fog clogging my thinking as I’m trying to hold on to what she’s handed me.Don’t let this slip.

“With Landon,” she says through another gasping exhale, those words wiping out the fog, and my face is instantly hot, my hands balled.

“Did he hurt—?”

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