Haunted Wood Cut myself on angel hair and baby's breath

"This is not the sea,"

She may as well have struck him across the face. His eyes turned downward away from her own and he felt his stomach churn into something just as frothy as seafoam. If he could have apologized vocally, it would have been tightened and choked by guilt. It would have been a string of words that every man had ever clobbered together in their life like some kind of collective thinking in times like these.

I'm sorry. I'm working on it. I'll do better. I'll be better.

Instead he only felt his face heat as though he had been struck.

As if somehow his grief was greater than her own. A saltwater fish forced in freshwater currents, he had no struggle like that. Besides trying to take this saltblooded woman back to her shores.

He pointed himself away and began a pace of purpose made up of long strides. His innards begged to stop, to make sure she followed him, but he would not force it. If she still had faith in him then she would come with.

If she did not, then he would forever drown himself in oceans and seas to feel this again.