"Renna?" Atticus asked with confusion. After eventually wiping his eyes clean, he'd looked in the mere direction of where he'd last seen the girl heading. With brows knitted together at the bridge of his nose, he watched as she remained frozen in the distance, her expression unseen as her back was to him. As he slowly began to swim towards her, she came back to her senses. She let out a scream.
All the panic and uneasiness and disturbance hit her at once, causing her to shriek with flooding eyes as she tried to swim away from the clearly dead man. Atticus called out her name again, that time with more urgency than the time previous. He swam as fast as he could, pushing against the light marshy waves as the blonde continued to scream and cry as she thrashed in the water.
When he got to her, he instantly pulled her by the arms to face him, except she never did. "Renna, what happened?" He asked, but it fell on deaf ears. She was sobbing, eyes stuck hysterically on the pale figure surrounded by trash. Finally, she resorted on squeezing them shut, but the image of the man's piercing eyes penetrating her skin was still present.
"Renna. Hey, baby, look at me," she slowly peeled her eyes open to look into his worried ones, but upon first glance, she couldn't take it. She just needed to leave.
"Renna?" Atticus yelled out as she pulled out of his grip, immediately swimming towards the pink jet-ski not too far away. He let her go with a groan, not wanting to restrict the obviously traumatised girl by tightly holding her upper arms. It wasn't long before he followed after her, listening to her struggled gasps and breaths of air with concern. He was worried about her, for he didn't even know what she'd seen.
Once she got up on her jet-ski, she held the handles but began to shake. She wouldn't be able to drive if her hands were trembling. So, Atticus - who was holding onto the edge of the jet-ski as he looked up at the frightened girl - tapped her leg.
"I'll drive, just tell me what happened," he insisted, and so she shuffled back. After he'd pulled himself up, sitting himself between the distraught girl and the controls of the water vehicle, she finally spoke up.
"There- It's over there," she managed to stutter out as she raised a shaky hand towards the pile of rubbish floating beside the tall reeds. Atticus immediately turned his body in the pointed direction and squinted his eyes, but still couldn't see anything that would cause such distress shown by Renna's wild and unexplainable actions. He took the feeling of her hands shakily wrapping around his bare waist as the key to go, so he carefully turned the jet-ski before travelling over to the said location.
Whilst he was slowly approaching the collection of trash in the water, Renna realised what he was doing. She didn't want him to see the traumatising sight too.
"No, Atticus, no. You can't-" she tried to grab the handles from behind him but he just grabbed a hold of her hands, letting the machine stop and float in the water as he twisted around in his seat.
"Ren, it's okay. I just wanna look," he reasoned lightly, trying to give comfort by rubbing both of the girl's hands.
"No, but-"
"Renna, everything's fine," he reassured her before she let out a shaky breath. He turned back around and held back onto the handles whilst Renna pressed her head against his back, squeezing her eyes shut so she wouldn't have to witness the horrific sight once again. He furrowed his brows at her peculiar actions but brushed it off, cautiously driving towards the lone mixture of plastic as he craned his head to look at it.
His eyes widened as he laid his pupils on the old man's floating body, the plastic beginning to stick to him like cling wrap. He didn't know what to do, what to say, what to feel.
"Holy shit." He made a point to turn around, to look back at the once terrified girl behind him, but her grip on his waist only tightened. For the life of her, she wouldn't let him turn around, because that would reveal the man's dead body once again.
Atticus gulped before briefly looking back at the man, instantly cringing with disgust. They had just been swimming in the same area as a dead man, and Renna had been that close to touching him.
"We need to warn them. They're gonna get in trouble," Atticus muttered as he tried to avert his eyes to look anywhere but the pale man in the water beneath them.
"Go, please," was all Renna could say before Atticus had revved the jet-ski, sending the two flying towards the motel as fast as the vehicle could go.
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