Page 27 of Born in the Spring

Elara looks back up, parting her lips with an inhale, and my eyes trace the softOof them. She hesitates again, and I know she’s going to say only part of what she’s thinking. “I didn’t want to take advantage…of knowing that.”

I breathe a laugh, my voice reaching for her as my body walks backward for the door, only because I have to. “Take advantage.”

I’m halfway out when she calls to me, “I’ll be here.” An invitation to come knocking if I need anything.

“Me too,” I say back, wishing she’d just get up and follow me to my lodge.

I hold her eyes a moment longer, keeping the picture of her looking back at me as I close the door between us, then book it off this porch.

Eleven

Jasper / Then

My next cockblocking to get back at my brother came around a year into us knowing Elara and was technically an accident.

Shepherd was supposed to be coming in tonight, but I hadn’t seen him yet, and I lived almost next door, my lodge a bit up the incline. I thought maybe he got delayed, because that had happened before, and all the steam I had gathered throughout the day to tell him a new trick I pulled on the slope was sputtering out with every hour he didn’t show.

I was getting better at snowboarding; I wasn’t outstanding yet, but we could finally share something and swap those stories. I even got Court to film it, and I had the video waiting in the background on my phone.

I was watching out my window when I saw his lights come on. But I still didn’t see him. I watched and waited and he never came up.

He’d always barrel in like an avalanche, sweeping everyone up into his adventures, Dad the most eager to lend his ears,always perked to his first son.

But that night, only one person had to know he was back.

Elara’s laugh behind his door stopped my jog up at the top step, that spirited sound, from inside my brother’s lodge, another ache he brought back with him. It was me who made her laugh earlier in the day. Now Shepherd was home and he got her laughter. Some squeals and shouts were mixed in like she was being attacked and enjoying it.

My breathing was becoming too loud and too fast before I even heard my brother’s grunts through their commotion.

“I thought you said you weren’t ticklish.”

The words flinched through me. His hands were all over Elara and I was out here listening to herticklenoises—that suddenly went silent, giving me the smallest moment of relief, until I was tortured again with a new noise that sounded too much like a moan, and I couldn’t think after that. I just charged through the door.

Elara squealed again, and Shepherd grunted again, but no one was enjoying themselves anymore. He sprang off her to the opposite end of the couch like he was caught doing something wrong—and I’d say he was.

“You didn’t lock the door,” is what I actually said, lamely, my voice all shallow air.

“People usually knock,” Shepherd said back, with a pointed glare as he zipped and buttoned his pants. Elara was putting her shirt back on in the corner of my eye as I strained every muscle to keep my eyes on my brother.

But it wasn’t too hard to do, with a glare now formed in my own stare, my jaw so stiff and my nose flared through my rough breaths, my heart falling to my gut.

He’d been pursuing her when I had no choice but to let him.

But he did. He had achoice.

“Let’s go,” he told me with a nod toward the outside, following me as I was already walking out. “I’ll be back,” he said to Elara, and I spun on him with a scoff.

“So were you just not gonna see the rest of us?” I snapped out as he flicked on the porch light, then closed the door. His steps to meet me at the railing were steady, acting like the sensible one, thematureone, leaving it to me to make a scene and downplay his part in it. Which fired me up more.

“Yeah, but I was gonna wait until morning.” He glanced around at the dark like I wasn’t aware the sun was gone. “It’s late. I got in late.”

“Mom and Dad are still awake,” I said back like he wasn’t aware what time they always go to bed.

“They would’ve been fine to see me in the morning.” He sighed. “And so would you.”

“How well do you even know her?” I blurted through the hole now in my chest, already feeling this creeping denial, as I saw a truth I wanted more than anything to be a lie. Just my insecurities over my brother winning everyone and everything. “She talks to me every day. When you’re not here,” I added as a reminder of his time away. Elara talked to me even when he was home, but he would go away and she would be here with me, and I wanted him to think about that. I wanted him to think that, one day, she could’ve chosen me if he’d just backed off.

But he was still just thinking of himself. “She talks to me too when I’m not here. It’s called a phone.”

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