Page 47 of Born in the Spring

It’s after the funeral. It’s the days of my guilt tripping dreams.

But I can’t do this again.I can’t, man.

The words are a quiet cry in my throat, a reach for my brother, that blue light making me feel him too. Humming through me to miss him more. To need him more. To need him to understand how much I needher.

And like then, I move like I’m being pulled, bumping through bodies, my pace increasing toward where he last was in my desperation to find him.

And like then, I collapse onto the bench, leaning forward with my arms on my knees and a heave through my stomach, warning everything I’ve consumed is going to end up in the snow.

But a few swallows and deep inhales tame the feeling,an adrenaline taking over as my mouth moves before any words come out, the silence saying this is pointless.

“I know you can’t hear me,” my desperation says for me, regardless, and I shake my head. “Maybe you can,” I continue with a whisper as the wind picks up, like some kind of answer,my clasped fingers digging into the backs of my hands.

I feel so disjointed, out of range, every thought and feeling scattered, though my heart is here for one thing.

“Don’t hate me.” My voice cracks with the plea, my face hot as I lift my eyes toward the sky, the stars clearing in and out of my vision. “I’m sorry I didn’t stop you. I never wanted you to die. I never thought—” My throat seals on a sob and I hold my breath against it until I can’t anymore, the stars now streaks as I cry to them. “Fuck, if I could bring you back, I would,” pours out with my gusted exhale, gasps filling my lungs. “And you’d still be alive and I’d still have my brother and Elara would still have you and I’d continue spending a lifetime trying to let her go. But youdied. And Ican’t.”

I look down, rubbing the tears from my face as the part of me arguing I’m only talking to myself tries to get a grip, while the part of me that’s needed to release this keeps reaching for my brother.

“You know I love her.” I sniff in my emotions as I look back up at the sky. “You know what it’s like to love her.” My laugh flutters through me as I blink back down at my hands. “We were both goners,” I murmur, letting myself sit in the light of her before pleading back up at the dark. “You also know what it’s like to be loved by her. And if I have that chance, I have to take it. If she has even asliverof feelings for me, I have to try. Ihaveto.”

The only person keeping me from Elara is Elara. She’s the only thing that’s felt right in my life. And unless she tells me to, unless she says the words, there’s no right reason to let her go anymore.

I sigh back against the bench, glancing out toward the slope. “If not. . .” my bit of uncertainty creeps up to add lower, “youstill won’t have to worry about her. I’ll take care of her. I’ll guard her with my life.”

My eyes fall closed, my breathing lighter in my chest on that promise, with thistalk, as I sit in the silence.

Until it’s filled with soft crunches of snow.

“Jasper?”

I jump up and turn to Elara at the worry in her voice, facing the same questions and fear I saw flaming in her eyes after the funeral, when she first found me here. And I round the bench to meet her where she’s stalled, where she’s waiting for an answer.

“I’m fine,” I assure her through a rush of air, half given to me by her presence. We’re both back at the bench, but this still isn’t like then. She’s not going to lose me. Ever.

She releases a rush of air too. “I couldn’t find you. . .” she says as almost an afterthought, low, with still a trace of concern in theOof her parted lips, silently asking for more.

“I just. . .” I start my explanation on a laugh, a reflex to the words and their relief, “had to talk to my brother.”

The admittance is strong with her, where it might have been weak with anyone else, because her response is what I knew it would be—a softened understanding. Elara’s not seeing me as the dumbass I felt like I was in those few seconds after I sat down. She’s seeing the guy she knows, the guy who needed his brother, with a spark of awareness for that same understanding I came out here to find, all pulling me closer to her.

Her eyes flit down to my shoes, her breath a shallow cloud in the decreasing space between us. “How’d that go?” she asks, her voice low and shaky, as her gaze reconnects with mine, sheened with caution and curiosity, but that’s not what peaks my nerves. It’s the flicker of hope I spy, sending another flutterthrough me.

“Good.” I say the word through a sigh, this one clearing the way for the new air I’ve been trying to take in, and she nods down to our feet.

“That’s good,” she echoes, a crack in her voice that makes me take the last step closer to squash the remaining distance. But when I have her blues again, the smile that curves her mouth builds mine and reawakens my hope for her in me.

“I couldn’t find you,” she repeats, now with a step back to get us moving. “It’s time to eat the turkeys.”

Mom’s chocolate-covered strawberry turkeys,I think with a chuckle, sliding my hand back into Elara’s, naturally, and without any pause, as I lead the way.

And she lets me, walking beside me in our same platonic palm to palm hold, though her tug on my heart is anything but.

She’s held my hand longer today.

I don’t say that one. We’ve both needed the extra comfort from each other. But she has.

I don’t say it, because this still isn’t a night—regardless of the shift I took—or a hand hold that’s about us, but I think it. Ilivein it. Even while knowing, as she does too, I’m only taking her to go eat strawberry turkeys with townspeople, and not somewhere to be alone with me.

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