Page 55 of Born in the Spring

“I’ll be back early,” I toss to Vanessa as I stalk to the coat rack for my jacket, flying out into the cold before she can draw me back.

Twenty-Two

Jasper

I’ve imagined the sound of a knock on my door a million times since I told Elara I want her to come to me again.

I lie on my couch with my eyes closed in buzzing anticipation to spring up, my ears open for those taps of her knuckles.

Then comes the sighing into the cushions—and sometimes accidental sleep—when her sounds don’t come.

We have our Saturdays back. But she hasn’t knocked yet.

I closed in early after I saw that she did too. We were both so busy today—her notably busier since our first new Saturday decorating the tree—we only got to talk once, and it was a drive-by. I saw her, then she was nowhere in sight.

A trick of the music makes me rip out an earbud, my body tightening to attention, thinking I hear a knock. But when it’s silent, I sink back down and shove the bud back in.

My eyes are closing again when a notification puts a pause in the song, and my fingers rush to tap into my phone, nowthinking Elara’s finally responded to the message I sent a couple hours ago—but it’s not her.

And it’s a call.

From Vanessa.

My hit of disappointment thumbsIgnorebefore my hit of nerves that something could be wrong taps to call her back.

But then her message that comes through is what has me springing up, my heart stalling out and kicking to life with dizzying beats.

Bad time not to answer. You didn’t hear this from me, but Elara wants to be with you. She’s just scared. She’s leaving now for a date with Tripp. I couldn’t stop her. Stop her.

The leash on my control snaps as I race for my boots, all I manage to put on after dropping my phone and flinging out my earbuds.

I sprint through the snow in nothing but my tank and pajama pants, my breath rapid clouds. I should probably be freezing, but all I feel is heat, blazed by six words I’ve waited six years to hear.

Elara wants to be with me.

So she can’t fucking be withTripp. Or anyone else.She can’t.I can’t watch that again. I could deal with seeing her with my brother, because he was my brother, but now, especially knowing without a single doubt how she feels about me, I won’t let someone take her from me again.I can’t.

Fear still washes through me, a violent trembling as I run, still feeling like it’s six years ago all over again, that fear I saw in Elara’s eyes, a fear she never had a reason to feel when she was taken.

The realization over what she’s doing thins the air as I try to take more in, my lungs burning. My face is numb from thewhips of cold, but there’s a fire under my feet, and inside my heart to fight for the one that’s mine.

When I finally spot her, red hair waving with her fast footsteps in a sea of white, the clacking of her boots as she rushes along the pathway toward Lulu Lodge echoes through every part of my body and heightens my desperation.

“Elara!” My call for her is the next echo, loud with that desperation as I catch up to her fleeing.

Her steps slow, then stop completely at my second call, that puts a slight stumble in mine from this brief moment of relief—until she turns to me with an attempt at a smile, and every other time, I could bear that response, but not this time. Never again.

“Don’t smile.” My demand is more a plea, winded, but the wobbly hold she has on the corners of her lips was already falling with one look at my anguish.

“Jasper.” Elara breathes my name as her own plea, her owndon’t, but she opened this door for us when she stopped for me, and I’m charging right in.

“You weren’t gonna tell me you were going on a date?”

“It’s just dinner,” she denies with exhaustion in her tone.

“It’s a date,” I argue. “That you don’t actually want.” My voice is scratchy, like I’ve already been standing here, trying to reach her, pleading for her, and maybe I have. For far too long.

“Jasper—” She cuts off her argument back with a visible clench in her body, a steeling against her feelings I now know with absolute certainty she has for me, then snaps out, “Why would I have to tell you?”

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