Page 74 of Born in the Spring

“You did great out there today,” he started, and I chuckled around my first sip, only slightly more bitter than the alcohol itself.

I’d been boarding and teaching for years, and he still complimented me as if I was just learning.

Or he was just complimenting me.

“But I’ll never do as great out there as you,” I said back, on the thought, and he shook his head out at the landscape on a swallow.

“You don’t wanna be me, Jasper.” His voice lowered with the words, and I paused my bottle at my mouth as I studied him. “You aregreatas you.”

My next breath squeezes its way up my chest as I close my eyes, my nose flaring with the strongest sting.

“I saw the ring,” Dad says, the smile in his voice saying his reflecting is very different from mine.

Shepherd asked me if I wanted to see the ring—after I chugged down most of my beer when he told me he planned to propose—and I didn’t answer. I couldn’t answer, so he didn’t show me. I almost said yes, because for one second, I thought it would be better to have seen the ring in a box before I had to see it the first time on Elara’s finger. But I already knew he wanted to have kids with her, and then seeing a ring she didn’tget from me on her finger that I’d have to see for the rest of my life made it all feeltoofinal.

And I knew I’d already lost, so on her finger or inside a box, seeing any ring would mean I’d have to let her go for good. And I was going to need more thanonebeer for that reality.

“Elara saw it too,” he adds, a weird insinuation in his tone now that snaps my eyes open as I whip him a glare.

“And how do you know that?” I ask to his side glance, confusion narrowing my stare, and a shake in my voice that shifts to my head, my body already rejecting whatever shit he’s trying to hurt me with.

He looks back toward the tree. “Because the day he died was the day he told me he was popping the question.”

My confusion deepens as I try to put pieces together I don’t even have, but he tries to click one in place, making his last mistake he’ll ever make with me.

“So I don’t think it was a moment ofhisimperfection.”

It’s a defense for Shepherd but a spit on Elara, and I round on him. “Don’t you say a damn thing about her.”

His eyes narrow up at me. “Have you asked her what happened that night? While I’m here, I should ask her myself.”

“Don’t you even talk to her,” I demand at that, my jaw and chest stiff with the words as they seize through me.

Dad gives me his height, looking down at me now as he tries to dominate. “I deserve to know what happened.”

“What happened is Shepherd got drunk and wandered offaloneand crashed his board. It’s no one’s fault. And you’re not gonna make me or Elara, or even Mom, feel like it is. We’ve beaten ourselves up enough without your bad press.” I snap those two words. My father loved the media. Even going as far as acting like them sometimes. And he loved when thespotlight was on his first son, highlighting all theperfectwork he accomplished through him.

Except after Shepherd’s death. Because then Dad didn’t want everyone to see what anasshe really is.

“I just want to know,” he says in his low, controlled tone.

“And I just told you,” I say back before making another attempt to walk out, my air thinning and my heart pounding for answers I don’t have, either, but I won’t let him get into my head.

“Are you two together now?”

That stops me again.

“Did she make you her backup?”

I face my father, my heart pounding more as I try to keep his hurt, his hate, off me. “Well you didn’t make me yours.” A truth I want to cheer and cry over. He spared me, but he also took himself from me.

“I want you gone by the end of the day,” I tell him, his warning now, before I storm out to give my mom hers.

Thirty-One

Jasper

“Are they in there?”

---