Page 45 of Born in the Spring

“No, I have plenty of time,” Tripp says, smiling again as he looks from Jasper to me.

“You held my eyes longer today,” Jasper says at my ear, like a secret, and my pulse skips at the light in his gaze as I watch him start a slow walk backward, nerves shaping his body.

He spins around and Skylar distracts me with another tug on my hand, this time toward the piano.

“Comeon,” he grunts out with the effort, and I go on.

Eighteen

Jasper

Iblink as the lights around the resort go blurry in my vision, my boots shifting in the snow from where I’m trying to keep standing at Dani’s Dukes.

It’s Thanksgiving. This holiday was never the one we went all out for, but it’s our first without Shepherd.

Christmas will be the hardest.

So at least I’ve stayed mostly together for this.

The three rings are set up—closed off to cameras. Our community, more than ever before, has come together to celebrate my brother’s life, a buzz spiking the cold air.

And this is what I wanted.

It’s what we all want. We need this. But it’s hit me with an almost new grief I should’ve expected, but didn’t. I’ve been moving through this day on weakened legs, knots in my gut, and flooded senses.

I fold my arms across my chest, pressing them into my abdomen, and try to ease myself with a deep breath and thereminder of what this night is for.

Shepherd’s gone. But tonight, he’ll be here again, in everyone’s memory, at the same time.

A warmth comforts me on both sides, and I’m swallowing down another sob before I even glance to my right and see Elara’s wet eyes looking back at me. To my left, Mom pries her arm through mine and I loosen the hold on myself to give her something to hold on to. We lean on each other, holding each other up.

“I can feel him,” Mom says with a sad smile, breathing through a swelled sob of her own. I catch Elara turn her head away as she wipes at her face, and I grasp her jacket, pulling her more into me, though she’s already flush against my side.

Mom clears her throat as she pats my hand. “I called your father.”

I’m suddenly more aware of my surroundings, those words a call for my attention to seek his, my spine straightening as I scan the crowd, the dumbass part of me thinking I will actually see him somewhere, my heart thudding on that brief hope. Hewouldshow up without showing himself.

But it’s more like him now not to.

He probably didn’t eventakeher call.

Mom confirms that thought with, “Martha took a message.”

I squeeze my mom’s hand with a stiff jaw over my father putting his own mother in the middle of his asshole decisions. The man who always bitched to me about responsibility and he can’t even take his own.

It’s Thanksgiving. Our first without him too.

It’s his wife. It’s his son.Both of us.It’s his whole fuckinglife.

Christmas will be the hardest, but Dad will make it theslightest bit easier if he stays gone.

Mom’s hand moves to my arm, rubbing away the tension, but it’s Elara who balances my head when she tells me, “You have better,” changing up the words she told me her first night back, grasping onto my sweater, and even closer to my side, if that’s possible.

It’s not. She could never be close enough.

I wrap my arm around my mom, my better, the woman who is pushing forward with me, with us, who is here tonight.

“I’m ready,” Mom says with a pat to my chest, and a preparing nod, before heading toward the sidelines as a roar—a softer energy but still there—vibrates through the crowd.

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