Page 85 of Apex of the Curve

They all busted up laughing at my expense at that and my mood darkened further. I was gettin’ fuckin’ irritated. The door opened up, and I looked over, my pops comin’ through.

“Well, there you are,” he grunted, but he wasn’t talking to me. He was talking to Mace.

“Hey! Vyking!” Mace and my dad embraced heartily, pounding each other on the back.

“How’s life on the outside?” my dad asked him.

“So far so good,” Mace said grinning. “We were just trying to talk to Fen about his girl.”

“Closed-mouthed bastard,” Glass Jaw said with a laugh.

“Aw, yeah? I like her. Aspen’s a nice girl.”

A chorus of “Oh?” and “Ooo!” went up around us followed by a song of laughter.

I shook my head, a passage from the Havamal, specifically Odin’s Rune Poem.

I know, if a modest maiden’s favor and affection I desire to possess, the soul I change of the white-armed damsel, and wholly turn her mind.

Looking at the pack of assholes in front of me at the moment, I had my work cut out for me on that last part – not that it had been wholly difficult to turn Aspen’s mind thus far. Maybe I worried about it too much. I don’t know.

What I did know, was that in order for the rest of my boys to see in Aspen what I did, they need to see Aspen. They needed to talk with her and learn for themselves what I had.

I tuned back in to the conversation in time to hear my pops say, “I’ve always been proud of my boy, but the way he is with her? Proudest papa I’ve ever been. Quit giving him a hard time, boys. I think she’s the one.”

I met my dad’s eyes, and he met mine. We were alike in that it was just like staring into the future in some ways. Wanted to know what I was gonna look like? Just look at my pops. Twenty or thirty more years and I’d be there.

I could see it. The pride shining in his gaze. For all that we could be a pain in each other’s ass and butt heads, pretty spectacularly I might add, we had an accord on some things. This was definitely one of those things. He knew. I knew.

Aspen was the one for me.

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