Page 64 of Jasper

I don’t move. Don’t breathe. I just listen.

“They were… unconventional,” she continues. “They taught us how to pickpocket. All of us. Said it was a survival skill, something we’d need to know if we wanted to make it in the world.”

Her voice is steady, but there’s a hollow echo underneath it.

“They’d send us out to crowded places: markets, parks, fairs. We’d come home with whatever we could find. Phones, wallets, watches. Jewelry. They’d sell it all and tell us we were helping the family. That we were pulling our weight.”

My jaw clenches, the pressure building in my throat. I press my hand more firmly against her back, grounding us both.

“They believed in living off the earth as much as possible. We each had our own garden,” she adds after a pause, her tone wistful. “It was peaceful. We’d grow vegetables, herbs, sometimes even flowers. But we didn’t get to keep what we grew. They sold some of it at the street market every weekend, and we used the rest for meals.”

I shake my head slowly. “The state was paying them to foster you, weren’t they? Why did they need all this extra money?”

She shrugs, her hair brushing my chest. “Yeah. Monthly. Per kid.”

“Then why the hell did they need stolen wallets and vegetables?”

She’s quiet for a long moment. When she answers, her voice is soft. “I think… maybe drugs. We never saw anything outright. But sometimes, we’d hear things. Smell things. They would act funny sometimes. Some of the older kids said they liked to do psychedelics. They were hippies. Free love and peace type of people.”

Anger coils low in my stomach, hot and bitter. But I say nothing. I let her keep going.

“I always knew I’d have to leave when I turned eighteen. It was a known thing in the house. They would give us a decent life while we were there, and it almost felt like a real family at times, but as soon as one of the kids became an adult, they were out,” she explains quietly. “They needed that bed for a new kid. More funding. But I still hoped…” She trails off.

I rub slow, soothing circles over her back.

“Hoped what?” I prompt gently.

“That they’d ask me to stay. That I’d actually meant something to them over the years because I’d been with them longer than some of the others.”

The words are so soft, so painfully raw, that it feels like someone just cracked my ribs open. I close my eyes, gripping her tighter.

“But they didn’t,” she whispers. “On my birthday, they handed me a thousand dollars in cash. Said it was my fresh start. Gave me a duffel bag with a few of my things and told me how much they loved having me with them over the years. But they didn’t love me enough to keep me.”

She chokes on the last part, and I feel the wet warmth of her tears soaking into my chest. My heart shatters.

Without a word, I shift her gently upward, guiding her until she’s straddling my chest, her legs tucked beside me, her weight light but calming. I cradle her with both arms and press my face into her hair.

“I’ve got you,” I whisper, the words fierce and full of promise. “You never have to go through that again. You’ll never be thrown away. Not by me.”

She sniffles, her small fingers curling into the fabric of my shirt.

“You’re mine now,” I tell her, my voice thick. “And I’m never letting you go.”

She doesn’t respond right away. But her arms slide around my shoulders, her head tucks tighter beneath my chin, and I feel it.

24

ARIANA

There’s something about the way Jasper holds me that makes everything quiet inside.

All the chaos that normally lives behind my eyes—the constant hum of fear, the tight coil of anxiety, the dull ache of abandonment I’ve carried with me since the day I was told to leave my foster home—goes still. Like someone finally found the switch and turned it off.

Likehefound it and turned it off.

I melt into him, my cheek pressed against the solid warmth of his chest. His heartbeat is a steady rhythm beneath my skin, calm and strong and impossibly grounding. My fingers curl into his shirt, holding on—not because I think he’ll let go, but because even now, there’s a part of me that can’t believe I’m allowed to hold on at all.

The blankets are pulled up around us, cocooning us in heat and safety. His arm is wrapped solidly around my back, his thumb moving in slow, lazy circles on my spine. I feel the rise and fall of his breathing, slow and even, like he could stay this way forever.

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