“That was a good one,” Kris says, when the credits roll. She looks over at me. “Don’t make that face!”
I school my expression. “I liked it. Very uplifting.”
She snorts, takes a sip of her cocoa. This plus the cookies—she smells like a bag of sugar, probably, and despite my general lack of a sweet tooth, I’ve never wanted to taste something more. I stand from the couch, holding out a hand for her mug. “Want a refill?” I ask, distracting myself. “Then we can watch another.”
She looks up at me, one eyebrow raised. “It’s almost midnight. Four’s not enough?” I can tell by the way she’s said it—four’s enough for her for now, and she’s got something else in mind. Something I’m guessing I won’t like.
“I’m not doing the singing,” I say, trying for a joke.
She doesn’t take the bait. “I kind of thought we should talk about yesterday. What happened in the kitchen, I mean.”
I sit down again, try to keep my face neutral. “I told you. I was off my game.”
“But what Gil said bothered you. I know you, Jasper.”
I sigh, stare down at my hands. “I know you do.”
“Does it—is it something to do with what you told me last night? About how you’re not welcome at home anymore?”
“Kris—”
“Tell me,” she says, and the way she says it. Exactly like that last challenge she put to me, with the same weight behind it. She sets her mug on the table, closes the lid of the laptop. Shifts on the love seat so she’s facing me, her knees hugged to her chest and her arms wrapped around her snowman-covered legs. With the laptop closed most of the light in the cottage is from the garish fiber-optic tree. I take a deep breath, something thudding inside me at what this might reveal to her. Where it’ll lead.
“Gil—the way he is with Tanner—that’s very different from how my dad was with me.”
“Yeah?”
I nod. “My dad—all he ever wanted was for me to take over his ranch. No matter the cost—school, fun, whatever. Drove me crazy, working for him.”
“Working for—?” Kris says, clearly confused at the way I’ve described it.
“Mean as hell, he was. About chores, about everything. When I got into science I’d try to bring him stuff, stuff I’d read about agricultural management, but . . .” I trail off, thinking about the way he’d once knocked a book from my hands, right into a trough of water. He’d probably have pushed me in too, but I was bigger by then.
“Well,” Kris says stiffly. “He must regret it now. He must be proud of what you’ve done.”
“He hates what I’ve done. He threw me out when he found out I got into college.”
“What?”
I shrug, passing on the details of that day—Dad stuffing my things in garbage bags, yelling. Mom watching, saying nothing. He told me if I hated my life so much on the ranch I could take the bags and what was in my truck and never come back. It wasn’t so bad that he’d said it; he’d always had a temper.
It was so bad that he’d meant it.
“Listen, there were lots of things he wanted for me that I didn’t want. The ranch, yeah. But even when I was younger. He wanted me to play football; I didn’t. He wanted me to take out a girl from a nearby ranch; I didn’t. He wanted me working every second I was free—no studying, no books, nothing. Everything I did back then, it was against his rules.”
“How could he throw you out?”
“Easy. We didn’t get along. I pushed all his buttons.” Signing up for science fairs. Taking the PSATs. Being in AP courses. “He thought something was wrong with me.”
“Wrong how?”
“Not sure, really. I wasn’t into the same things he was. He couldn’t understand me, and I can’t say I blame him. Everyone in my family, they’ve all done the same sorts of things. I’m an outlier.”
“What about your mom?”
“She’s all right, but she didn’t much understand me either. I think it was a relief for her. We all get along better now, see each other a couple of times a year for a dinner out or something. They’ve both said they’re sorry for how it all happened, but I don’t think they’re sorry it did. My dad’s got one of my cousins in at the ranch now, and that makes him happy. They still don’t invite me back.”
“Jasper.” Her voice is full of sadness. Way more than event planner lady.
“I wasn’t an easy kid. Once I knew what I wanted—I’d do anything to get it, break any rules he set, no matter how mad it made him. I was determined.”
“You’re still like that. Determined.”
“Best and worst thing about me. That’s what Ben says.”
“I don’t see how it’s the worst thing.”
I give her a look that says, yeah, right. “I almost ruined my friendship with him—with you—so I could start the firm. I was so determined for us to get out on our own I couldn’t see straight.” After a few years at Beaumont, I’d felt like I was twitching every day under the thumb of my various bosses, like being back on that ranch.
“You figured it out, though. You apologized.”
I smile at her. “You helped.”
She smiles back softly. Looks down at the space between us.
“Back then, I guess I felt—I’d given up so much for my career. My family, my—” I break off. My feelings for you, is what I want to say, and I realize that this is why I was afraid of this conversation. I swallow. “I had to make it work, getting out of the non-compete. I had to get us out on our own, be in charge of myself. Or else—what had all that suffering, all that loss been for?”
For a few seconds neither of us says anything, and in the silence I realize—that’s the
