“Just because they spoke doesn’t mean she was planning to sell.” His voice is like a balm to my soul, but it’s too little, too late. The hurt and anger have been marinating for so long that I don’t know if anything can extract it.

“She was interested, Jasper.” My voice breaks when I say his name. All the emotions I’ve been suppressing are coming to the surface. I close my eyes and take a deep breath, trying to push them back into submission, but they power through, the tears falling silently down my cheeks, the pressure in my chest deepening with every breath. “I gave up everything so I could run the store in a way that would make her proud. I wake up and I go to sleep wondering if I’ve made the right decisions by her. I don’t do anything in that store if I don’t think it will fit the vision she had. And now I find out that she might not have wanted it at all anymore?”

I bury my head in Jasper’s chest. I don’t want him to see me this way. I’m ashamed of the things he’ll see written across my face.

“It’s been a year since I found out I got the store. A year of stress about money. A year of fighting with my dad more than normal. A year of ignoring my career to nurture her legacy and try to keep this piece of her alive.” I hiccup, my tears coming harder as Jasper turns me fully into his body and wraps me tight in his arms. “Why would she do this to me?”

And there it is.

The real reason for the tears. The real reason this pain feels like someone has plunged a knife into my chest and made me watch as they twist it.

“She’s the only person I had.” I feel like I’m drowning. The grief I’ve worked so hard to ignore, the fucking anger I’ve pretended didn’t exist, is bursting out of the neat little box I tucked it away in. And now that it’s tearing at the seams, the messiness is leaking all over my life, destroying what I was working so hard to preserve.

“It’s okay, Drew.” Jasper’s voice cuts through the fog threatening to swallow me whole. “It’s okay to feel hurt. It’s okay to be angry. Let it out.”

The pain trapped in my chest claws at my throat, fighting for a release. I can’t breathe; the magnitude of my grief is too big. It’s been a part of me for too long. I’ve grown around it, trapping it where I thought I could control it.