Jasper

I don't know how to react, what to think or feel. I stare at him, gawping, somehow rooted to my spot, anger consuming me, mixed emotions swirling around me like a dense fog. Pain, then relief, some inkling of joy and hope, but it all swirls back around to agonizing shards of biting fear as I try and absorb that this is real.

I open my mouth to speak again, but only noise comes out, a whimper of desperate sobbing that breaks me down and in a second I'm crushed against a strong warm chest, surrounded by arms that used to be as familiar as my own skin. I'm hugged tightly by the one person who used to make my day brighter, before Colton did, before our world fell apart. I can only slump into him, so caught in past memories and how this feels so familiar, so necessary and yet I cannot stop crying against his soft clothes like a wounded child.

"If I had known.... I would have found a way to take you. I would never have left you or abandoned you. I truly, truly believed I was