Powerless (Chestnut Springs, #3)

by Elsie Silver

That night, with only the moon as his witness, a devastated boy divulged his deepest, darkest secrets to the most inconsequential person he could find. A girl who never looked at him with pity, only adoration. And he shredded his heart for her. Left all the jagged, torn pieces at her feet. And I became the keeper of those pieces. I didn’t balk at the rawness of the moment. I don’t think I even really understood it, but I picked up every little scrap and stowed them all away in my heart for safekeeping. With time I made sense of his story. I mulled it over. I became a part of it, inserted myself somehow. And those pieces became seeds. Seeds that I watered and tended to and kept safe for him. But seeds grow and now the roots of him and that night are wrapped so tightly around my heart that I’ll never be able to extricate myself from Jasper Gervais. There isn’t a soul in the world who can remove those roots and the stranglehold they have on me.

After all, he’s Jasper. The boy with sad eyes and a heart of gold.

“I feel like I could crumble under the weight of not wanting to disappoint you. I’m paralyzed by my fear of losing you.”

“Don’t you get it, Jas? I’ve seen all the darkest parts of you and I’m still here. I still want more. Stop trying to scare me away. It isn’t going to work.”

“It’s always been you, Jasper. It will always be you.”

She’s still looking up at me like I hung the moon. Like she always has.

Harvey’s grin is just a little too wide when he says, “Y’all went and made that kissing cousins saying a real-life thing.”

Everything aches—my heart, my throat, my chest—so I do the only thing that I can think of to make it hurt less. “I love you, Sloane Winthrop. I always have. I love you so damn hard I don’t even know what to do with it. You’re my person. And I think I’m yours too.” “You have always been my person,” she chokes out. “I love you so much.”