The Turning TIde (The Fischer Men #1)

Prologue

PROLOGUE

No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.

-C.S. Lewis

Jasper

I looked out the kitchen window to see my best friend sitting on the curb outside his house across the street.

“I’m just popping to Jackson’s,” I yelled to anyone who was listening. Mum and Dad were arguing upstairs, probably thinking we couldn’t hear them because they’d shut a couple of doors between them and us, and my brothers would be in their room fighting over the Nintendo controller. They wouldn’t miss me, and even if they did, they’d know where I’d be.

With Jackson.

Always with Jackson.

I watched as he rested his chin on his arms that were folded over his bent knees, closing his eyes, his face pinched in an expression I didn’t recognise. We’d been best friends for over a decade. There wasn’t an emotion I couldn’t read on him usually, but lately, he’d been different. Quiet, secretive, distant.

He thought he was keeping it to himself, offering me half smiles that didn’t reach his eyes, trying to cover up the lies I knew he was telling me about why he didn’t want to hang out with me, avoiding being anywhere near me.

I knew why, too. I was being weird.

Jackson was maturing faster than me. He’d hit puberty—his body widening, his muscles more defined, the fine hair appearing on his chest. The girls at school noticed it too and flocked to him. But me… I watched on from a distance. Comparing myself to him. Well, that’s what I told myself.

But recently, I’d begun to wonder... I shook my head to erase the thoughts. I was terrified to even contemplate it. Unsure where it would go and how much it would wreck my life and my friendship with Jackson.

I whispered my mantra silently: it was normal to think of him so much, to dream about him, for him to pop into my mind while I fisted my cock in the shower.

Normal. Totally normal.

So why did I feel so guilty?

Huffing out a breath, I shoved my hands into my pockets and walked from the house across the quiet road.

He looked up when my shadow fell across him. “Hey, Jas.”

“Hey. Can I sit?”

He shrugged and then shuffled over, despite there being plenty of room for me anyway.

“You okay?” I asked.

Our gaze locked, and my heart stopped beating; the pulse hammering in my ears the only reminder that I was alive. I waited for him to say it—to tell me to back off, leave him alone; that he didn’t want to be friends with me because I was being some weird, creepy lech, but he didn’t. Instead, his brown eyes turned glassy, and he chewed his bottom lip.

“My dad,” he said after a while. His dad was so hard on him. A reverend in the local church, he thought any problem in life was a result of someone’s sin. He even told Jackson that his mum’s cancer was her own fault and that praying for hours over her would be enough to save her.

Unsurprisingly, it wasn’t.

“Sorry,” I replied, not sure what else to say. “You wanna talk about it?”

He sniffed, wiping his face on the sleeve of his sweater before he turned to me. “I wouldn’t know where to start.”

I stared at my hands for a second, looking at my chewed fingernails. I’d been biting them a lot more recently. “You can tell me anything,” I said to the floor before I leant my head against Jackson’s shoulder.

He smelt nice—of soap and the aftershave he bought himself with his Christmas money.

“ He doesn’t want me talking about it.”

“I won’t tell anyone.”

He draped his arm over my shoulder and rubbed his hand up and down my bicep. Goosebumps exploded across my skin and my cock swelled in my jeans. I desperately tugged at my hoodie to hide the obvious lump that I wouldn’t be able to explain if he noticed.

Not when I didn’t understand what was going on myself.

“I know.” He sniffed again.

I lifted my head and glanced at him. Jackson was a few inches taller than me, so I had to look up at him. I took in his nose, the curve of his lips, the stubble that darkened his chin, which made him look so much older than me.

“I love you.” The words fell from my lips without me even realising they were there. My pulse picked up again, and I wondered if he’d notice it pounding in my neck. It was fine. We were friends. Best friends. He was my ride or die. You loved your friends. It was totally normal. That’s what I’d say when he recoiled in horror, but he didn’t say a word, instead, pulling me closer.

“Love you too, Jas. Always.”

I rested my head back on his shoulder and tried to ignore the voice in my head, screaming that I had feelings for my best friend that were anything but friendly.

We stayed there until the sun set, and Jackson’s dad yelled for him to come inside. The next day, my world imploded when Jackson got home from school to find out his dad had sold their house, and they were moving.

Jackson cried when he told me he was leaving, and I tried to reassure him that we’d stay in touch, but both of us knew it wouldn’t happen from the way he was being ripped from his life without a say in it or a moment’s notice.

Whether it was his choice or not, my friend abandoned me that day. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t shake the idea that my messed up feelings somehow contributed to it, so I buried them and pretended I’d never had them.

I mean, what was the worst that could happen?