Girl Gone Viral (Modern Love #2)(74)

“That’s sexist.” It was rare for Bikram to rebuke their grandfather.

“I’m not sexist. If she’d wanted the farm, I would have encouraged her,” Andrés growled.

“You didn’t expect it of her, though.”

“Because daughters go off and start their own families. Sons stay with you. They build with you.” His grandpa jabbed his thumb at Jas. “I built all this for my boy. And he threw it all away.”

“Grandpa.” Bikram shook his head. “He chose to enlist. You can’t be mad at him forever for picking a different profession.”

“I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about after he was done.”

Jas stirred, weary of being discussed like he wasn’t in the room. “What about after I was done with the military?”

“You were injured. You should have come home and let us take care of you, let this land take care of you. Instead, you chose to go live with a man who was of no relation to any of us. Blood is thicker than water, but you chose Hardeep Arora over me. The family of the man that abandoned my father? You abandoned me and this land to go live with him?”

The tense silence returned, but only for a moment. “You know, that saying is misused in modern times,” Katrina said, her calm, reasonable voice a much-needed break.

Andrés shook his head. “What?”

“The whole phrase goes, the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb. People shorten it to mean that kin is stronger than all else, but the original meaning is that the bond between nonfamily members can actually be stronger than family.”

“What on earth does that have to do with anything?”

Katrina grimaced. “Sorry. It seemed relevant.”

Andres exhaled in a great rush. “I think it’s time I go. This is useless.” His shoulders drooped. “Jasvinder, you can do whatever you want. Of course, I’ll never disown you. Come to the parade, don’t come to the parade. I’ll love you, even though you don’t want me.”

Jas clutched his glass. “I can’t.”

“Yeah, yeah. Like I said, if you don’t want to, fine.”

Jas couldn’t take this anymore. “I didn’t say I don’t want to come. I said, I can’t.”

Everyone turned to him.

“What does that mean? Why can’t you?” Andres asked.

“I can’t . . .” The rest of the words stuck there, as they always did.

I can’t because I am physically incapable of doing this thing you ask.

I can’t because I’m not the man you used to know.

I can’t because even though I look mostly the same, my brain is different now, and this thing you’re asking of me, this simple, tiny thing that anyone else could do, will hurt me.

He swallowed, and tasted his self-disgust.

“Jas, it’s okay,” Katrina finally said, her voice soft.

It wasn’t okay. Jas placed his napkin over his empty plate. He considered leaving, which was the safest option, but his mom, his brother, his grandfather. Katrina. All of them were looking at him with concern, even his grandpa. Jas touched the scarred wooden table. His great-grandfather had built it.

Jas had run away from this place, but deep down, he’d always been secure in the knowledge he could return someday. Except, if he didn’t talk now, he might not get to come back, never feel this place that was heart-wrenchingly his. The place where his roots ran deep, even though he had no desire to farm.

Tell them. He forced the words out past the constriction in his throat. They came in a rush. “I can’t come to the parade because big crowds and loud places are difficult for me since I was in Iraq. If there are fireworks or a car backfires, I think they’re gunshots. If I get too hot, I feel like I’m in the desert. I . . . I can’t.”

Tara inhaled, and Katrina shifted closer to him. She placed her hand over his.

His heart pounded, so loud it hurt his ears. “You have no idea—” His voice cracked. Don’t think about it. Put it back. Bury it deep. Only it was out now, and he couldn’t. “You only know what happened in the trial. You think that was the only terrible thing I saw there? You think I walked away fine?”

Andres dashed the back of his hand over his eyes. “You didn’t tell us. How could we know what you don’t tell us?”

Jas’s inherent sense of fairness strangled his resentment back. He hadn’t told his family anything. He hadn’t wanted to tell anyone anything. No civilian could truly understand.

“You could have come back here, after. We would have taken care of you.”

“I couldn’t come back here, to this place that had stayed the same, when I wasn’t the same person anymore. It hurts, to see all the stuff that was familiar. It hurts to see the things that have changed, the things I wasn’t around for.” The words were falling faster out of his mouth, like a wound had been lanced. This was a high, to have this drained out of him. He’d come down off this high later, but for now, he’d take this. The euphoria of unburdening himself numbed the pain of recalling it.

Jas raked his hand through his hair. “Hardeep heard what happened through the grapevine. He offered me a job out of pity, so I could escape. It’s not that I hate this farm or what you built. I love it. It’s just not for me to claim. It wasn’t then, but it especially isn’t now.”