LAILAH #2
“Oh, good morning. I didn’t think anyone would be up so early,” he said, sitting next to his sister.
“So, are you going to introduce me to your girlfriend?” Kayley asked, her keen brown eyes looking over at me.
Brayden sighed as he poured himself some coffee. I wasn’t sure what caught me off guard more—that she assumed I was his girlfriend or that Brayden wasn’t denying it.
“Kayley, meet Lailah. She is a good friend of ours. Lailah, meet Kayley, one of my little sisters.”
“So, she isn’t your girlfriend? You made such a fuss about getting back so late and not knowing if she had stayed up last night waiting that I just assumed.”
“Kayley,” Brayden groaned, hiding his face in his hands, not looking at me.
“This is why I’m glad that I don’t have siblings that bother with my personal life,” Hudson interjected, pulling the attention away from Brayden.
“As a fellow younger sibling, Kayley is only doing her sisterly duty in embarrassing Brayden,” Parker said with a wide grin.
“What the hell is the pint-sized menace doing here?” Micah interrupted.
“Micah,” Kayley said, jumping up from her seat and racing over to hug him.
I sat stunned, watching Micah hug her back with a hint of a smile on his face.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen him happy to see anyone before.
Though I had to admit, even the ghost of a smile transformed his face into something breathtaking.
Micah caught me watching the exchange, and the warmth fell from his features, shuttered behind the cool blank expression he normally had.
“What the fuck did you do this time?” Micah asked, holding her away from him.
“Language,” Brayden snapped.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Young virgin ears present, my bad,” Micah grumbled.
Kayley rolled her eyes and looked back at her brother. “Seriously, it's not like I haven’t heard it all before. Even some of the teachers swear around us. I’m not a little kid anymore.”
“Oh, so ending up in jail has made you an adult now, has it?” Brayden asked, glaring at her.
Micah spun Kayley back to face him as he scowled at her. “What the hell is he going on about? Did you really land yourself in jail? I will spank you myself if you pulled some crazy stunt.”
Now there was the Micah I knew well; the disapproving look she was getting that I had become well accustomed to.
“I was just defending myself. I wasn’t going to let that snobby bitch talk about my family that way.”
“Explain,” Micah bit out.
“This girl at my school found out about Michael and said that the reason I was sent to boarding school so young was to keep Mom from killing me too. That Mom wasn’t stable, and she’s the reason that Michael killed himself.”
Everyone in the room froze at her words. I flicked my gaze over to see Brayden’s reaction. The shame and hurt that washed over his face told me there was more to this story. Kayley started to cry, and Micah pulled her against him and let her cry it out.
“Goodness, what happened here?” Beth asked, walking in with Cami.
“Just a typical day in the Dolton household,” Brayden said as he passed Beth on the way out of the dining room.
I was torn whether to follow after him or to worry about his sister. Hudson touched my elbow and gave me a look that made the choice for me. Pushing my chair back, I hurried after Brayden. I really wasn’t sure where he would run off to when he was upset. My instinct was to try his room.
When I knocked on the door, I didn’t hear a response, so I opened it and peeked inside.
Empty. Then I remembered seeing a library on the first level and headed off in hopes he would be there.
When I reached the library, one of the wooden sliding doors was partially open, and I could see Brayden hunched over in an armchair.
I slipped into the room and closed the door the rest of the way.
Brayden looked up at me with tears shining in his eyes.
Seeing him so vulnerable made my heart break as I walked over to him.
I wrapped my arms around him, holding him close, his head resting on my chest as he wrapped his arms around my waist, pulling me onto his lap.
With anyone else, it would feel far too forward, or I’d worry that they would take advantage, but this was Brayden.
Not wanting to push him to talk, I just held him and showed him I was there for him.
Brayden had been my safe place through all this, and I wanted to be that for him.
“Michael was my older brother,” Brayden said, breaking the silence.
“We were eighteen months apart, and we were inseparable. He was the other half of me, but he always struggled with some mental health issues. He was diagnosed with bipolar disorder at the age of ten. His only dream in life was to be the next Earth Elementi. He talked to my uncle incessantly about it.”
Brayden pulled back to tuck me under his chin as he continued.
“Michael and my father had many arguments, being so similar, with strong opinions and even stronger tempers. My father knew that the chances of Michael becoming the next Earth Elementi were five to one, so he didn’t want my brother pinning all his hopes on that one thing.
He tried to get him interested in the business side of things, but nothing would deter him.
When his thirteenth birthday came and passed with no powers, he became despondent and inconsolable. ”
“The final straw was when I turned thirteen and inherited the earth element. Michael wanted nothing to do with me after that, telling me that I stole everything from him. We had to have him admitted into a mental health facility because he kept trying to kill himself. He made it another two years before he finally managed to find a way to end his life. He wrote me a note telling me that if he couldn’t be an Elementi Warrior, then he didn’t want to exist in the world, couldn’t watch me have what he longed for.
After that, my mother became depressed and started to do odd things trying to keep us safe.
It became too hard to be around the house, so Micah and I moved into this house a year early with the other guys and started training as Elementi Warriors.
As you can see, that has worked out well for us. ”