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Chapter 84

Maria III

The day of my family's summer dinner was when I realized Lia wasn't just my soulmate. She was my brother's too.

That was also the day that everything started to fall apart.

I woke up that day, missing my dad. It happened less and less these days, and that scared me. I called Lia and asked her to come to my family's dinner. I knew I could probably convince Lana to come, but I felt sad, and I wanted Lia around.

As the house staff got my house ready for dinner, I decided to sneak into my dad's study.

I went down the servant staircase and through the false wall like I usually did and tiptoed down the stairs to his desk. I crawled underneath and felt the floorboards for the loose one. Then used a bobby pin I had in my hair to pry it off the floor. I picked up the stack of pictures he had and leafed through them, my eyes watering as I did. Then I saw it, sticking out of the corner, hidden underneath some filing folders and a rusty safety deposit box—a journal.

'I thought I had gone through everything in here,' I thought to myself and bent over, sticking my hand into the hole in the floor. It was stuck. I wiggled it gently to try to coax it out. I didn't want to damage the leather cover. Finally, it came loose.

It looked like all of my dad's other journals. He had given me most of them when he was diagnosed. I put the floorboard back in its place, sat at his desk, opened it up, and started reading it.

It was strange. In this journal, my father talked a lot about the coffee business. Plans he apparently had for it—plans he never told us about. Then he spoke a lot about Robbie. I flipped through it, trying to find myself. I was so focused I didn't hear my brother open the door.

"What are you doing? How did you even get in here?" He asked, and my head snapped up. I closed the journal quickly.

"I was just reading."

"You were reading? Since when do you read?" he asked, incredulously.

"I like some books," I said, annoyed.

"Okay," He said slowly, not expecting me to respond so aggressively, "What book were you reading?"

He came up to me, and I shoved the journal onto my lap, hiding it beneath the desk.

I wasn't fast enough.

"Wait, is that one of Dad's journals? Where did you find that?" He asked. His green eyes narrowed.

"On a bookshelf," I lied.

"Liar," He said, frowning. "Well, let's read it together," he said, pulling up another chair.

"Aren't you with Abigail? It's rude to ignore your guests. What would Misses Manners say?" I asked.

"Abigail will be fine," he said dismissively. "Come on, we had fun reading the other ones; read it out loud."

I didn't want to. The whole journal sounded very much out of character; Dad spoke about the business as if it was our family's destiny. As if it was his life's opus.

It just seemed so—weird.

Dad hated the business. He would tell me all the time that I could give it a try when he was gone, but that if I didn't like it to just sell it and 'damn whatever your grandparents say.'

Robbie never received his 'damn the business' speeches or his rants against bureaucracy; Those were given on our daddy-daughter dates when he tried to make me feel better about whatever nasty thing my grandmother said to me. He would say working for my grandparents was kafkaesque. I had no clue what that meant, but it sounded terrible.

"Leave me alone, Robbie," I said, pursing my lips.

"No."

We stared at each other for a moment before I jumped out of my seat. It took Robbie a second to react before he ran after me. That was all the time I needed to sprint around a corner and duck into an old servant's closet that no one knew about except for Darla and me.

The door blended in with the wall, and you had to press it in just the right place for it to open up. Darla used the space to store extra cleaning supplies when she bought them in bulk. There was also an old refrigerator she and I put in. She used it to hide leftovers she didn't want the other staff to take. I heard Robbie walk by and mutter, "what the hell?" When he couldn't find me.

I waited until I was sure he was back in his room before running up to mine and locking the door behind me.

Lying down in my bed, I read half of the journal, stopping only because Lia called to say she was outside. Then I hid it. It was definitely odd. I found the pages where he talked about me. My dad liked to call me his little palm warbler.

It was this cute yellow bird I was obsessed with when I was little. We would see whenever our parents took us birdwatching. It was small and had a cute yellow butt it would flick up and down. They were also known as butter butts, and I found that name hilarious as a kid.

I would draw pictures of it for my dad, and he would hang them in his office.

In the journal, he called me his little pine warbler. This other bird, that looked similar. If I pointed out this mistake to Robbie, he would say it was a typo, that he was probably on medication and confused. I knew this wasn't true. My dad wouldn't make that mistake.

Robbie mentioned the journal again when I was introducing Lia to everyone. He was so persistent. I gave him the runaround and played dumb. Then he did the strangest thing. He grabbed Lia's arm and gave her the most intense look. They had this odd moment where they looked at each other and had this silent conversation with their eyes.

When the fuck did this happen? I thought to myself.

I felt a wave of jealousy.

Lia was my friend.

I looked up to see that Abigail was just as confused and bothered.

The rest of the dinner was a disaster. My grandmother was awful to Lia. It was so embarrassing. I was so afraid she would decide that she didn't want to be friends with me anymore. Then Robbie and I decided to butt heads again at dinner. Finally, in a stroke of genius, Lia faked food poisoning and got us out of dinner.

When we were back in my room, I decided I would give her my journal. Robbie would never find it if she had it, and I trusted her to keep it safe. I needed to figure out what the hell that journal meant. I needed time with it.

That night Robbie decided to hang out with us, and it felt like old times.

Like back when we were kids when he would say I was his best friend, and we did fun things like treasure hunts and sleepovers on the trampoline with Lana.

I left them to go to the bathroom and became distracted with the journal again. There was a paper in it with random numbers. It wasn't even in his handwriting. I tucked that paper into an old algebra book I had from after school tutoring before slipping the book back into Lia's bag.

Hours later, when I went back downstairs, they had fallen asleep. Something in my heart shifted. I usually got jealous when I saw my brother with Lia.

Lia was mine.

I didn't want to share her with Robbie.

I looked down at them. Robbie and Lia slept with their hands clasped together and their noses touching.

I walked over to Robbie to wake him up.

The light from my phone shined on their faces. Robbie winced in his sleep, and Lia buried her face in his neck. His hand came up to shield her face from the light.

I winced and dimmed the light on my phone, and his faced relaxed. He pressed his lips to the top of Lia's head and stroked her hair before becoming still again.

I took a step back. When had this happened? How had I not noticed?

I frowned and reached out to shake my brother's shoulder.

"Robbie," I whispered. 'Get off, my friend!' I felt like yelling.

He lifted his head slightly, drunk with sleep. Confused, he looked down at Lia.

'Exactly,' I thought, thinking he would realize what was going on and be appalled with his actions.

Instead, he stroked her cheek with the back of his hand, kissed her nose, and went back to sleep.

I thought I knew my brother well. Robbie never acted like this with any girls. He never was tender with Abigail.

Unfortunately, I knew they were active in bed. Still, Abigail never slept over, and he seemed impassive with her otherwise. The most I'd seen him do was hold her hand or begrudgingly put his arm around her shoulder.

Maybe he didn't realize what he was doing. Perhaps it was just because he was under the influence of sleep. If there had been a full moon, I would have blamed it on that too.

Still, something warmed in my heart, and I suddenly felt very protective of them. Lia shivered. Robbie brought her close, but I could tell she was still cold.

I didn't want this moment to end for them. I ran inside, grabbed a blanket from the linen closet, and came back out. I gently draped it over them.

As I walked back into the house, I tried to understand what was happening and place a timestamp on when this started.

Was it the day we ran together? I knew my brother found her attractive, but I thought it was just a physical thing. After all, he found many girls attractive. Plus, he and Lia always seemed so annoyed with each other.

I realized suddenly that she always took the time to put my brother in his place, and whenever she did, he listened; he actually changed. I started thinking about how much he doted over her. He asked me about her all the time. I realized this was more than an infatuation. This was more than my brother trying to put another notch on his bedpost.

My heart stumbled over itself. Darla was right.

I observed their mating dance from a distance. Despite being a great listener, Lia never really talked about herself. She would tell you precisely what she thought if you asked, but that was the key, you had to ask.

After everything that transpired with my grandparents, I knew it would come to a quick end. I also knew their breakup would ruin Robbie. Anybody who looked at them could tell they loved each other. Still, I rather have him gutted and heartbroken than not at all.

I had been suspicious of my grandparents ever since I found the journal. After everything that happened to Lia, my suspicion grew.

I didn't trust them. I didn't believe my grandparents were above hurting someone to get what they wanted. I had a feeling they were behind what happened to my father. I could not let that happen to my brother.

I didn't know how or if I would be able to fix this, but for now, I just needed to know they were both safe.

When the dance was over. After I won 'Dance Queen' and finished my dance with Jesse, I ran outside to look for Robbie or Lia.

As I stepped outside, I saw a figure leaning against a car. "Robbie?" I asked, getting closer and realizing it was indeed my little brother.

He looked as broken as he did when he returned from the hospital after my dad's accident. His hair looked like he had run his fingers through it too many times. His eyes were red-rimmed. He was smoking a blunt, holding it in that unusual way he did between his middle and index finger as if it were a regular cigarette.

"What are you doing out here?"

He shrugged.

"I'm sorry, Robbie," I said, my eyes welling up with tears.

"Yeah, I'm not done with you," He said, his mouth was drawn in a hard line.

"What?"

"Something is going on. Whatever it is, I know you know. I know Lia was lying to me. If you don't want to tell me that's fine, I'll figure it out on my own."

I looked at him, my eyes wide.

"I'm going to fix this, whatever this is," He said after taking a long drag.

"How?" I asked, looking at him. With these heels, I was exactly his height. It reminded me of when we were little. I was taller than him until he hit his growth spurt in 8th grade. He was my height by the end of the year, and by his freshman year, he would call me shortcake. The nickname I teased him with when we were kids.

He shrugged, "I don't know yet, but I am."

He took another long drag and then threw the blunt on the ground. "I have to catch a plane." He said while exhaling.

"How long is your trip?"

"A month? Two?"

"That's a long time. I'll visit."

"Yeah, actually, can you do me a favor?" he asked, running a hand through his hair.

I nodded, "anything,"

"Really anything? Fine, tell me what's going on." He said, and I pressed my lips together. He let out a wry laugh and shook his head.

"Go to Miami, stay with her. She needs friends. You, Nicole. See if you can take Lana."

"Okay, but so do you," I said slowly, worried about him going off alone to do my grandparent's bidding.

"I'm not very happy with you right now, big sister," He said, and I felt a knot in my throat. His eyes softened. "I'll call you," He added, his voice low before he came off the hood of the car and went to get inside.

I stood in the parking lot until I saw him drive away and then made my way back into the dance. 

********** SECOND BOOK IS OUT TITLED: FORGET ME***************************

This is the last chapter of this book. This book will have a second part that I am writing/editing at the moment. It will be uploaded as a separate book. 

The title is pending (because I am terrible with titles) I will be posting the second book soon. 

In the meantime, I know a lot of you guys have requested a chapter in Robbie's POV. I can do two or three of your choosing.  Whichever chapters I get the most requests for. Let me know as a comment. 

Disclaimer: I don't think he will be a regular POV. I wanted to keep these books narrated from a female perspective. 

I wanted to thank everyone for reading this, again. I feel like I can't say it enough. Thank you, thank you. You guys are amazing! ❤️❤️❤️❤️