What Isn’t Mine, I Don’t Want Chapter 02

What Isn’t Mine, I Don’t Want Chapter 02

The words landed, and my brother’s head came up, surprised.

He knew how badly I wanted to move downtown, how badly I wanted to be close.

So when I stepped in to smooth it over, his eyes filled with guilt and a kind of ache.

“Let’s keep playing,” he said.

“This round Nora goes first.”

I didn’t say anything for a while. The girl beside me bumped my arm.

“Go on, your brother’s giving you the opening. You’ve got this one.”

I held up five fingers and looked at Sienna.

“I’ve watched the sun come up over the mountains at four in the morning.”

The whole room played along with little sighs of regret.

Sienna rolled her eyes and folded a finger.

Then, like she couldn’t wait.

“My family flew to Iceland to see the northern lights.”

I folded a finger too, my face unmoved, and said it slow.

“I once raised a three-hundred-pound hog.”

She wrinkled her nose in disgust.

“There’s a star up there that’s mine. Mom had it named for my birthday.”

I lowered my lashes, voice flat.

“I planned both my parents’ funerals by myself.”

She froze for a second, then bit out.

“I was at charity galas at eighteen, representing the whole family!”

The room went silent.

Somewhere along the way the game had become just the two of us.

I didn’t pull back, didn’t dodge. Two fingers left, no feeling in my voice.

“At my thinnest, I weighed seventy pounds.”

Sienna wasn’t about to back down, pressing in step by step.

“I’ve got twenty million in savings, and three beachfront houses!”

That she’d even say that meant she was out of better brags.

I let the corner of my mouth tug up.

“I don’t have a home.”

She folded her last finger and went to say something more.

Then realized she’d already lost. Her face darkened.

But just as she reached for her glass, my brother caught her hand.

“I’ll drink this one for you.”

He lifted the glass and drained it.

Then he walked over to me, his face dark, and pulled me out of the room.

“Why would you say all that? Are you playing the victim?”

“I know you had it rough out in the country, but tonight isn’t the place to fish for sympathy!”

My heart sank. Maybe it was the wine, maybe it was how unfair it all was.

Either way, everything I’d been holding down finally broke open.

“Sienna brags and it’s fine. I talk about my own life and that’s playing the victim?”

“Could you possibly favor her any more?”