Team NYU? Cute… They All Secretly Joined Team Delilah Chapter 08

Team NYU? Cute… They All Secretly Joined Team Delilah Chapter 08

Andrew did not follow me after that.

Evelyn walked beside me for a long time before asking quietly, “Are you okay?”

I nodded.

“I’m fine.”

But I was not really fine.

Sometimes a heart could hurt so much that everything inside it simply went quiet.

My phone kept vibrating.

Andrew sent message after message.

“Jade, I’ll get the necklace back.”

“Jade, I was wrong.”

“Please answer the phone, okay?”

I did not open any of them.

The next day, they returned to New York.

It was already dark when Andrew got home.

He pushed open the door to my room.

The room was very quiet.

He stood in the doorway for a long time before slowly walking inside.

An old framed photo lay facedown on the desk.

It had been taken on my tenth birthday.

Our parents had not been gone for long, and my eyes were still swollen from crying.

Andrew stood behind me with one hand resting awkwardly on my shoulder.

On the back of the photo were words I had written as a child.

Andrew promised he’d spend every birthday with me from now on.

Andrew stared at the crooked handwriting, and his fingers trembled.

He opened a drawer and found a neatly organized stack of documents.

Copies of his state ID, bank paperwork, and medical checkup records had all been sorted into separate clear folders.

A sticky note was attached to the outside.

Andrew Schmidt’s important documents. Don’t lose them again.

He had always believed he was the one taking care of me.

Only then did he realize I had been helping hold our broken family together too.

I remembered his stomach problems, where he kept his documents, and how he could never sleep the night before our parents’ death anniversary each year.

They were all such small things.

So small that he had never truly noticed them.

Then he opened the bedside drawer.

An old letter lay inside.

The paper had yellowed with age, and his name was written across the sealed envelope.

It was Mom’s handwriting.

Andrew froze.

A long time passed before he slowly opened it.

There were not many words inside.

Mom wrote that if one day she and Dad could not be there to watch us grow up, she hoped Andrew would not force himself to become an adult too soon.

She wrote that Jade was still young and might look spoiled, but what frightened her most was being left behind.

She also wrote that the necklace was meant for Jade, with her name engraved on the back, and that

she hoped Jade would stay safe for the rest of her life.

The final line was written faintly.

Andrew, if your father and I are gone someday, please look after your little sister for us.

By the time Andrew reached that line, all the strength seemed to leave his body.

Late that night, he sent me a very long message.

He said he was wrong.

He said he never should have secretly applied to Columbia without telling me, never should have smashed my phone, and never should have doubted me when I was sick.

Most of all, he never should have given the necklace Mom left me to Delilah.

He said he had simply gotten used to believing I would always be waiting for him at home and that I would always forgive him.

At the end, he wrote, “Jade, give me one more chance, okay?”

The dorm was silent when I finished reading his message.

Dawn was beginning to brighten the sky outside the window.

I stared at the screen for a long time before sending a single reply.!

“I don’t have a brother anymore.”