What Isn’t Mine, I Don’t Want Chapter 03

What Isn’t Mine, I Don’t Want Chapter 03

His face went all the way cold.

“She doesn’t know any better. Does that mean you don’t either?”

“And here I was thinking you’d been good about it, planning to move you tomorrow no matter what, and you pull this?”

“Nora, I haven’t let you go without these years. I’ve given you plenty of money, haven’t I?”

“So what exactly are you so desperate about?”

My pupils shrank. I stared at him, not believing it.

“So you think I’m in a hurry to come home for the money?”

My brother had found me the year my mom and dad died.

I’d lost everything all at once.

And then forced myself through both funerals alone, wrung out body and soul.

At my lowest, when I had nothing, he showed up like a savior out of nowhere.

Eyes rimmed red, he told me the truth. I was the Sinclairs’ daughter.

“Nora, come back with me. Mom and Dad are waiting for you.”

“It’s been so hard for you here. How did you even get through these years…”

I weighed seventy pounds then.

He pulled my half-starved body into his arms.

His hands shook. His voice came out raw.

“I’m sorry. I came too late. I let you suffer all this.”

I stood there frozen, not knowing what to do with my hands.

My brother was so tall. So put together.

When he held me, I felt like I was the one dirtying him.

I felt so small, and still I couldn’t hold back the rush of it, the pull of blood, of knowing he was mine.

So I made him my salvation, and I went back to New York with him.

But he didn’t take me home.

He set me up in a little place out on the edge of the city.

“The thing is, we already have another daughter. She doesn’t want you back. She cried, screamed, threatened to throw herself off the roof.”

“Just wait a little, Nora. Let me get her ready for it.”

To smooth things over, he brought Mom to meet me.

The elegant woman teared up the second she saw me.

“Nora… look how grown you are. I’m so sorry, baby!”

Like my brother, she held me, her voice gone hoarse with the hurt of it.

“Just wait a little longer. I’ll talk Sienna around, I promise!”

I hugged her back, careful, like she might break.

“Okay. I’ll wait.”

Relieved, she smoothed my hair and pulled a bank card from her pocket.

“Spend whatever you want. You can’t come home yet, but you’ll be treated exactly the same as Sienna!”

I tried to push it back, flustered by it all. She forced the card into my pocket.

“All right, I’ve been out too long. Sienna will get suspicious.”

“I’ll come see you again, have a meal with you. Okay?”

I nodded hard. “Okay. Thank you, Mom!”

That little wait turned into three years.

In those three years, the second I brought up coming home, my brother would sigh.

“Let’s talk about it in a few days.”

At first he was nice about it.

Later, once he saw I had no temper, that I’d never throw fits the way Sienna did, he got impatient.

“It’s not like you’re short on anything. Why do you have to come home right now?”

“Do you know how much pressure I’m under just sneaking out to see you? Sienna’s about to find out.”

I couldn’t understand it.

“Coming home to my own family, why do I need her permission?”

“Mom only ever visits me on the sly. Am I the Sinclairs’ daughter or not?”

His face darkened.

“You’re my real sister. Of course you’re a Sinclair.”

“But we care about Sienna too. Are we supposed to just watch her jump?”

I went quiet.

Seeing me upset, he gripped my hand, like there was nothing else for it.

“Don’t worry. You’ll get to come back eventually.”

“When Sienna lets up, I’ll have you two meet first. Try to become friends with her.”

“Once you’re close, she’ll come around to you on her own.”

I never once imagined that coming home to my own family would have this many walls in the way.

That was the first time in New York I missed home. Missed my mom and dad.

And now, I’d cut the thought of the Sinclairs out completely.