You Have Us... Always.

Chapter 44- Christmas.

"You look just like him," she muttered, sleepily.

Zayne hummed, "it's been said."

"Did he love us?"

There was a pause.

Then, "Brynn, if I ever had any certainty about anything in this life, it would be for his love for us, for you. He would have moved oceans, changed continents for us, of that I have no doubt," Zayne said seriously, surely, firmly. "He was a good man."

Brynn's breathing was almost at normal pace as she nodded numbly against his chest.

"I love him," she stated softly.

Zayne squeezed her harder. "He loves you infinitely."

She laughed and sobbed at the same time, then gradually lifted her head up to look at him properly.

"I love you, too."

For the first time ever, Zayne's eyes softened to such an extent, Brynn believed that the man holding her was not her eldest brother.

He forced her head back down under his chin and rocked them slowly.

"I love you infinitely, too."

---

Sometimes Brynn wondered if her brothers loved their mother as much as Brynn did.

If her love felt the same for them as it did for her. If they missed her like Brynn did.

Because her mother's love always made her feel warm. Had it made her brothers feel warm, too? Did they feel her love as Brynn had done so long ago? 

Because she must've loved them. How could she not have done? She must have loved them as much as Brynn did.

Brynn sighed into Zayne's shirt and leant her cheek against the soft material, vaguely acknowledging that this is the first time, the only time, she has seen Zayne in anything but a suit.

She scrunched her eyebrows, slowly turning her head so that her other cheek leant against the shirt and so she could look into the empty adjacent playroom, to the same piano set that she had just watched in the video. 

Except, this one didn't have her father sitting behind it, looking on to the rest of the room, to his children around the room. To his wife, recording aforementioned children. 

Because who else could it have been recording? Who else would have wanted to document their family life and the sanctity that their home used to have?

Brynn looked to the spot where her mum would have been sitting to make that recording. She envisioned it in detail, the way her mum would have been sitting. The way she used to when it was Christmas Day, when they had sleepovers in living room, when she messed up their new couch delivery order day and got rid of their old one too soon; on her knees, shins tucked neatly and toes curled up in thick socks because she always had cold feet.

She envisioned the blinding smile on her face as she spoke to her children from behind the lens.

All of her children.

The way crinkles probably encased the sides of her eyes and smile lines intensified as she gave them a warm look and Brynn is hit with an intense feeling of utter longing.

She missed her mum's tender looks. Her unwavering smile. Her hair that Brynn never saw in anything other than a messy bun. Her shiny jewellery that she let Brynn try whenever she was caught looking too long at them. Her voice which Brynn hadn't heard in so long. Her clothes. Her.