𝐎𝐮𝐫 𝐋𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐒𝐞𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐭 | 𝐁𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝟎𝟐

𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝟐𝟓

BREE

“What are you doing?” Rose asks as soon as she steps into my room and sees the mess I made.

I decided to deep clean my closet and ended up finding things I haven’t seen in years. Like albums, birthday cards, old drawings.

“I’ll clean it,” I say as Rose’s eyes keep widening seeing the mess.

“Are you sure? I can help,”

I nod, “I will. But look, I found so many things.”

Rose carefully makes her way to me and sits beside me as I show her all the cards she made for my birthday over the years.

“Oh my God, you have every one of those cards,”

“Of course, I do.”

Rose was my first genuine friend who actually wanted to be my friend and not because ‘I went through so much’. From day one, Rose started acting like my guardian, always holding my hand whenever we leave the class, buying me food and sharing hers, refusing to let me pay.

I’ve always been happy that I have two brothers. Two strong pillars whom I’ve leaned onto my whole life. But Rose was different. I could lean on her and talk to her about things I wasn’t comfortable talking to my brothers about and Rose always gave me her undivided attention.

“How did your talk with Ryan go?” Rose asks after a while.

“It was good.” I say, a smile taking over my lips, “it was nice.”

Rose smiles softly, “good,”

Our attention wavers when our apartment’s door bell rings.

“That’s probably your boyfriend,” Rose says, getting up, “he just likes to ruin our sweet time together,”

I let out a small laugh as Rose dramatically sighs and leaves the room to open the apartment door.

My eyes catch an old drawing that I drew when I was three.

The portrait isn’t perfect, not like the ones Arzo paints but it contains five stick figures, two tall- our parents- and three short- Ryan, Jack and I. Our parents' stick figures are holding hands while we stand in front of them. All of us are smiling. The scenery indicates a sunny day with clouds in the sky.

When I drew this, I showed it to mom and she was so happy. Jack said I’ll be a famous artist after that drawing- liar- and Ryan smiled too. When I showed it to dad, he gave me a big kiss, hugged me and told me how good the painting was and how he loves me.

I had never expected our beautiful, happy family to get broken the way it did.

My brothers and I coped with what happened in our way. Ryan decided to remember the parts of dad that ruined our family, Jack refused to remember anything about him, meanwhile I remember the moments we were happy. Where dad was the person we had always loved and adored.

“Amore?”

I look up at the sound of that nickname and find Finn standing in front of me, looking around the mess of the room.

I didn’t notice him walk in.

“Love with what you’ve done with the place,” he says, then looks at me with a smile.

I give him a small smile back, “thanks,”

Finn sits down next to me, “so, what is all this?”

“Some things I kept over the years,” I say and hand him the drawing I was holding.