The Lost Daughter

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

"Hi?" I whisper back to Maia stupidly, my sleep-foggy brain working hard to put together the pieces in front of me.

She begins to fidget, twisting her fingers with the hem of her shirt and fiddling with the long strap of the bag slung over her shoulder in obvious discomfort.

"I was just leaving," she tells me, pointing her thumb behind her in the general direction of the entryway.

My eyebrows furrow together a little, lost and confused as I try to take in the situation and understand it.

"Oh," I respond flatly to fill the silence, my voice unconsciously raising a bit from its whisper. But then all at once, it clicks, and the realization finally dawns on me.

My eyebrows shoot up in shock then, matching my sharp intake of breath as I gasp. "Ohhh." I say again, drawing out the word and biting my bottom lip to keep the out-of-my-depth uncomfortable smile from forming on my face.

Maia seems to be suffering the same problem, chuckling nervously as she moves to play with the end of her ponytail, shuffling her feet as she does. All without an ounce of anything but genuine sweetness in her aura and demeanor.

The movement endears me more to her in that moment, despite the awkward circumstances, and reminds me of why I liked her so much much when I met her.

Zeus yawns in my arms where he's cuddled against my chest, snapping the both of us back to the situation.

"Are you sure you want to leave?" I ask her, lowering my voice back down to a just a breath. "You don't have to go,"

She looks over her shoulder for a moment at the door she shut closed behind her, a look I don't catch crossing her face before she turns back to me.

"I should," she tells me simply.

I nod and smile at her in understanding, tilting my head down the hallway and we fall into step together towards the stairs.

"Are you going to the party tonight?" I ask her, raising my voice once we're out of range of the bedrooms.

She turns her head to me as we take our first steps down towards the front doors. "Party?"

"Yeah," I tell her, my feet reaching the sparkling marble floor of the foyer. "Just some guy from our school is throwing it."

She casts a brief look over her shoulder again, back up the stairs where we came from, her eyebrows set low over her pretty brown eyes in a look that shouts confliction.

She opens her mouth to say something, what looks like denial and apology on her lips, but I interrupt what I think she's about to say to add, "Don't worry about Wes, I'm inviting you."

And I mean it, I truly do. In the weeks since I've been here, besides my brothers—and Jackson, in his own way—Maia has been one of the only people I've felt both a connection to and someone genuine in their disposition.

It might be cheating a bit to have my first friend already be a friend of my brother's, and something else to my twin, but it's clear I need that sort of help in this area.

She looks to be deliberating for a few moments as we stand together by the huge front doors, but she finally sucks in a big breath to tell me, "I might be working at my sister's store tonight, but I'll let you know?" Her voice rises at the end in a hopeful sort of question, bright and bubbly to match her personality. It brings an easy smile to my face.

For the first time since I got it, I'm able to recite my new phone number to someone. And it's exciting to see as she taps it into her phone. Now, I'll have something else to do on it besides taking endless photos of the puppies and then texting them to Wyatt—who seems to enjoy them the most.