You Have Us... Always.

Chapter 42- Limits.

"Hebben we aanwijzingen?"

"Alleen het wapen."

"Is dat alles?"

Is that it?

She sat back into the couch cushions satisfied, she understood that part.

Zach held her not-even-sore-anymore wrist and turned it over, inspecting it, like Brayden had when she first came into the living room.

The Dutch detective show he loved so much was playing and only one person in the room was paying attention to it, and she didn't even understand it.

Brynn narrowed her eyes at the television screen, doing her best to ignore Zach's prodding fingers, and analysed the scene like the detective-man was doing. She didn't understand.

"I don't understand, I thought the sister was killed," she turned to Zach, lips pursed confusedly. "Why is the brother dead?"

Zach looked up from her wrist, a crease forming momentarily between his eyebrows before he looked at the television.

"Maar wie kan het dan gedaan hebben?" the detective-man said. Zach's eyebrows unfurled in understanding, "the sister did it."

Brynn gasped softly, "but she loved him!"

Zach's eyes softened and he grinned, "you'll have to keep watching to find out more." He gently put down her hand after inspecting
Callan's work, seemingly satisfied, whilst Brynn winced. She only knew that because she asked Brayden before when Zach left the room to get his own coca cola. She didn't think she could keep up anymore.

However, she did try. Her focus never strayed from the big television screen, except maybe the occasional peek at the twinkly lights that adorned the massive Christmas tree that was in front of the even bigger living room windows. The sight always made her stomach twist in excitement. Christmas was next week.

Nothing surpassed the amount of elation that Brynn held within her when she thought about the Christmas holidays here, with her family.

With Milo, weeks off for the Christmas holiday meant nothing but torment. Weeks, days, hours and seconds of harrowing torture that seemed to never end.

And she remembered the worst of it; it wasn't the hours of verbal abuse, nor the hours and hours of finger crawling actions. It was the silence that encased the entire house when Milo had passed out in his room, or in the living room. A cold, empty silence that made everything in Milo's house scarier.

Looking at the sparkling lights, a particularly bright one beamed into her eyes, and she was brought back to her first Christmas with Milo.

Sat in his living room in the pitch black, in front of the run down chimney waiting for the Father Christmas to come because she had been so good this year and she so wanted her mum back.

She missed her cuddles, she missed her kisses and she missed her laugh that used to take up every crevice of their home each and everyday. The voice that used to wake her up, the sneaky smile she gave when they'd share a sugary treat in the dead of night on Christmas Eve, the fingers that used to trace the palms of her hands when she couldn't sleep.

Milo's fingers weren't like her mum's fingers.

She remembered pulling her tattered pyjama bottoms that she'd grown out of a few months ago down, trying to make them reach her ice cold heels. She hoped that she'd get bigger pyjamas for Christmas.

Although she was okay with just getting her mum.

And she waited and waited ages and ages, until sunlight beamed through the crooked, stained blinds and hit her eyes. She had shot up, letting go of the bottom of her pants in favor of grasping the carpeted floor to help herself up.