Gracious

Chapter 8

A/N - it's been a while...

(Literally had to go and jog my memory of the last chapter 😭)

TW- scenes some may find upsetting ❤️

~~~

Perseverance.

Carrying on even though everything was going to shit.

It'd been less than twenty-four hours since I freaked out in the backseat of my car with Cairo, and I was already back in parent-mode.

I didn't have time to dwell on shit.

After a restless night I'd gotten up and made sure all the boys were ready for school, had eaten, brushed their teeth, all of that; only did I let myself breathe when I got back home from dropping them all off. And I slept for the entirety of the school day, only crawling out of my slumber when it was time to collect the boys; for once I had a little more energy in my system, I guess I was exhausted from the state I was in last night.

"I've got the popcorn, you bring the chocolate!", Xavier ran into the kitchen with Alexander hot on his tail, the pair of them in matching grey sweats and black T-shirts.

"You're addicted", Alexander shook his head, grabbing two chocolate bars nonetheless, "Zane, are you coming?".

"Yeah, Scott set up Monsters Inc", Xavier grinned, a mouth full of popcorn, "we're all waiting".

"Apart from Chase", Alexander chimed in, ripping open a bar and moving towards the doorway.

"Where's Chase?", I frowned, taking a sip of my coffee- not as good as Cairo's.

"We dunno", they said simultaneously and I nodded slowly.

"Go and start the film, I'll come in soon", I told them and they listened, scurrying from the room as if it was on fire.

Chase excluding himself was both common and uncommon: I knew he preferred quiet and our brothers were anything but, but when he shut himself away like this, I worried about him. He'd not spoken a word on the way home from school, nor had he eaten anything when we got in.

So I made it my mission to make sure he was okay.

~

It didn't take a genius to figure out where my 11 year old brother would be, and from I realised that his bedroom was empty, I knew exactly where he was.

The library room.

I'd never met someone with such a love for reading, and it was when I was watching Chase that I thanked everything that one of us was gonna go somewhere in life, no offence to my brothers. Chase always had a book with him, just like Xavier's addiction to popcorn, he was inseparable with words on paper.

I slipped inside of the room, peering around after I closed the wooden doors behind me. My brother was sitting on the floor, legs crossed, in between two shelves with a heap of books stacked beside him. It appeared that he hadn't heard me come in, or he was just ignoring me. I approached him, purposely trying to make my footsteps louder in an attempt to not startle him, when he glanced up suddenly I knew I'd failed.

"Hey", I smiled, lowering myself onto the ground and leaned my back against the shelf to his left, "you okay?".

He nodded, his eyes lingering on my lips as I spoke, only then did I notice his hearing aids on the floor beside him. I'd been 12 when our father had fired that fucking gun beside my brother's head, when his screaming filled my ears, when our mother noticed he wasn't responding to conversation or keeping up when we spoke.