Blind Love (Edited)

Chapter 43: The Return

Lauren and Landon were walking from school when she saw an unrecognized car in the driveway. She knew it wasn't her mom's or her dad's. And it definitely wasn't Emileigh's because she didn't have a car.

"Something wrong?" Landon asked beside her.

"There's a car in the drive way which I don't recognize." she answered.

"Maybe it's someone from Santa Barbara?"

"No I don't think so. It would say Santa Barbara on the license plate, and it doesn't. I think it says Pittsburgh."

"You want to go and stop by?"

"No, I'm fine."

"You sure?"

"Yup."

They walked past Lauren's house and they started towards Landon's house. As soon as they had passed, the door opened and someone came out of the house. Landon had a feeling that someone was following them.

"Lauren!" a male voice was heard behind them.

Lauren turned back immediately at the mention of her name. As soon as she turned the three sixty degrees, Lauren froze.

"Come on, baby girl. Aren't you happy to see me?" he said to her, opening his arms to give her a hug.

Lauren remained frozen. It took everything in her to not cry. She couldn't believe what she was seeing. Standing in front of her was the man who had been there since she was born, the one who had helped her through the heartbreak, the one who had just left her like she was nothing to him.

Lauren walked up to him and made the motion of giving him a hug, but at the last moment, she slapped him hard and walked away. She waited until she was inside Landon's house to cry. She hadn't expected Brett to be there. She hadn't expected him to be back at all.

"Lauren...explain to me what happened. It's the only way that I'll understand." Landon said gently.

"That's--my--brother." she said in between sobs.

Landon wrapped her up in his arms before asking her, "Brett?"

"Yeah. He wasn't supposed to ever come back. He was supposed to stay away. He just left."

"But he came back to see you. It should mean something."

"He left me, Landon. He left me as if I were nothing to him. As if I was some person he didn't know, someone he had just seen once or twice. He broke my heart when he left. I don't ever want to see him again. Not after what he did to me.

Family is supposed to stay together. Family is supposed to support each other, never turn their backs on you. They're the only ones that stay when everyone else has left you. And Brett, he---he turned his back on me, and he did what family is never supposed to do. He broke away, he lost my trust."

With that Lauren ran upstairs to Landon's room. She launched herself on the bed and there she let herself cry for everything.

Landon let her go, but it hurt him to see her like that. It was as if he was connected to her and he felt Lauren's pain. He knew that Brett had left her and he knew how much he meant to her before he left, but Landon knew that Lauren still loved him. He meant the same to her maybe even more. She was just hurt that he never wrote to her or told her about her whereabouts.

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Brett stood there rubbing his cheek. That was definitely not the reaction he had expected, especially from his baby sister. He thought that she would have been extremely happy to see him, but the slap in the face was an obvious sign that she wasn't happy to see him. He returned to the house and Kyle was standing in the living room.