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HOME.
Although it was a four-letter word, it was something that held a lot of emotion in it. It could be used to describe a place, a thing, or even a person that makes you feel safe and brings you comfort. A home is something you miss when you've been away from it for even a short amount of time, something that you will forever hold dear to you.
Braelynn Aviana Forbes has never felt what it means to have a home.
She has lived in a house for most of her life with her family, but it has never felt like home. She has never felt truly comfortable living there, instead, feeling as if she was an intruder in their lives. She felt as if though she wasn't part of the family.
It wasn't their fault. No, her mother and sister had welcomed her with open arms when she was only six years old. Her mother was excited to have another daughter and her sister was ecstatic to have an older sister to look up to. Her biological family may have not wanted her, but her adoptive family sure as hell did.
So no, her mother and sister were not to blame for the fact that she felt like an outcast.
She could only blame herself.
Braelynn was a naturally curious person. If she ever found something interesting, she would become an expert in that thing. Some say it was a good thing, but she only saw it as a curse. Because of her curiosity, Braelynn has always wondered about her biological family. She didn't do anything to actively look for them because she had a new family now and she loved them, but she always had a nagging feeling to learn more about them in the back of her mind.
She lived her life ignoring the feeling to find more about her biological family and instead focused on her own life. She studied hard, got nearly perfect grades and even graduated early. After graduation, she left the only house she's ever truly known in order to travel.
She had been in New Orleans, exploring the city when she got a call from one of her old friends. He had said that her sister had gotten in a car accident and that she was currently in the hospital, not waking up.
As soon as she hung up the call, she had dropped everything. All her plans, all her adventures in order to go and be there for her little sister like she promised she always would be.
Now, she was on her way back to the town in which she was raised, back to her friends and family.
If only she had known those weren't the only things she was going back to.
