Care For Me ✔️

8

She's dead.

After losing so much so young, it brought my brothers closer to each other than ever. After the incident that left nine kids orphans, nine siblings instead of ten, we were taken in by our grandfather, our mothers father. He was a sweet old man that tried his best to comfort and keep up with so many energetic kids, but he was old and frail, mostly our guardian on paper while Zac was our guardian in person.

Sadly, Grandpa died a couple of years later, and I learned back then, everyone dies no matter how much you wish they could stay. They always leave.

After that, chaos seemed to break loose. Zac had just finished his degree, he was in his early twenties and began his fight for custody of the eight of us because, despite acting like our mother, Grey was still a kid himself and hadn't turned eighteen yet.

I don't know a lot about what happened during that time, Zac and Grey done their best to shield all of us from the battle our eldest brother was facing, but no matter how hard they tried to put on a brave fact, they couldn't hide the stress.

Ryan, Zac's best friend and our bonus brother as he called himself, tended to be our babysitter when Zac and Grey were away for hours on end, fighting to keep us together because there was no way we could handle being split up.

I've always looked up to Zac and Grey, even back then. Zac is the dad to me that our papa never got the chance to be. He was only a teen when our parents passed, but to watch how he parented the seven, eight whenever Grey acted out, of us you'd never be able to tell. He took his role as man of the house seriously because he seen it as his duty to fill the big boots papa had left behind.

I couldn't ask for a better dad. For better brothers. I love them, I do, but it doesn't stop the lonely hole I've had in my chest since the mere age of two from gaping with want.

Despite our parents only having two sets of twins, each of my older brothers came as a pair. They all had their own partner in crime. Zac and Grey. Callan and Carter. Alex and Ace. Kaden and Killian, the first set of twins who have always been joined at the hip despite their personalities being polar opposites. Then there's me. Just Leo.

It should've been Leo and Lily. We should've got the chance to be a pair. I don't remember my sister considering I was barely a toddler when she left, but that will never stop her being the other half of me.

As much as I love my brothers, they still have their partner in crime— their person.

I don't.

_

Sitting in chemistry class, on yet another uneventful Tuesday, all I can hear is girls waffling on about the new boy that's hanging around with The Lombardi Brothers.

Fuck, I really hate the way they say it. The Lombardi Brothers... as if we're not just normal kids like the rest of them.

My brothers have quite the reputation here and I guess I do to by association, but I don't get why. Yeah we have money, but so do most of the other kids at this school. My brothers are classed as the popular kids but I'd detest to that. The only other people they hang around with, minus each other, are Elliot and Enzo. So I'm pretty surprised to hear they've befriended the new boy. Especially when Ace doesn't fair well with people he hasn't known for years.