the spade brothers' little sister

nineteen

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Jace ended up leaving my bedroom after I had fallen asleep. He told me a story like he did when I was younger to get my mind off the possibility of my father wanting to take custody of me and Brady. That was the last thing I wanted to happen. And when I woke up in the morning, the thought was still circulating in my head.

The days had started to blur together, but I was reminded that it was Monday morning when Jace woke me up by telling me I had to get dressed to go into work with him. Brady was still recovering from his injury, and the doctors at the hospital insisted that he stayed at home and limit his activity until he returned to have the doctors check how his wound was healing. Maybe it was because neither Larson or Jace could take off of work again, but Jace allowed Brady to stay home by himself. I begged for him to let me stay with Brady and help take care of him, but Brady quickly voted against that saying that I would just make him worse off. Whatever that means.

Jace practically dragged me to his office because I certainly did not feel like going back there. It was so boring and I had nothing to do all day. All I wanted to do was stay home.

The entire morning in his office consisted of him on phone calls and me trying to entertain myself with the paper clips and thumb tacks he had in the top drawer of his desk. I instantly regretted not bringing a book to read or something to do while he was working. 

Luckily for lunch, Jace took me to a restaurant that was across the street from his office that had delicious Lebanese food. It was some of the best food I had ever tasted before. We were talking about the school year that was coming up in just a few weeks, and then Jace decided to bring up the sensitive topic of last night.

"I don't wanna talk about it," I whined, shoveling more food into my mouth.

"Well we have to talk about it, Brenna," he spoke gently. "You fell asleep when I was trying to talk to you about it last night."

I didn't even respond, just grunted in reply.

"Spencer wants custody of you," he stated firmly, putting down his fork and knife. I nodded in acknowledgement. "Do you want to live with him?"

My eyes widened and my mouth gaped open. "What?! Are you actually insane right now, Jace?"

He didn't even crack a smile. "No." He sighed and glanced somewhere behind me. "I know Brady doesn't want to live with Spencer, but I want to know what you want. You call him 'dad' and you haven't really opposed seeing him, so I want to know how you are feeling. You can have a say in what you want. I don't want to force you to live with me if you don't want to in the first place." He looked at me, waiting for my response. 

"You really are stupid," I replied, raising my eyebrows at my oldest brother. "I love living with you. I don't want to live with him. I want to live with you."

"Are you sure?" He asked earnestly.

"One hundred percent sure," I replied.

"That makes me happy," he spoke, smiling. He grabbed my hand from across the table and gave it a quick squeeze. "I'll make sure you're mine." 

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After what felt like an eternity at Jace's office and a long traffic-filled drive home, we finally got back home. Larson had an early shift that morning so he was back too. 

"Yo Jace!" He called to us as we were walking in. He started walking towards us when I crossed my arms and glared at him.

"I'm here too, ya know!" I shook my head at him.

He chuckled and moved over towards me. "I know you are B, but I need to talk to Jace about something." He grabbed my head and put me in a headlock, moving his hand to mess up my hair.