𝐈𝐅 𝐅𝐈𝐍𝐋𝐄𝐘 𝐇𝐀𝐃 𝐀 𝐒𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐋𝐄 𝐖𝐄𝐀𝐊𝐍𝐄𝐒𝐒, it would certainly be Freya’s tears. It had been that way since they were children. If she so much as sniffled in the school ground, he’d be there with a shoulder to cry on and an eagle eye for her offender. Granted, there had been times when she’d used her tear ducts (and his apparent lack of any) to best him in arguments and win their mother over. But, for the most part, they were were his Achilles heel. More than even his own desperation to be on the ‘in’. “Rey…” Finley sighed. His affect a stark contrast from his outburst moments earlier. He left his seat with the paperwork in it and squeezed next to her. His arm wrapping around her shoulder. “Hey… You’re not stupid.” God, she really wasn’t. She was the only one of them that had her head screwed on (relatively) straight. It was why this had come as such a shock. “I’m sorry… I didn’t mean to get mad, I just–” She was the one of a select few he would ever apologise to. Still, it felt strange in his mouth. “I mean you could’ve told me…” Finley added this quietly, still selfishly nursing his hurt. Projecting his own insecurities about fracturing their family by moving away onto her. “What happened, eh? Do I need fight the geezer?”
Being pulled into a half embrace, Freya only felt her tears multiply, body trembling with unfiltered sobs. Every feeling that she had willed herself not to experience washed over her in waves. Yet strangely, in her drowning she felt some sort of...relief. Like an arrival of flood after drought. Perhaps all this time, all that she needed was a little comfort from her big brother. It hadn’t yet failed her. “But I am,” came a whimper from her place on his shoulder, “I really thought things could be different for me. As if I haven’t been taught time after time these things never end well for the likes of us.” As far as any of them knew, they had inherited only one trait from their father. And it was useless. “I’m meant to be the sane and rational one, I know that. Having to tell you guys that I finally took a risk and it ended up blowing up in my face...I couldn’t do it.” She shook her head, sniffling as she wiped her tear stained cheeks on her sleeves, “That’s not even the worst of it. It would have been one thing for it not to have worked out, but Parker...” She swallowed thickly, as if to brace herself to share her greatest shame, “He was with somebody else. And when he told me, God, Finley, for the briefest moment I thought of staying. As long as I had him, you know? But I couldn’t. I thought about all the times that I saw those men come in and out of mum’s life that did the same thing. How much it damaged her. Now I’ve gone and done the same thing to some other woman. How was I meant to tell anybody that?”