"Hey, what's wrong?" I asked Rico as I saw him run his fingers through his hair in frustration for the third time in ten minutes.

"I...uh...I wanna tell you something." He replied, sounding uncertain.

"Alright." I held his hand in mine, keeping my phone on the nightstand near the bed, I gave him my full attention. We had been sitting on the bed for a while after making sure that Nico was asleep in his own room.

He tightened his hold on my hand like he was afraid of what was going to happen after he told me what was wrong but all I did was bring the back of his hand to my lips and place a soft kiss on it. He smiled at my action, and started speaking.

"Five years ago, around the time when Luciana was pregnant with Nico, I had been going through a rough patch." He sighed. "It wasn't only the time when my girlfriend wanted to abort my only child but it was also the same time when I lost one of the most important people in my life."

"My whole life, I had taken her for granted. I thought that she would always be there for me, and I would for her, my only sister,Ziva.

She was always the cheerful one at home, besides Toni, of course. She was twenty years old, younger than both of us so she was always our little baby sister. We made sure that her boyfriends knew who her older brothers were but we never tried to meddle in her private life.

She always tied her hair up in a high ponytail because she said it made her feel powerful. And before you knew it, Toni and I made it our lives' mission to tease her about it. She gave us back, though; she never took anyone's shit." He smiled at the memory.

"For the most part, she wore black heeled boots with spikes so that she could threaten us all day." He let out a small but pained laugh. "We didn't realize that we were making memories with her, we were just having fun.

Mom, Dad and Toni and I were so busy with our own lives that we never stopped to talk to her, ask her how she was doing not just physically but mentally too. Ziva was a straight A student and won in most of the competitions in high school but as she started doing her bachelor's degree, she became a little distant.

She wouldn't make jokes and puns like she normally would along with Toni, she wouldn't leave her room for hours and hours together and slept almost every hour of the day until it reached a point where she wouldn't even talk to us."

I felt like I knew where this was going but I didn't intervene.

He sighed before continuing, "Mom, Dad, Toni and I assumed that the studies were getting to her which is why we never forced her to come out of her room. I tried talking to her once when she was eating lunch by herself and all she did was smile and reply.

At the time, I didn't believe her words, I didn't believe that she was perfectly fine but I went along with it not realizing that it would the biggest mistake in my life.

One night, while I was leaving my parents' house to go to mine, I decided to go to her room to bid her goodbye. I wanted to tell her that I was going to have a child, a son."

Rico's muscles stiffened as he spoke further and when I told him that he could tell me another time if he wasn't comfortable, he denied.

"I vividly remember that night like it wasn't more than a day ago; I called out to her when I didn't see her laying down on her bed like she usually did.

I started to get worried as I searched every inch of her room, until found a piece of paper on her table that read,

At first, I called out to her, not wanting to invade her privacy, but when she still hadn't answered me, I tried entering only to see it locked. I kicked the door down and saw her..."

He paused, tears filling his eyes. His voice cracked as he tried to speak further. He scrubbed his nose and took a deep breath in an attempt to calm himself down. I could clearly tell that he was trying so hard to contain his feelings at this point; I had never seen him this vulnerable and it broke me.

"She laid down at the bottom of the water-filled bathtub with a weight tied on her wrist to keep her underwater. I-I...pulled her out and laid her head on my lap at first but when I noticed that she wasn't breathing, and that I couldn't feel her heartbeat, I performed CPR on her.

In the meantime, everyone in the house had come in to the bathroom because of the noise that they hears when I burst open the door.

But, it was too late to save her. My little sister had already taken her life away. I felt as though someone had taken my heart out, ripped it out into a million pieces. Life didn't stop itself so that I got time to heal or accept her death. It went on. I dealt with Luciana at the time, scared that I would lose my child too."

I can't believe how much he's gone through in his life. He deserves so much better.

"I didn't talk about how I felt and neither did Toni. We piled up our work, avoiding to continue our lives like we hadn't just lost her. I'd never felt so overwhelmed. I just didn't care what happened."

Knowing that Rico needed nothing more than love and comfort at this point, I sat up from next to him, where I was sitting, and swung my swung my left leg over his thigh. I went closer to him and sat down so I was now straddling him.

I pulled him into an embrace while he wound his arms around my torso in response. Resting his head on my shoulder, he sobbed, letting out all of the bottled up feelings that he had.

It was only now that I understood why Toni was so afraid of losing Rico; he was his only sibling remaining. It was only his brother that kept him holding on.

"I-I can't stop thinking of her, babe." He sniffed, pulling away but still resting his hands on the curve of my waist. "Tomorrow is her birthday."

"I'll be here for you if you ever need me, Rico. You won't have to go through this alone anymore. I know that there isn't much that I can do now, but I'll always be here for you. I love you."

"I love you too." He gave me a slight smile and connected his lips to mine.

On their own accord, my hands tangled into the dark curls of his soft hair. I felt the tingles that spread through my entire body like I always did and deepened the kiss at that moment. Rico let out a small groan, causing my brain to go off the deep end.

I slightly gasped at the sudden contact of his cold fingertips on my bare skin after they mad their way under my shirt. He traced the lines of my stretch marks that were formed on my hips. For second, I though that he would retract himself from me but he only kissed me even more passionately.

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