Seven
Leo
“You got your way,” Shane mused, pressing his foot on the brake pedal as the light turned red. “You must be feeling quite invincible, Leo.”
Leo didn’t look back at Shane, but he felt his eyes on him from the seat over. “I’m not feeling invincible at all.”
“No?”
Leo simply shook his head.
It was the first day of school. The weeks leading up to this point had been eventful. To attend Brown Bay Public Highschool meant the occasionalbeatingtraining from his old man. It meant being ignored by his dramatic mother (which was fine, she would nurse her wounds by going to the gym and secretly screwing her trainer). It meant being instructed by Shane on a daily basis that good behaviour was key, that he would never truly mix in, and that his true education there would entail learning the conducts of the everyday people. Because, as Shane pointed out, they would be his customers one day.
Those were his days. It was sort of an illusion.You can go to the god-awful school, Leo, but these are your conditions. Those conditions were entrenched in psychological warfare. They were trying to change him, teach him the ways of a crime world hidden behind legal businesses and backdoor handshakes. They were nudging Leo closer to a line he wouldn’t be able to come back from if/when he crossed it.
It was his fate.
To lead alongside his father, eventually become his father when he passed on.
That was just the way it was.
And these years, in the long run, were infinitesimal. “That school will barely leave a mark on him,” George had assured his quiet wife in private as Leo eavesdropped. “He’ll grow apart from those kids—from that girl you’re always going on about. Leo will use her when the time comes, and then he’ll move on from her the second he realizes he can have any girl he desires.”
Is that what they truly thought?
That Skye was just a passing fancy?
That she was just a temporary obsession?
Better they think it, he thought to himself. Better his old man lay off his back and mind his own business.
He had hardly been able to see Skye and Hunter over those weeks. It troubled Leo how quickly detached he could become from the real world. Without them, he could so easily slip into the Itani role. His training at home had impressed his old man; Leo Itanishinedat leading. He shined at many other things too—darker things that Leo chose to promptly block from his mind, though his memories still battered him with the pained cries from the dungeon rooms of the underworld. Musty, hot little prisons they were—one could so easily go mad in such a rotten place.
Alas, it wouldn’t matter the second he stepped foot outside that car.
Because, as Shane pulled up to the tired school, Leo immediately spotted them on the sidewalk. He stilled for a moment, his eyes pinned on Skye as she playfully shoved at Hunter’s shoulder. He bent down to say something in her ear, which earned him a kick to the balls that he didn’t so easily recover from.
Leo’s mouth twitched, but the humour he felt was a tiny blip compared to the hot itch in his chest he felt when he stared at Skye.
He stepped out, looking so completely out of place and he hadn’t even walked the halls of that rancid school yet. He didn’t mind—didn’t care, really, because he was used to standing out wherever he went.
Already he saw heads turn in his direction as he ambled to Skye and Hunter, who were still standing feet from the bus stop they’d gotten off.
Skye
It didn’t feel real until I turned my head and saw Leo walk to us.
My heart clenched tight in my chest and my smile was so wide, it hurt. I leaped into his arms, telling him how much I couldn’t believe he was there.
“I mean, I believed you, but I didn’tbelieveyou, you know?” I exclaimed.
He chuckled, his arms wrapping around me tightly. Immediately I was engulfed in his delicious scent, and the familiar warmth of his body. He was familiar the way Hunter was, but hugging Leo gave me that extra spark in my chest. Because while Hunter and I were practically inseparable, Leo had a life away from us. Seeing him, being around him, always felt like a pleasure.
“Where have you been, man?” Hunter asked.
Leo pulled away slightly to look over my shoulder. “Family stuff.”
They exchanged loaded looks, but I couldn’t decipher their expression in time.