Leo nodded. “Yeah.”
“There’s goodness in him—so much of it. And he’s always been there for me…” My words trailed off as emotion clogged my throat. I thought of him touching me in his bed, telling me to shine; I thought of him holding my hand as I lay hurt…
Leo must have been omniscient because he quietly said, “I’m sorry about that night, Skye. I think about it every single day.”
It was my turn to look away. “It’s okay, Leo—”
“I’m worried things are different now. You’ve been…distant.”
“You guys have been busy. I spent my Winter Break doing my own thing, and that’s okay. It’s okay to have space.”
That was true. I wasn’t going to be a puppy and beg for their attention. I was fifteen and needed to have my own hobbies, my own life separate from them. Being around them at the same time was overwhelming now. I could hardly keep my emotions in check when I was around just one of them—add the other to the mix, and I was at times drowning.
“But you’re not okay,” Leo pressed, sounding miserable.
“I see things differently since that night,” I tried to explain, peering up at him as he gave me a curious look. “I feel like…the world isn’t as colourful as it used to be.”
Leo’s lips turned down. “But Mom’s not a problem anymore.”
“And there are a million others like her.”
He seemed conflicted. “I want you to have colour in your world. What do I need to do to make you the way you were before?”
Leo, ever the mender of things. I gave him a sad smile. “I’m never going to be that way again, Leo.”
Wretched now, he took my arm and pulled me to him. He hugged me tightly against him. I heard his heart beating riotously against my ear as I shut my eyes and embraced his warmth and touch.
“I’ll bring those colours back,” he promised, voice thick with conviction. “One day you’ll be living in a rainbow, I swear it.”
That was Leo in a nutshell. He itched to rectify all problems, and it didn’t end with me.
It came as no surprise when he was later coined the name Fixer.
Leo
It should have troubled Leo that Hunter was naked in her bed. He kept waiting for the jealousy to pulse through his body, but…
Leo didn’t feel it.
What was wrong with him? Was it because he cared deeply for Hunter that he wanted him to be happy, too? Was it that from the start he knew Skye’s affections were split in equal measures for both boys and that he had come to accept it along the way?
He didn’t know, and it should have bothered him, but it didn’t.
In truth, the only thing he was jealous about was that Hunter got to feel Skye’s lips. He didn’t outright ask her if it happened, but he sensed it the second he’d prodded for information. She had lightly grazed her mouth before washing her hands. Leo caught it, and his insides twisted apart.
They had kissed.
He envied Hunter in that moment.
But that was the deal, wasn’t it? They had given her the control. Ultimately, she was the one that got to decide who got to touch her.
They orbited her like planets around the sun, pulled in by her gravity, bathed in her light, longing to feel her heat touch their skin.
Now, he was staring at her mouth every time she spoke, utterly captivated by how perfect it looked—felt.
Yeah, he was envious of Hunter for having another hit of Skye Cross.
The weather was cold and windy. They took cover under the bridge by the school. He wrapped his arms around her as she sat, shivering and wet, in his lap. He pretended to shield her from the wind, from the cold, but it was a lie that he wanted to believe in. He ran his nose along her hair every chance he could get, touched the soft skin along her jaw as she spoke, back pressed against his chest.