Unbroken

The silent moments felt heavy, like he should do something, like she should turn her head and invite him in.

She didn’t, and that was okay—and it wasn’t.

Leo felt scrambled about it. His head was filled with rooms he’d learned to keep closed. Ever since venturing in the Dungeon with his old man, he learned to compartmentalize. With Skye, he would try to tuck away his emotions, and he would learn to be patient.

“I miss the flowers,” she whispered as the rain picked up around them. She was still in his lap, digging her fingers into the ground as cars zoomed past overhead. “We should go to the botanical gardens this summer.”

She’d been saying that every year, and every year Leo was pulled away and forced to be apart from her. They didn’t drive yet, and Hunter was working now so it was unlikely he could take time off long enough to catch a few buses to the city where the impressive Treewalk Gardens were.

Nevertheless, maybe this summer would be different now that his venomous mother was locked away from sight, being looked after by carers.

Or maybe George intended on fucking him up some more.

He was leaning toward the latter. Because his father was a sadist bastard who loved watching him crumble.

“Yeah,” Leo agreed quietly, hiding his uncertainty. “You should try gardening.”

She chuckled. “Yeah, right. I get no privacy at the trailer park. We have a tiny plot next to the porch, but it’ll get dug up in two seconds flat if a bunch of kids saw me planting there.”

“How about my house then? I can tell Shane to keep the backyard open for you, and I’ll have a plot for you to plant what you want.”

She didn’t respond for a few moments, but then she twisted her body around, and his arms came around her, helping her settle in front of him. Her legs curled around his back. God, this felt good, she was warm and soft and she was looking at him with that look in her bright eyes that made his pulse quicken.

“I’m not using you,” she replied solemnly, though her lips curved in a smile. “The last thing I need is people talking about how I’m going around your place—”

“It’s just a garden,” he cut in, softly. “Let them talk, Skye.”

“It’s not that I care about what they have to say,” she explained. “It’s that I don’t want you to think I care about that—”

He pressed his thumb to her lip, silencing her. “Stop.”

She went still, and then nodded, shoulders relaxing.

Every now and then he needed to do this. Reassure her. Remind her that he didn’t think that she would ever use him. When she said that people talked, she was worried he was listening. He wasn’t. He never would, either.

He traced her lips, breathing slowly. Then he dropped his hand and returned his arm around her. The wind gusted, the rain wound up finding them. She ducked her head against his chest as he shielded her from it, laughing at the way she squirmed. Just as quickly, it went dead, and the rain no longer sliced through them. She pulled away, shaking her head at the bipolar weather. “Over it, Leo. Bring back the sun.”

You are the sun, he wanted to tell her.

“In time,” he said instead.

She watched him, studying his face like she was trying to dig deep and read his emotions. “You’re different lately,” she remarked, thoughtfully. “Something’s wrong.”

“A lot has happened—”

“It’s more than that.”

She could sense it then.

He shuttered his misery, hoping she could only see his happiness right now; happiness caused by her being here, sitting in his lap, caring enough to implore what was wrong.

If he was being truthful, he’d have said,I’m frail, Skye, because they’re beating me down.

“I’m okay,” he assured her, and it surprised him how convincing he sounded. “I’m happy.”

“You are?” she asked.

“Yeah.”