Leo frowned. “I should have introduced you properly instead of just saying your name—”
“You did fine,” she assured him, patting his arm affectionately. “No matter what you might have said, I doubt they’d have been nicer.”
This was the hard part about figuring out his place in this world; Leo didn’t know how to be firmer in his approach. He wished for a day he might have called out that sort of callous response, but he had rules to adhere to. To maintain a relationship with these people, there needed to be cordiality.
Still.
He didn’t want people looking at Skye like she was just fluff on his arm.
“I’ll fix this,” he promised her just then, nodding to himself. “I’ll make them see you’re not just hanging on my arm—”
“Leo,” she cut in again, her smile fading now as she gazed at him with a strange look in her eye. “Stop, alright?”
But once Leo had a task in his mind, he couldn’t shake it. He went quiet as they came to a stop, staring out at the ocean now. He felt a strange knot at the pit of his stomach—a feeling he felt every now and again, this bizarre tug that made him want to crack. He didn’t know what cracking would entail, and so he did his best to focus elsewhere than on the feeling that now seemed to linger like a ghost.
“You’re not nothing to me,” he whispered just then, looking down now. “I want—no, Iwilllet everyone know what you mean to me, Skye. Just…give me a little time to figure some things out.”
He needed to secure his place in the Dungeon. He also needed to bankrupt his old man. Then he needed to destroy him once and for all. But before he could even do any of that, he needed allies, he needed armour, he needed to know that he could slide into his father’s role without issue.
The last thing he wanted was to botch it all up and have someone more powerful than him contend for that seat.
Skye studied him intently, eventually muttering a quiet, “Okay, Leo.”
*
The Galloways reached out to Leo later in the day, inviting him for dinner at an exclusive restaurant. Tucking the phone into his pocket, he leaned against the doorway of the balcony, watching Skye. She was standing before him with her arms on the railing, staring down at the busy streets below. Her lips curved in a smile as she watched a couple local kids walk by, selling fruits from baskets they carried.
“I better hurry down there,” she said. “Before I lose them.”
“They’ll be back tomorrow,” Leo assured her.
But she was already patting the pockets of her shorts, getting ready to leave.
“We’ve been invited to dinner,” Leo quickly added now.
She turned to look at him, curious. “Invited by who?”
“The couple we bumped into—” He paused, noticing her shoulders drop. He frowned. “It won’t be bad, sweetness.”
Letting out a sigh, she said, “How about you go? I’ll hang back, do my own thing.”
“I need you there, Skye.”
“Why?”
“Because like I said before, you’re not nothing to me.”
But Skye was shaking her head. “I don’t care about proving that to a bunch of judgmental assholes, Leo.”
“I think they just misunderstood the situation—”
“I don’t care, I don’t want to go.” She slipped past him, walking into the bedroom. He followed after her, keeping his distance as she busied herself. She packed away the make-up on the dresser, and then folded her clothes, and then she undid them and refolded them again, looking antsy.
Leo’s heart clenched at her anxiety. “It’s going to be like this, Skye.”
She paused. “Like what?”
“I’m going to be at meetings, I’m going to be brushing against people like the ones you met today all the time.”