an architect.”
“And you liked it.”
“Yeah.” He smiled. “It was all the stuff I loved about buildings, but also all this problem solving, you know? How to make the most of a site. How to incorporate what people said they wanted but also what you thought they needed. How to do all that and make it look good. It sounds dumb, but it kind of reminded me of a real-life video game.”
It didn’t sound dumb. It sounded exactly like Leo. “So what happened?” She recognized that as the wrong question the moment it was out. “Well, I know what happened.”
“Yeah. I mean, yeah. But it wasn’t . . . just that.”
“What was it?” she asked gently.
“I was the first person in my family to go to college. It was a big deal for someone like me to be in architecture school.”
“That’s good, though, isn’t it? You should be proud of yourself.”
He blew out a breath. “There wasn’t a day that I didn’t question whether I belonged there. If I should just give up.”
“Of course you belonged there. They admitted you, didn’t they?”
“Yeah, but I was barely hanging on. I worked my ass off for middling grades. I tried, but it was just . . . never enough.” He laughed, but there was no mirth in it. “Which actually turned out to be good practice for what came next.”
“What does that mean?” she said sharply. She hadn’t meant it to come out like a rebuke, but she hated to hear him talk like this.
“It means Gabby. I try with her, but it’s never enough.”
“Leo! That’s objectively not true!” She had seen the love between the siblings. She had envied it.
“It is, though,” he insisted.
“Give me one example.”
“Braids.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“She always wants braids, and I can never get them right.”
“Oh, Leo.” He was breaking her heart. He didn’t see how wonderful he was. “Girls need love, not braids.”
He swung himself off the bed without answering. He didn’t seem angry, but clearly he didn’t want to continue this conversation.
She asked one more question anyway. She couldn’t help herself. “Do you ever think of going back to school?”
“I don’t see how I can swing it until Gabby’s much older.” Leo darted a glance at her but looked away quickly. “As it is, we get by, but barely.”
She was certain it hurt him to admit that. Leo was proud—though there was no shame in what he was saying. She was absurdly pleased, though, that he regarded her as a person he could say such things to. She resisted the urge to offer to pay for his school, or to help them in some way. He was only confiding in her because he trusted she wouldn’t react that way.
“My mother used to talk about the accident of birth,” he said thoughtfully.
“You mean like unplanned pregnancy?”
“No. The randomness of the life circumstances a person is born into.”
“Ahh. Meaning some people are princesses and some people aren’t?”
“That’s one way of looking at it. But I meant more that even though some shit has happened lately, I have a good life. I wouldn’t trade my life for anything.”
“I know,” she said. And that was what was so great about Leo Ricci.
They stared at each other for a long moment, him standing and her on the bed. She knew he had to go back to his own room eventually, but didn’t want him to leave yet. “Leo?”
“Yeah?”
“Will you stay a little longer?”
“Yeah.”
“If you stay past midnight, it will be the twenty-third.” She wasn’t sure why she was still talking. He was already sliding back into bed. “It will be the day after the anniversary of the day my mother died.”
“I know, Princess. I know.”
Chapter Seventeen
Leo got to the cabin site late the next morning, having inadvertently slept in. He’d had a hard time extricating himself from Marie’s bed last night. It had been ridiculously cozy there, and he didn’t just mean her puffy, soft bedding, but the cocoon effect of talking late into the night. About real things like his aborted academic career and her mom’s death. But also about silly things like how the kitchen staff had allowed Gabby to invent her own cocoa flavor for the Fest, and they had been testing variations on her butterscotch s’mores creation.
He’d been so . . . relaxed. Profoundly relaxed. Being so had thrown into sharp relief how not relaxed he had been for such a long time.
By the time he’d finally heaved himself out of bed and sneaked back to his