Chapter 43
43
LEO
T he villa we booked is much bigger than I ever thought, but that’s maybe because my brain is absolutely unable to comprehend square footage.
What do you mean the space is almost eight thousand five hundred square feet?
I look down on my foot, well aware that my feet are larger than a foot. The place is eight thousand five hundred of these?
Now I feel like it’s more.
“Leo!” Elara yells from the middle of the large, bright family room.
Snapping out of my thoughts, I look up. “Yeah?”
“Just so you know, Junie and I called our rooms already,” she tells me with a hand on her hip.
“Which one?” I ask, heading toward her.
She points at the door to the left of us, and I peek inside just to make sure they haven’t claimed one of our rooms. Thankfully, I spot two twin beds decked out in white and blue comforters, the exterior wall a giant window instead of doors.
I let out a breath, thankful I don’t have to tell the kid no.
“Nice,” I tell her, holding out my fist .
She bumps her small fist to mine, pulling it away slowly away without releasing the fist in an explosion.
“What is that?” I ask her, bewildered.
Her cheeks turn pink. “Sorry Leo, I forgot,” she huffs, sticking her fist back out to me. I bump mine on hers, and pulling back, Elara puffs her cheeks and makes an explosion sound as she opens her fist and extends her fingers.
“Thank you,” I tell her, ruffling her blonde hair before turning to go find her mom.
I find Isla standing outside of a room down the hall, her dark hair in a high ponytail, Owen standing against the wall behind her, his arms crossed over his chest. “You guys get this room,” she says to someone.
I walk past, peeking into the room to find Briar standing in the middle of it, looking around with her jaw practically on the floor.
“Are you guys really sure?” she asks, her eyes meeting mine.
Isla nods. “Mr. Moneybags over here paid for most of the trip, which means that you’ll be staying in the best room. That is,” my sister’s eyes dart to the side, eyeing me, “unless you want separate rooms.”
Briar’s mouth opens, but nothing comes out as her eyes widen at Owen’s expression. I turn to look, finding him looking at me curiously, as if waiting on what I’m going to say next.
“Well, if I’m counting correctly, I don’t think there’s enough rooms for us both to have our own,” I tell them, not wanting to get into it. “I can sleep on the couch over there if I need to,” I assure them, hoping it would get them off our backs.
Neither of us really know or understand what’s going on between us yet. Just the other day it came out that we were engaged, for crying out loud. We need some time to figure things out, and I don’t feel like inviting the others to help us in that feat.
I can feel Briar’s eyes on me as I watch Owen carefully consider this. At some point I know I’m going to have to talk to him about how things have changed, and I’m not quite sure how he’s going to take it. I think my one saving grace with him has been that all of this has been fake. That I can’t really hurt his sister, because he knows her well enough that she wouldn’t fall into my trap.
But there is no trap. I really love Briar, and I want nothing more than to make all of this real.
I just need to convince her that I want that, and that it’s not just a fleeting feeling.
“Okay,” Owen nods, pushing off the wall and heading back down the hall to where I’m assuming their room is.
“So you guys have this room, we have the one down the hall, and I’m assuming the other two have found theirs,” Isla tells us, looking back down the hall.
Emmett had disappeared to the other wing of the house when we first got here, and Heidi had been bringing Elara’s things to their rooms as I made my way over here.
Briar checks the time on her phone. “Do you know when we’re meeting up for dinner?” she asks.
Isla looks at me.
I shrug, and she sighs. “You were supposed to be planning these things, Dummy.”
“I paid for nearly all of it, I figured you guys would come up with the plans. I’m just here to hang out,” I defend, my hands up in front of me.
She considers this. “That’s fair. Let me talk to Owen and everyone and see what they think, and then I’ll plan the rest of our week, unless you want to help me do that?” she asks, looking at Briar.
She smiles a little. “Sure, that would be great,” she tells my sister, sitting on the end of the bed with her hands tucked between her thighs.
“Great. We don’t have any food in the place tonight, and since the big guy over here didn’t plan anything I highly doubt we have a chef or anything arriving for meals, so I’ll look up places to go tonight at least.”
Briar nods as Isla takes out her phone, already scrolling as she walks off in the direction Owen disappeared.
Breathing a sigh of relief, I enter the room finally, closing the door.
Silence greets me as Briar looks at the ground.
“You okay?” I ask her, concerned.
“I just haven’t been on a trip like this,” she informs me, her voice low.
“Really?”
She nods solemnly. “Well, I don’t think most people go on trips like this,” she gestures around the room. “But my brother doesn’t really go on vacations, and certainly not any that I’ve been on. And I never went on any with Tony.”
She’s right about Owen. He’s always been a little more of a homebody than any of us, and I think the furthest he ever went was New York City last year with my sister while I went south with a girl I had just met.
Not my finest moment, that’s for sure.
I’m surprised that she had never been away with Tony, though, considering how the guy loves to fling money around.
“He never took you anywhere?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “Nah. Not even for our honeymoon. He was always too busy with business. He would go away once in awhile for it, but I’m not positive it wasn’t just to cheat on me, if we’re being honest with ourselves.”
I purse my lips, not knowing how to respond to that.
“Well I want you here with me,” I tell her.
She nods, looking unsure .
With a sigh, she gets up, looking around. “Your publicist texted me the other day and said that we need to post at least four photos together on this trip, and we need to get photos of my ring,” she says, holding out her hand.
The large ring takes up half of her finger, but it’s as small as we could go without articles coming out about how I’m hurting for money because of whatever drug problem they want to give me this week.
“We can do that,” I tell her, spotting my suitcase in the corner and heading toward it.
“It’s a perfect time to really milk this, that’s for sure,” she tells me, her hands on her hips as she watches me.
I still.
“Milk this?”
“I mean, yeah.”
“You know that I haven’t been fake with you, right?”
She rolls her eyes, heading toward what I assume is the bathroom. I haven’t given myself time to look around yet. “Leo we both know what this is.”
Groaning, I flip onto the bed, feeling it creek underneath my weight. “You’re absolutely killing me.”
“Why?” she says from behind me.
“Because I keep telling you what my feelings are, and you keep just telling me that I’m not being reasonable, or that this isn’t what I think it is, Briar.”
“Leo,” she says softly, and I sit up, turning to look at her.
She’s braiding her hair, a frown plastered on her beautiful face. I don’t want to be the reason she’s sad. Not now and not ever.
“I told you I like you, and you’re telling me what you think I feel, and it really sucks, Briar. Because I feel like you like me too, you’re just not letting yourself think about it.”
She purses her lips, thinking about what I said.
“I just don’t want to risk?—”
“Risk what?” I ask her. “Our fake relationship? Our non- existent friendship? What don’t you want to risk, Briar. Because it sounds like, from what you’ve been saying, we’re nothing but a means to an end.”
Briar drops her hands, rearing back as her eyes turn glassy, tears threatening to spill over.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“Leo who’s to say that I’m not your own personal brand of fucking self-sabotage? Who’s to say that I let you in, and you can’t deal with things going right in your life? Who’s to say that you don’t spiral out of fucking control like you do every single time things are going great for you, and I’m left to pick up the pieces of my life that you manhandled? I can’t fucking do that, Leo,” she breathes, her chest heaving. “I have a daughter,” she points to the door, “and a life, and bills to fucking pay, and those are things that come first. I can’t be sitting around waiting for you to get your act together so that I can depend on you.”
I feel like I was kicked in the gut, her words sitting on my shoulders like a massive weight.
“I—”
“I’ve wanted you, you know that?” she asks. “I can’t get your stupid face out of my head, and what this could be if you were serious about it. But I can’t tell myself that it’ll happen, Leo. Because I don’t know what’s real and what’s not, and I don’t know if you’re actually being serious or if you’re just going to drop me tomorrow because you like ruining your life more than me.”
Briar’s tears come fast and hard, her body rocking as she tries as hard as she can to keep her voice quiet so no one comes in.
“Briar—”
“Please,” she tells me, her hand up to stop me from coming over.
I do anyway .
With a sigh, I throw my suitcase on the bed, opening it and searching through the large pocket. Finding what I need, I pull the piece of paper out, unfolding it, and hand it to her.
“You know what this is?” I ask.
She shakes her head.
“That’s a plan that Cooper, Emmett, Dirwin and I came up with. A plan. Your brother was in on it too, though I don’t think he really thought that anything was going to happen with it. I think he thought the same thing you have,” I say, my shoulders slumping. “But I’ve wanted you for months.”
She reads it, her eyes scanning the chicken scratch and crossed out words.
“I told them that I wanted to be a better man for you, Briar, and I’ve worked every single day since then to make sure that I am. I’ve gone to therapy. I’ve focused on myself, you, and Elara. I’ve done the work, day in and day out, so that I can be a man who deserves you for once. Because I don’t fucking want anyone else. I don’t want to be that man anymore. I want to know my worth, I want to live this life without regrets, and dammit, I want you, Sunny.”
Briar’s brown eyes meet mine, her bottom lip trembling. “I just don’t want to get hurt, Leo.”
I shake my head. “I’m going to piss you off sometimes. I’m going to anger you like I always have. I’m going to fuck up, and I’m going to be an absolute fool. But I’m going to be a fool for you. I’m going to continue to live every single day like I’ll lose you tomorrow if I step out of line. Fuck, Briar. I’m going to keep doing the work to deserve you, because you deserve absolutely nothing but my best every single day and night, and so does your daughter out there. She deserves someone else in her life that loves her more than anything.”
Briar smiles slightly, looking down at her feet. “She loves you, you know,” she whispers.
“And I love her, Briar. I love when she hears me wake up, so she comes out to make you breakfast with me. I love when she lies to me and makes me do all of the work. I love how she definitely brought a dog into my home after I told her no, and I love how she filled the place with fucking plants that smell like dirt, half of which have died because I forget to water them—I’ll be better about that too—and I love how much she loves you, Briar.”
She smiles. “Keep complimenting me, please.”
“I want to compliment you for the rest of your life, Sunny. Every single day.”
Worrying her lip, she takes a step forward, looking up at me before taking another, more hesitant one.
And I close the distance, wrapping her in my arms and squeezing. I just want her near me. I want her close.
But this doesn’t feel close enough.