Page 19 of Legacy Elite

I stand in the middle of all this holding one canvas bag.

"Oh," Sophia says behind me, in a voice of pure religious awe. "Oh, Jessica."

"Don't."

"Jessica."

"Sophia, I swear—"

She's already past me. She does one full slow lap of the sitting room with her hands pressed together in front of her mouth, and then throws herself sideways onto the couch and lies there with her eyes shut.

"This is my couch now. I've decided. This is where I live."

Renzo has gone straight to the fireplace and is running his thumb along the mantel.

"This is real marble."

"Is that bad?"

"It's marble, Jessica. It's a dormitory." He looks around the room with genuine grievance. "That chair is worse than the room, though. That chair is the ugliest object I have ever seen in my life."

Declan has stopped in the doorway with two bags and the flat astonishment of a very large man who spent last year in a very small space.

"Jess. This room is bigger than the whole common area we had."

"I know."

"No. The whole one. Where all of us ate."

"Declan, I know."

Freya hasn't said anything. She's at the window, checking the catch, the frame, the drop below. Then the door. Then the second bedroom.

"Good sight line," she says.

"For what?"

"The courtyard."

"Freya."

"I like the window seat." She sits in it. That's apparently the end of that conversation.

Torres carries my bag through into the bedroom, leaves it there, comes back out, and drops his own bag on the floor of the little second room like a man putting his keys in a bowl.

I watch him do it.

"Are you moving in?"

"Probably."

"Do you want to discuss that with me?"

"I did. Just now." He tips his head at the bag. "You saw it happen."

He's already moved countries for this. I'm not sure what I expected.

"If he doesn't take it," Sophia says from the couch without opening her eyes, "I want it."