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“You laughing at her?”
“Laughed at what you said.”
The boy’s brows pinched together. “You don’t get to laugh at her, rich boy.”
“I meant no offense.”
The boy elbowed the girl, snickering. “He meant‘no offense’, Skye.”
She leaned her head forward a little more, staring at Leo with a smile. “Yeah, it’s called manners, Hunt. You should learn to speak like that.”
“Want me to beat him up for laughing at you?”
Now her brown eyes clung to Leo’s as he stared back at her, a cool smile on his face. “I think he laughed because you were being funny.”
Hunter glared at Leo for several moments, as though debating what he should do next.
Leo took it in stride. Much like his father did when there was a heated business argument in his office. In a professional capacity, George Itani never raised his voice, no matter what. It was what gave him an edge. Being recluse and unreadable was actually scarier than swinging your fists at every problem thrown your way.
When they ran out of junk food to eat, they began to argue once more, blaming one another for eating it all. Leo shook his bag casually, staring at them as he said, “I got more candy here, if you want.”
Leo, wanting to win their favour, did exactly what everyone warned him not to. And yet before he had offered, he had wavered for a moment, considering the outcome.
He could win them over with food, and it wouldn’t end there. Over time, he told himself, he could win them over with gifts, with a taste of the plusher side of life. And maybe he would do it to test the power of money, which he would very swiftly learn was limitless. Maybe he would do it because he was lonely and in need of true friends.
Or, maybe, at the deepest part of him, he ultimately would do it forher.
For Skye.
Because, let’s be honest here, he was pulled in by her. She was beautiful and innocent and so full of life. She was everything he didn’t know he needed until he heard that high pitch laugh, until he hadtrulylooked at her.
Even young, even before he fully understood what he was about to do in its entirety, he was no fool.
Off-limits, Skye would never be accepted into his family. There would never be a future with her. There would a sandglass representing their friendship, and it would wind down with every day that went by.
He could savour that friendship, he reasoned.
He could savour Hunter’s friendship, too. Because at the end of the day, while coarse he was at times, distrusting, harder to win over, Hunter was passionate about Skye and protective of her.
Hunter was a good guy.
Maybe not to the world.
But he would go to the ends of the earth for her, and god, what would that be like, Leo wondered.
Truly, if Leo hadn’t sought them out, he knew exactly how they would have gotten along. He saw their future before they did all laid out before them. He saw Hunter’s fierce possessiveness, saw Skye growing fonder to him. He saw that one day they would fall into each other.
Hunter and Skye were destined to be.
Leo should have let it be.
Hecouldhave let it be.
It would have been easier on all sides if he had fed them that candy and went on his way. Better yet, he should have walked on by like he had done countless other times.
And yet…he couldn’t.
Because Skye was carefree. She was funny and exciting, and she was sweetness and kindness and everything good. She belonged to Hunter before Leo had come along, but he wanted her to belong to him, too.
