A look passed between Leo and Rosie, some silent language conspiring in that quick glance.
“You’re the only one who ever makes us feel that way,” Rosie said. “Mama and Papa never do.”
The words were a gut punch. Guilt swept through her. Stella loved Rosie and Leo. She was so grateful for her siblings and loved their talents and quirks more than anything. They’d always felt like her team, and she hated that she’d been anything less than accepting of them.
It didn’t matter that Rosie and Leo had both come from other families. Stella had always felt like they belonged to her.
Leo scowled at her, took Rosie under his arm, and guided her toward the foyer. The front door slammed a moment later.
Stella stood alone in the kitchen for a long time, staring out at her parents in the garden and watching a great love from afar.
4
STELLA
“Stella, I swear to the gods if you don’t move your fine ass, I am leaving without you,” Kate bellowed from somewhere on the first floor of the McKay Estate.
Stella had always loved the huge house where her mother grew up, but its sheer size meant that someone was always yelling between floors.
Stella rushed down the stairs, around the corner and into the kitchen, and nearly barreled into her best friend. “A face like a lady, but the boisterous voice and colorful vocabulary of a sailor,” she said affectionately.
“I have to speak up if I want to get a word in edgewise in my house,” Kate said with a grin. “Now tell me how good I look.”
Stella laughed as Kate turned in a slow circle. Her fuchsia dress swished around her legs. The high neckline in the front fastened around her neck and left her whole back bare.
“Scandalous,” Stella teased.
Kate pretended to toss her dark hair, which was meticulously pinned up on top of her head. “Thank you for noticing.”
Stella smoothed her hands down the lilac silk of her own dress. “And me?”
Kate pressed her lips together for a long moment, as if debating whether to say something. She was one of the few people who knew about Arden, but the prince had not done as good of a job winning Kate over as he had Stella.
“Of course you look gorgeous. I just hope you’re not getting your hopes too high,” Kate said.
Stella looked around the kitchen for anything to deflect from the same conversation they’d had many times before. Kate didn’t have to like Arden, but she could at least be supportive.
She glanced out the windows into the garden. Her parents sat in their fancy evening clothes, necks craned, looking up at the barely darkened sky. They whispered to each other, her mother taking the teacup from her father’s hand and sipping from it.
It had been a full day since her mother dropped the news of her pregnancy and Stella still felt unsettled.
“They’re so?—”
“In love?” Kate finished for her.
Stella rolled her eyes. “Yes, but this whole thing is a lot. The way they sit there staring at the sky, passing the same glass back and forth and saying, ‘sugared with stars’ like it actually means something?”
Kate laughed. “Youarejealous. You want what they have. And why shouldn’t you? You’re their baby. They are the standard.”
Stella hated that it was true. Even now, with her father surely switching to some sort of tea instead of the whiskey they normally shared, they sat there together on a blanket, whispering to each other, as in love as they’d always been.
“They are. It’s easy for them, like it is with me and Arden.”
Kate ignored her, watching as Rainer rose from the ground and helped Stella’s mother up, kissing the scar on the outside of her hand and the one inside her wrist.
“I don’t blame you for feeling like no man at court can measure up to the example your father sets,” Kate said, fanning herself. “And he looks so good doing it.”
“Ew, Kate,” Stella said.
