“Okay,” she says off-camera. “Tell us who you are. No brands. No family name. No school. Just… you.”
I stare at the lens.
“Uh. I’m Leo,” I say. “And I’m… I guess I’m the guy everyone thinks they know.”
I swallow.
“Born with a silver spoon in my mouth. Came out in Ralph Lauren onesies and baby cashmere. Graduated into Vineyard Vines polos and then Giorgio Armani suits before I could even grow a decent beard.”
Lane snorts softly behind the camera. “Keep going.”
“I grew up in a house with marble floors,” I say, voice flattening. “Crystal chandeliers. Summer homes. Ski trips. Private jets. Latin tutors. French and Spanish lessons before I even hit middle school.”
My jaw clenches.
“I had everything money could buy,” I admit. “But the stuff that actually makes a home? I didn’t have that.”
I stare past the camera for a second, seeing it all.
“I never had a mom baking bread and yelling at us to get our elbows off the table. I never had holidays where everyone’s crowded around a scratched-up wooden table laughing until they cry.”
My throat tightens.
“I had staff. Schedules. A calendar color-coded by my mother’s assistant. I had nannies, not bedtime stories. A full-time driver, but no one to talk to on the way.”
My voice shakes, just a little.
“I had a lot of… noise. Not a lot of warmth.”
The room feels smaller suddenly. Quieter.
Lane says nothing. Just lets the silence sit.
“That’s why I was such an asshole for so long,” I mutter. “Because when you grow up in this world, they train you to believe you’re the center. That everyone else is orbiting you. That the crown is your birthright and not something you have to earn.”
I let out a sharp breath.
“And then I met her.”
Lane doesn’t ask who. She knows. Everyone knows.
“Jade,” I say. “The scholarship girl. The one who never let me get away with my bullshit. The one who didn’t care about my last name or my car or the fact that I could buy the entire lacrosse team matching sneakers on a whim.”
I laugh, soft and wrecked.
“She made fun of me. She challenged me. She told me no when everyone else said yes. She looked at me like I could be more than I was. Like I could be someone better if I tried.”
I look straight at the camera now.
“And then I broke her heart anyway.”
The words hang there like a confession.
Because they are.
We film all day.
The library.
