But Oliver blasts away my hope into shattered shards of glass. “I would say Dray strays the least, and I the most. He prefers escorts.” Oliver turns a dark grin on me. “Less bother, as he says.” The sigh that deflates him is soft. “And whatever feelings Serena and I once shared are straining more by the day.”
A frown furrows my brow.
Oliver relaxes in the seat, turning his cheek to me, and he looks out the window.
He shifts his wrist to study the face of his watch.
Not the one I bought for his New Year gift, not the Vacheron, but I’m hardly surprised, since the Vacheron is too much for a place like Bluestone.
Best to keep it at home in his vaulted wardrobe for now.
It’s either a show-off piece or a collector’s treasure, not a watch Oliver would wear around the academy.
Dray would.
I probe, my voice small, “What happened?”
Oliver shrugs. “Power shifted. Her father started consulting with me this past year, and Serena is nothing short of bull-headed. She was offered an internship after graduation. She begged her father to consider it. But I didn’t agree.” He loosens a sigh and turns his blank gaze on me, blank as though he cannot fathom her resistance. “Her ego was hurt.”
My mouth thins.
The words tumble around my head.
An internship.
Something I knew nothing about.
Something Serena should know better than to be interested in, to hope for.
I don’t ask anything about it.
It’s ludicrous.
Instead, I latch onto the word that cringed through me, the one that stirred awake my own defiance in my own powerless life.
“Bull-headed?” I scoff, bitter. “For not wanting her fiancé to have the final word in her life?”
The look he throws me is withering. “It’s my place to make those decisions. Serena knows that. But her pride doesn’t welcome the transition.” He turns his cheek to me. For a moment, he watches the mountain beyond the window, then adds, “It affected us.”
“Because you call her proud for wanting autonomy, for wanting her own life to be just that. Hers.”
Oliver doesn’t bother acknowledging my response. He just stares out the window.
I consider him a while in the new silence that has found us. I consider the slight pinch of his mouth, tense, and the low set of his lashes.
He almost looks sad.
Maybe he is.
There’s an echo of pity in my chest.
But not for him—it’s for Serena.
It’s a dynamic I never considered in my quest for a husband, someone to fill a void and protect me.
My brother sleeps around, hardly loves her, then decides to steal away all of her choices, her autonomy, her freedoms and career, then call her stubborn and proud…
That’s not just sad.
