Leo had pushed off the counter then, arms folded.
“Portal stuff?”
“Partly.”
He waited.
He always waits just long enough to make me hate how well he knows me.
So I gave him the version I could live with.
“Harvard’s not bad,” I said.
Leo lifted a brow.
“That sounds like a setup.”
“It’s just…” I remember dragging a hand through my hair. “It all makes sense. That’s the problem.”
Jade had looked between us.
“What does that even mean?”
And I’d laughed, but there was nothing funny in it.
“It means I’ve got the name, the school, the path, the draft buzz, the old-money resume my father can show off at dinner. I’ve got every version of a life that’s supposed to impress me.”
Leo had gone quiet.
Then:
“And?”
I’d looked at the fire.
At the bowl in my hand.
At the stupidly polished calm of their brownstone.
And said it.
“And I feel nothing.”
The plane jolts lightly through turbulence.
My fingers tighten once on the armrest.
Because that’s still it.
That’s still the truest thing.
Harvard made sense.
It just never felt alive.
I close my eyes for one second, and Leo’s kitchen sharpens again.
“You’re starting next year,” he said.
