My head snaps up. “Youdid?”
“He mentioned gaining the prize might make my companymore palatable.” A smile tugs the edges of his lips. “And he was correct. I’ve been receiving praise all day. It is marvelous.”
I don’t believe it. William did this.Successfully.
“I’ve also apologized to Kinsley and Inessa for the unkind things I said,” William continues. “As a gesture of my good intentions, I presented them with wildflowers I found near the hiking trails. I truly meant no harm.” He glowers. “And I’ve extended an apology to Stelmak, though I withheld any type of accompanying physical gesture of my internal frustration.”
A golden warmth fills all my shadowed spaces. I don’t think anyone at Ivernia has received flowers for any reason, and a sincere apology goes a long way. Maybe it’ll show people he’s more than poor, judgmental opinions. He’s learning. He’strying. He may be English nobility, but his title means virtually nothing here as Enzo Giannotti. The faster he can accept this, the smoother things will go.
“Oh yes,” he adds. “And I’ve also extended an apology to Brayden for assuming he’d recently come down with the plague when, as you say, he was suffering a common cold. Though, to be frank, he appeared quite unwell.”
I repress a snort. It wasn’t exactly fair to expect William to perfectly assimilate after missing one hundred and sixty years of progress. I shouldn’t have been so hard on him. And even though I had, he’d made things right anyway. Or maybe it was all those YouTube videos Sumner subjected him to.
I must have a strange look on my face because William goes, “Have I done something wrong?”
“No.” I shake my head. “I think that’s great. And if you can try and refrain from calling people commoners, that would be even better.”
William removes his journal from his blazer pocket and begins to jot something down. “Understood.”
A few fencing guys walk through the doors, still in their cream-colored jackets, laughter erupting between them as they shuffle inside. Sumner hangs up and collapses beside me. A crestfallen glaze is apparent in his vacant eyes. I stop rummaging. Right. What am I doing? We have bigger things to discuss. I’m focused on the wrong objective.
But I get a sense he’s dealing with his own problems.
“Your brother?” I speculate.
Sumner gives me a sidelong glance. “Yeah,” he sighs. “Kids are never denied lunch at his school, but he needs his account paid off. My mom hasn’t, I guess. So I’m going to—and then get yelled at for doing it.”
I twist my dad’s ring around my thumb. “Why would she get upset over that?”
“You’d be surprised.” He tips his head over the back of the couch. “She does her best, don’t get me wrong, but it makes things difficult when she doesn’t want to communicate.”
I can’t imagine my own mother cutting me off. If I ever neededanything, she’d answer the phone. She checks in. Texts GIFs of beating hearts just to say she loves me. Asks if I’ve done my laundry. There’s never been a moment where she intentionally ignored me.
“That must be hard.”
“It is what it is.” He rights his head and his glasses edge down his nose. “She’s a server and has a side business making jewelry, so her income fluctuates. And she thinks I accept extra money from my dad, which I don’t. It’s a point of contention.”
“Do you have a job or something?”
Sumner’s eyes flick toward mine. “Carmichael,” he says, “Why do you think I live stream solving equations while gaming all the time?”
“You makemoneydoing that?” I can’t keep the shock out of my voice.
One corner of his mouth lifts, that tilted smile returning. “There is an entire community of people—most of them students—who need math explained a little differently in order for it to click,” he explains. “The gaming aspect is a bonus because I’m a nerd and I like it.”
“Well, that part is clear.”
No wonder he spent so much time going live from Jared’s room over the summer. I thought it was a way to pass the time, not actual work. At least, not the clock-in-clock-out work I was doing as a hostess.
William is deep in conversation with some coding guys. I hadn’t noticed him leave our vicinity.
“But your mom doesn’t believe you?”
“No, which is hypocritical becausehewanted to send me here and she had no problem acceptingthat.” A heavy exhale escapes his lips. “But anything else I take from him is a betrayal. It’s why I couldn’t go home last summer. Preston had been talking about this overnight camp nonstop, so I saved enough to enroll him. She didn’t want to tell him no because then she becomes the bad guy, so she let him go but gave me the silent treatment. Staying at home was hard with her refusing to see my side, so Jared told me to come.”
That’s how he ended up staying with us. I can tell it hurts to talk about. And I get it. It’s messy and complicated when it shouldn’t be.
Something must change in my expression because Sumner goes, “Don’t.”
