But slowly, gradually, like a door being eased open inch by inch, we started to find our way back. Vaughn made a joke about Dr. Nutsworth, and I laughed so hard I nearly choked on my coffee. I did an impression of our mother at a school fundraiser, and Vaughn snorted beer through his nose, which was disgusting and also the funniest thing I’d witnessed in weeks.
It’s not the same as it was when we were kids. It can’t be. We’re not those people anymore. But it’s something.
It’s the only sunshine in my life right now.
Because I continue to miss Leo.
I don’t think I’d realized how far down the Leo rabbit hole I’d fallen until I tried to extract myself from it.
I always thought there was a trade-off. Someone who provided me with security would bore me long-term, but someone who challenged me would be exhausting to live with.
But Leo somehow managed to do both.
He made me feel more secure than I’ve ever felt in my life, but also kept me on my toes.
And there it is. The thought I’ve been circling for weeks, approaching from every angle, running every diagnostic, looking for an alternative explanation.
There isn’t one.
I’m in love with Leo Brennan.
And it’s an all-encompassing, terrifying, no-safety-net kind of love.
I’m in love with him, yet he walked away from me.
And I get that I withdrew when he wanted to talk about our relationship. I constantly replay that moment in the apartment, the night after the most intimate sex I’ve ever had, when he told me he wanted to talk. And I shut him down.
I should have been more open with him. I should have told him how I felt about him.
But isn’t the fact that he left an indication that he obviously doesn’t feel the same way about me as I feel about him?
Because I could have never left him. I know that now.
I try to push Leo out of my mind as Vaughn and I move across the grounds of the Tower of London. We’re here because Vaughn has never been, and I told him it was mandatory. You can’t visit London and not see the place where half the monarchy tried to murder the other half. It’s basically a family reunion with worse outcomes.
We climb the stairs to the next tower at my pace, which is still slower than normal because my left foot is adjusting to life free of a walking boot.
“The Beauchamp Tower is my favorite part,” I say as we duck through a low doorway into a circular stone room.
“What’s special about this one?”
“Look at the walls.”
Vaughn looks. They are covered in carvings. Names, dates, coats of arms, prayers, elaborate inscriptions that were all scratched into the stone by prisoners who’d been held here, some of them for years.
“Were these done by the prisoners?” Vaughn traces a finger near one of the carvings without touching it. It’s an intricate family crest surrounded by Latin text, the kind of thing that would have taken weeks of painstaking work with a nail or a belt buckle.
“Yeah, some of the prisoners knew they were going to be executed. They spent their last days carving their names into the walls so someone would know they’d existed.” I point to one near the corner. “That one’s the Dudley family crest. Four Dudley brothers were all imprisoned here together, locked up in the same tower. One of them carved this.”
“Brothers,” Vaughn says.
“Brothers.”
We stand there for a moment, looking at the name of a man who carved his family’s identity into stone five hundred years ago because it was the only thing he had left.
“You know a lot about Tudor prisoners,” Vaughn observes.
“I know a lot about everything. It’s my curse.”
