Steve didn't move or give any indication that he'd heard her for a couple moments, trying and failing to come up with the magic words that would just halt this conversation and drain the awkward out of it and let them both go on and pretend it never happened. It might have been the only way he'd be able to look her in the eye for a while.

"I'm... I'm not mad at you," he said quietly. That wasn't precisely true, but he was far angrier at the situation at large that put him in this horrible, hopeless position. At himself, for ever thinking he had a shot. At Leon, irrationally, for being everything he wasn't and would never be.

He somehow had the mind to say something else, so she wouldn't make him clarify. Unfortunately, all his thoughts at the moment were pretty dismal. "How am I your family? I'm just... some kid. You only knew me for one day," he murmured. "You don't have to say things just to make me feel better, okay?"