“I’ll send you the details,” he decided to say, and I didn’t miss the smile in his voice. He laughed a little. “I’ll see you in a few.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Sloane
“You were wrong, you know?” Dorian placed a hand on my back, a warm wide hand. He flattened it on my spine, his finger tracing the line. “What happened to Charlie was my fault. You heard Mayberry in the video. She said he contacted her.” He shook his head, blond tendrils swaying across his brow. “He did that because of me. Because of what I said. He never would have texted her had I not told him she was still with her husband. They’d broken up with Charlie thinking Mayberry was going to leave Coach.”
How funny he’d heard something completely different than I had.
He really was damaged, taking on this blame for himself. Charlie and Mayberry were two people who made a choice, Dorian’s involvement or not. Also, I didn’t miss how he completely threw away the fact that he’d gotten that woman to tell the truth at all.
I slid onto my back, his hand flattening on my tummy now. I’d driven Bru’s car to come out here to Dorian’s family’s cabin, not hard to find with my cell phone’s navigation. And funny enough, the dark prince and I actually hadn’t jumped each other’s bones the moment I arrived.
We hadn’t had time.
We both knew we were biding it here. He said he just needed a moment before things changed.
I laced my fingers with his, as thick and powerful as the rest of him. We barely fit on this couch together. “I heard something different,” I admitted, and he smirked.
“And now you’re going to tell me.” He kissed my mouth open, a lot of cuddling, a lot of kissing on this coach. I felt like a girl obsessed with a boy.
What’s he doing to me?
And he said I got in his head. Our tongues dueled, our mouths tasting for hot moments. I grinned. “I would if you’d get your goddamn tongue out of my mouth.”
To be an asshole, he deepened the kiss, his tongue basically down my throat at this point.
I wished I cared. In fact, it was all I could do to not let him pull me underneath him and own me like he had everything else. I’d come over here so quick.
“Dorian…”
He stopped to look at me, but didn’t stop pressing kisses to my face, my nose, my eyelashes.
“You can’t convince me otherwise,” he breathed and sounded more sad about that than anything. He harbored so much guilt for what had happened to Charlie, obviously. He tightened the grip of our laced fingers. “It’s my reality, Sloane.”
I sat up on my elbow. “Two people got involved with each other. Two people that had nothing to do with you.”
“And I knew about that too. The affair.” He frowned. “Kept it all to myself thinking I was having Charlie’s back.”
There was an honor amongst most brothers, and Charlie definitely sounded like Dorian’s. “What happened to Charlie was awful,” I said. “But something tells me he wouldn’t like what you’re doing now. Taking the blame?”
“And you know Charlie so well.” He said it, but he smiled a little. “You haven’t even met him, and you don’t know me.”
I might know more than he believed. He wore his heart on his sleeve more than he may think and I wanted to tell him that again. I wanted to tell him that I saw him. That he wasn’t whatever he believed he was. He couldn’t be. Not with what he did today for Charlie.
His phone buzzed beside us. Dorian sighed, reaching over me to pick it up from the coffee table. I’d only been here an hour or so, but he’d had so many missed calls he debated turning off his phone. He never answered one, but I supposed he didn’t have to. He said his parents had been blowing up his phone.
We don’t have much time.
It was like each moment and touch with him was an hourglass losing sand.
These moments we had now weren’t supposed to be lasting. That was why I came over here. His family’s cabin was by the lake and pretty remote. His mom and dad obviously enjoyed their privacy when they stayed here.
“It’s Wolf now,” Dorian said, studying his phone. “He never calls. Only texts.”
He let the call go, but there’d been so much debate in his eyes. I didn’t know whether to push him toward reality or away. Reality meant we weren’t here in whatever bubble we’d temporarily created.
My phone buzzed next.