“Yeah, bro. That’d be fucking cool.” He slapped my brother’s chest. “You come too, man.”
Alerted into this conversation, my brother opened his hands. “That’d be fun.”
“Right?” Thatcher tipped his chin across the table. “Bow, you can come too since Sloane will be there.”
“Well, thanks.” The sarcasm absolutely lined her voice. She glanced my way. “Will you be there? Probably shouldn’t go unless you’re there.” She shrugged. “I don’t want to get in the way. They do guy things, you know?”
I noticed her study the other end of the table. The only one there was Wells, and he was barely paying attention to the conversation anymore. In fact, he had his mouth full of burger bits, and Bow’s cheeks completely colored.
I wondered if the little rabbit may have a bit of a crush. This wasn’t the first time I’d caught her looking at him, but if a crush was the case, I wished her luck. Dude was a complete man ho like her brother, and it was lucky she or I could find table space at lunch whenever her brother and his friend brought their harems over.
They also weren’t shy about their make-out sessions at the table, which made lunch hella fun. Between the two bros, I gagged on my milk most days.
“Now, I never said there was any goddamn party at my house.” Ares’s toned snipped, his eyes fire. “D…”
“It might be good to mix things up.” He eyed him, his brow arched, and whatever was going on between these boys had me confused as fuck. Dorian nodded. “We’ll all hang out and talk. It’ll be good.”
Ares said nothing, his gaze averting. He waved a hand, and it seemed all this was settled.
“So tonight?” Dorian’s fingers folded behind my neck. “You should come. It’ll be nice for us to all hang out, and you can get to know the guys more.”
I felt put on the spot when he said that, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t prefer a group gathering. He may not mean to put pressure on me, but I felt it whenever it was just us.
I mean, he’d said he loved me.
That was still obviously there between us, and until I could get over myself and my reservations, it would for the present.
I agreed to meet up and quickly. With that all done, the conversation flowed back to what it had been, but I noticed Ares wasn’t a part of much of it. Actually, he stared more out the window than participated in the conversation with his friends, which bothered me more than I’d ever admit. He’d seemed to be cool with me. Like we really had a truce, but how he’d just been acting now didn’t feel like one.
In fact, it felt like the opposite.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Sloane
“We’re not staying very long.” I didn’t want to come at all really, but Bru convinced me otherwise about the pizza night tonight.
He’d called me a lame-ass, and after nearly punching him out cold, I decided to get up and go. I didn’t want to go, God did I not want to, and I told my brother that all the way over to Ares’s house. We’d just gotten to his wrought-iron gate, and after pulling in front of the house, my brother turned off his Audi.
He scoffed. “We’re going to leave when we’re both ready.” Since that wasn’t our deal, I frowned, and his eyes lifted. “What’s y
our problem? I thought you and Mallick were cool.”
We had been cool until he’d gotten all weird at lunch. I shook my head. “I’m not staying long.”
“Well, then your ass is calling a ride share.” Bru got out of his car, and I growled. Our vehicle wasn’t the only one in front of Ares’s big-ass house. I noticed Dorian’s ride and Thatcher’s and Wells’s too.
Ares’s Hummer wasn’t there, but I assumed he’d parked in the garage since this was his house. I caught up to my brother on the home’s steps. “Bruno, I’m not joking.”
“And I’m not joking about your butt finding a ride.” He sighed. “Just chill for one goddamn night. Odds are, you and Dorian will be all over each other anyway.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“What doesn’t it mean?” His eyebrows wagged. “Ever since he got you all mushy on the football field, you guys have been inseparable.”
He may be right about that, but that’d been before our last night together.
The pressure from that moment was still there, and I hoped we could all just hang out tonight. I wanted to commit to Dorian…