Me: Sloane’s.
Wolf: I’ll meet you there.
He’d texted back in seconds, and by the time he did get there, I was out in the street. I had my jacket off, pacing, but I wasn’t going to handle things like I had in the past. It wouldn’t come to blows with my friend, but that had nothing to do with him.
I’d made Sloane a promise. I was trying for Sloane. I wouldn’t let my anger take hold of me.
But that didn’t mean it made it easy to look at him.
When Ares got out of the car, Wells’s car, he didn’t immediately come over. He had his hands to his mouth, his eyes fucking wild, and though I stopped pacing, he started.
He didn’t stop.
“I fucked up, D,” he started with, working his hands. He braced them on his arms like that was the only thing he could do to keep from messing with them. “I fucked up so bad, man.”
“How?” My fists tightened, my throat the same. “What happened and where were you?”
“I was out looking for her, but I can’t find her.” He breathed into his hands. “She found it all.”
“Found what?”
“It all.” He glanced my way, shaking his head. “She knows I’ve been recording her. That we’ve been recording inside her house. She found one of the DVDs from the camera I put in to watch for your grandfather.”
I closed my eyes.
“I kept it in my dad’s studio since he never goes in there.” He swallowed. “She found it all, D. T
he screenshots from the surveillance. The folder I made for her and her brother. I don’t know what all she saw in there, but she’s at least seen the photos. She threw them at me before she ran off.”
He’d created a docket for them, notes and stuff he’d actually started before I’d come back to town. He really had been trying to get to the bottom of things with Sloane and her brother back then, and anything he found, he’d kept in there.
Of course after I came back, Thatcher had taken over the case. He’d made a digital file, but Wolf still kept the hard copies at his house. He said they’d be safe there.
I put my fists to my mouth.
“But it’s not just that.”
I panned, my friend coming over after what he said.
“It’s so bad, Dorian,” he said, his swallow hard. “She found my sketches.”
My eyes narrowed. “What?”
“She found my sketches, bro.” He raised and dropped his hands. “And now, she thinks I’m stalking her. She thinks I’m a fucking freak—”
“What sketches, Ares?” I scanned for his eyes, but they averted. I braced his arms. “Ares.”
He stared off, his eyes fucking haunted. “I couldn’t help it.” He pressed a fist to his mouth. “She was in my thoughts all the time.”
What the fuck?
“Ares?” My brow lifted. “Buddy… what are you talking about?”
“I drew her,” he confessed, making me blink. He cringed. “I drew her a lot, and she found all that.”
“What do you mean she was in your thoughts all the time?” I asked, and he wouldn’t look at me again. I made him. “Bro, you better fucking talk to me.”
The words cracked, broken and goddamn shattered. I honestly didn’t even know how I said them without…