The hit burned hot, searing hard into my flesh, but I’d been hit harder. Sloane was a chick. She wasn’t hitting as hard as one of my boys when things got rough.
“You’re so fucked up.” Her chest hiked, trembling up and down. “You are, and you’re trying to drag me down in that shit with you.”
I didn’t understand, and she only laughed.
She lifted a finger. “You’re a headcase, Dorian Prinze. You’re fucked and you’re…” She swallowed. “You’re too late.”
Too late.
Her laughter continued, so fucking dry. I’d pulled some of her hair out of her ponytail, and she pushed a veil of it out of her face. “You d
on’t want me. It’s your ego. It’s…” She raised and dropped her hands. “I don’t know what the fuck it is, but people who want people don’t treat them the way you have me. They don’t abandon them and call them liars.”
I’d made a mistake, shaking my head. My throat jumped. “I know I’ve fucked up.”
“You don’t know the half.” She pulled her ponytail down. “I told you to stay the hell away from me, and I meant it. You don’t know what you want, and even if you did, I want nothing to do with it. You treat people like shit, and you’ve especially treated me like shit.”
I wished I could just tell her, tell her everything. She needed to know my grandfather was playing her and her brother. She needed to know he was my grandfather.
But there was too much risk.
My buddies and I didn’t know the answers. In fact, we knew little to nothing, and Grandfather was right. It might be too late for the truth now with her, and her going rogue and doing something random once we told her our theories could cause more harm than good. My grandfather was a determined man, a violent man.
And if she got hurt…
She couldn’t know, not yet, and I said nothing after what she said.
Her smile was haunted, as sad as it was gorgeous. Noa Sloane could bring a man to his fucking knees with her beauty.
She had me.
Maybe she wanted me to fight, fight her and what she said. Maybe she wanted me to fight for her.
I should have.
Shaking her head, she left me, and before I thought better of it, I went after her. She ran right into someone the moment the door opened, my buddy grabbing her.
Wolf glanced up, probably roaming the halls. We’d all been taking details. Just keeping our eyes open in case my grandfather attempted to try something at school.
This must have been Wolf’s shift.
“Sloane?” he questioned, but then she shoved him away. She speed-walked down the hall, and he started to go after, but then spotted me.
He blinked then, his eyes flashing. “What did you do?”
I blinked myself, not expecting that reaction.
Especially when his eyes narrowed.
They cut hard in my direction, his dark eyebrows descending like storm clouds. Before I had a chance to get a word in edgewise, my buddy was striding down the hallway. He headed in the same direction as Sloane, and I fell back against the door, knowing I’d fucked up. I’d told my buddies I’d stay away. I’d told them I’d keep my distance.
But today, what just happened told me I obviously couldn’t.
Chapter Thirty-One
Sloane
Ares was really quiet that night when we worked in my garage. He was always quiet, but this time it was different. He didn’t have his earbuds in, which, for some reason, made me super aware of him. Or maybe it was that I knew he was aware of me, and that made all the awkward shit that had happened with his friend this afternoon that much worse. Ares had come after me following that, but I’d told him to fuck off and hadn’t seen him again until we met tonight.