“Good at what?”
He put a hand out. “This. This shit. Us.”
“This shit?” A perfect sum-up of what we were or were not. I squeezed my arms. “I don’t want you.”
“Well, I want you.” He closed the distance, disappeared space, and I thought he’d do what he always did. He’d take.
He waited.
He stood there waiting, and the side of his neck flushed in so much color. His nostrils flared. “Sloane…”
“I told you it’s too late.” My throat tight, I tried so hard not to fucking blink, cry. If I blinked, I knew the tears would come down. “I can’t do this anymore, Dorian. We’re so bad for each other.”
It used to be a joke, our madness. We were hate-fucks and anger.
We were aggression and heaven.
Combined, it just made for a recipe of chaos and disaster, and my heart couldn’t physically take anymore.
“We aren’t, and it doesn’t have to be how it’s been.” He wet his lips. “I know I screwed up with you. I know I’m fucked up, and everything you said was right. It’s always been right, but I want to try to not be so fucked up.” His throat worked. “I want to take you out. On a date. A real fucking date and not me being an asshole for once.”
I twitched.
He smiled. “I want to show you I’m serious. Serious about this, and that I’m not afraid to admit when I’m wrong. That I have faults, and I’m human.”
Blinking, I noticed Ares over Dorian’s shoulder. At this point, he’d gotten in his car, but he was still looking at us. He’d obviously gone into detail with Dorian about conversations Ares himself and I’d had.
I mean, those were my words coming out of Dorian’s mouth.
For some reason, Ares was going to bat for us. He was rooting for us.
As my thoughts mulled over that, Dorian managed to advance closer. I could make out every various shade of brown in his eyes now.
“Please give me a chance to show that,” he continued, and he was really pleading here in front of me. He grinned. “I’m not a complete asshole. I swear, I’m not.”
There were these moments, a time or two. Sometimes that dark filter would slip, and he let a part of himself out. A part that wasn’t so cold and thorny.
A part that wasn’t so distant.
He let me get close, but so quickly he’d pull it right away.
“It’s…” I started to say. “It’s not that easy. You’re not that easy.”
His head lifted, his nod firm. Ares’s window pulled down, and Dorian and I both angled around.
“You coming, D?” Ares tipped his chin. “Probably should get this thing to school. Wells and Thatch will wonder what’s up.”
They’d apparently left while Dorian and I were talking. The flatbed truck was gone, and it was only the three of us now.
“Two seconds,” Dorian said, facing me. “What do you say? It doesn’t have to be what you think. You and me?”
But it very well could, and he hadn’t given me reason enough to go that way and take the risk.
At least, not yet.
“You should probably get that stuff to school,” I said. “You go do that, and I might think about it after that.”
His eyebrow rose slow. “You might?”