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I had no idea if the rest of the school knew about Legacy pretty much casting me out. Maybe they just found it weird because Ares was being seen with the likes of me. The two of us had spent pretty much all night working on the sketches for the project, and that was the first thing he showed me when he lounged against my locker.
“Figured we’d start getting things down on canvas tonight,” he said. “What do you think of the final design?”
The final was my work and his put together. What I’d worked on last night had just been mine, but what I was seeing now was the two combined.
I didn’t know if he’d worked all this out at school, after I left, or what, but he’d done a lot of work in not many hours.
And he was also asking my opinion for some reason.
“What? You fucking hate it?” He pushed a hand over his hair. “Obviously, it’s not going to look just like what you did. I had to replicate your style, but I think I got pretty close.”
Pretty close was an understatement. Hell, it was like I’d done the galaxies beneath the constellations.
“Pretty good.” I gave the pad back to him. I couldn’t help but be annoyed he could imitate a style I’d been working on for, well, my whole goddamn life.
He smirked upon looking at it, then me. “Something tells me it’s more than pretty good, but all right.” He laughed. “So tonight, then? Same time?”
I was about to tell him yeah before our audience suddenly expanded beyond the casual onlookers.
Rainbow Reed had stopped in the middle of the hallway, people passing around her. Her lips parted, she passed a glance between Ares and me.
Ares pushed off the lockers, following the line of my sight in that direction. He faced me. “Tonight?”
I nodded, but he barely waited for that before heading over to Bow. He dropped a long arm around her, walking away with her, and I didn’t know what to think about that before closing my locker. I supposed it wasn’t my business to think about it.
Chapter Fourteen
Sloane
“So, I take it Bow’s unaware we’re working on a project together?”
Ares’s head lifted after what I said, a pencil in his teeth. He’d been working out our objective tonight, i.e., where to start on getting something down on our huge canvases. We had a lot of work ahead of us, and we both needed to be smart about it.
His pencil fell from his teeth with his frown, and I shrugged.
“Bow?” I questioned, hiking back against the white muscle car. “She didn’t look like you’d told her we’d be doing this.”
Not that I cared really. Like he’d said, all that wasn’t my business, but the girl had definitely looked like a deer in headlights today.
Ares pushed the pencil behind his ear, his paint-splattered bibs secured at his hips. I’d purposely worn jeans and a T-shirt to differentiate. We may be working together, but I wasn’t working for him. Last time I’d shown up in bibs like him, I’d ended up looking like his employee, and I wasn’t having that shit.
It seemed he’d noticed our similar choice in dress the other day, or at least, was mixing things up. In any sense, we’d both managed to avoid wearing the same fucking thing.
Ares hooked thumbs in his pockets. “How about you just focus on the work,” he said, then directed me on the other side of the car. “You start there. Take what I sketched out and replicate it.”
I saluted him, which made him scoff. I swear, by the end of this, we’d probably both kill each other. I didn’t know what had compelled him to ask me to do this shit with him, or what had compelled me to say yes.
I think I knew when I pulled out my phone, a distraction from everything going on back home.
I checked my phone for texts. I’d told Bru before I left again today I’d be around for him. I had my phone on in case he needed me. He probably wouldn’t. He never did, and his response this morning had been the same as when I’d told him about the project.
He’d verbally pushed me out the door, then promptly told me to not make any noise on my way out. He spent most of his days sleeping, and though I often asked if he was feeling any worse, he stressed he was fine.
He was almost stubborn about it.
The thing about my brother was, he had a lot of pride. He did just like me. The pair of us were so used to just looking out for ourselves and each other, when we actually needed help, we refused to seek it.
For all I knew, my brother really could be dying, but he’d never tell me. This made me even more vigilant about checking in despite his doctor telling me (telling the both of us) Bru just had to sweat this shit out. We were informed to tell Dr. Richardson if Bru got any worse, and since he hadn’t, we didn’t call.
