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Not after what he’d done.
And he couldn’t deny that shit. The evidence had been there and in my friggin’ hands when I’d gone into that home studio at his house. My jaw worked. “How long did you know?”
His chin tipped, head cocked. “Is that why you did?” He leaned forward. “Because I lied? Lied to you?”
I was glad he was admitting it.
I didn’t answer, and he sighed. Raising up, he touched his back to the wall.
“Not as long as you think.” His gaze swung in my direction. “I didn’t know who you were when you first got here. Honestly, it was a fucking fluke how it happened.”
I scanned him, watching as he scrubbed his hands down his face.
“A fucking miracle.” His attention latched onto me again, pointed, heavy. He frowned. “Remember that party I had? That day I mean?”
Of course, I fucking did. He lied to me then too.
He blinked, pulling that cap off and running a hand over his curls again. He returned it backward on his head. “Of course, you do. I made a fucking fool out of you.”
It was really crazy how my thoughts really did align with his. Like we were always kind of on the same wavelength, and I’d noticed it before this when we’d worked together closely.
Trying not to think of those similarities, I sat there, and Ares braced his long arms around his raised legs.
“Well, before the party, I saw you looking for something.” He chewed his lip. “Remember that? How you were on your knees looking for something?”
I shrugged. I guess I did. Honestly, I’d forgotten about it. I had seen a flash of something, but he’d made me feel like an idiot for being on the floor.
He reached toward me, and when I sat back, he raised a hand.
“There’s something in the pocket.” He directed a finger. “In the jacket? You can get it.”
Eyeing him, I tugged the pocket over, feeling around until I did feel something. I pulled it out, and it took me a second to see what I was looking at. Metal, whatever it was had been tarnished to the point where it wasn’t recognizable as, well, anything. It had a layer of age and distress, and with the channel’s low light, I couldn’t really see what the object was until Ares shined his phone light on it.
But when he did…
My heart stopped, like fucking stopped, full stop. I definitely recognized this thing.
It looks like his.
It resembled Ares’s emblem, the one he’d worn when we were painting. It looked exactly like it, but it was older and dented.
My thumb running over it, I looked up but only to see the same one in front of my face.
Ares held another, this one dangling from that familiar chain he always wore in his garage. His was newer, or at least nicer. He swallowed. “The one you’re holding is the one I found on the floor that day I saw you in the hall.” He cleared his throat. “I looked under the lockers after you left.”
He tugged his off, giving it to me. I was able to compare the two then, and they were completely identical.
I ran my thumb over both of them. “I don’t understand.”
“I didn’t either.” His back touched the wall again. “As far as I knew, I only had one. My parents gave mine to me when I was a kid.”
That’s what he’d said to me in the garage, that he got one as a kid.
“But I should have been the only one,” he continued. “Dad told me he had it made out of this old, archaic-as-shit necklace Court guys used to give their girlfriends. They called it a ‘Court Kept’ necklace or some bullshit. Only guys were members back then, and it was a way to claim their girls.”
Jesus, that was archaic.
“Right?” Ares laughed a little, apparently the pair of us on the same wavelength once more. “Anyway, I don’t know why it was never given to my mom. Maybe because it was archaic. I know he got it in high school, and they didn’t meet until my dad was at college so…” He angled forward. “Basically, I was the only one supposed to have it. It was unique. Obviously, since Dad made it out of this thing he used to have. He had that old necklace melted down and actually did it himself. He’s into metalwork. Don’t know if I mentioned that.”
