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He couldn’t ghost them.
I didn’t even want to.
I didn’t know what I wanted. I was so confused. I just knew up until a month ago I’d been something else.
I’d been someone else.
Now, I was being told I had a whole other life. My brother, Bruno, wasn’t my own, and I had not one living parent but two. I had a family, and an interconnected web of other families. I’d seen the Prinzes, Reeds, and the Ambroses on the television too.
I’d seen them fight for me.
“If you’re here, I’m here,” he said, swallowing. “I’m not going to make you do anything you don’t want to do, and I’m not letting anyone else do that either.”
And then there was him and probably the closest link of all. We were twins.
I was a twin.
I didn’t know what that meant. It’d just been Bru and me for so long.
“Can I ask you something?” He whispered the question, his body incredibly still. “How did you know Pilar’s charm…” His head shook. “How did you know that charm was under the lockers? Have you been here before? In Maywood Heights? You had to have.”
But I hadn’t. I never. “I’ve never been here. I don’t know how it got there.” My finger scratched my wrist, restless. I used to wear the charm there on a bracelet my parents had gotten me.
At least, I thought they’d been my parents.
I just had a scar in that place now, and I had no idea how I’d gotten that either. It had happened a long time ago when I’d been young.
Why can’t I remember anything?
Maybe I’d just been too young, and there’d been no chance at all to remember anything.
Ares’s lips came together after what I said, and though I thought he’d ask another question, he didn’t.
Taking them off my lap, I gave Ares back both charms. I didn’t know the answer to his questions, and God I wished I did.
Ares’s hand closed around them both, and after pocketing them, he faced forward. He folded his arms, and when he closed his eyes, I knew he was serious. He was going to stay out here with me in the cold.
“He really didn’t know?” I asked, and his eyes open. “Dorian. He didn’t know about me. Who I was?”
Ares told me he didn’t, but there were just so many lies.
Ares head tilted. “If he did, he would have blown the whistle on that shit. Instantly. He would have called my parents for me. Fuck, he did call my dad and made me tell the truth. The truth about you.”
What?
“You would have known, Sloane, and he would have told you himself had I refused. As far as keeping quiet about Callum, D didn’t have all the information. He didn’t know who you were, and had he, I think he might have done a few things differently.”
But Ares didn’t know that. Not really.
“If he’s part of the reason you ran, he shouldn’t be,” he said. “The secrets and shit was me, and D and his gramps are complicated. I’m sure he’ll talk to you about it if you ask. Just got to give him a chance.”
He was always trying to be the peacemaker, and it made sense he believed what he did, about me running, and I probably would have come to that conclusion too had I been him.
It’s not that simple.
I was cold again, my head lowering. I zipped Ares’s jacket up, and stared at the city with its twinkling lights. I sat next to my twin brother, my eyes closing. They were itchy and hot.
The tears that followed only made it worse.
