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I hadn’t even talked to my therapist about this shit.
I didn’t care, and she was going to listen to me here today. She needed to hear this, my truth. “My hate for him, my distrust, was never about you. It’s not, because you are perfect.” I closed space, and her head lifted. “You’re goddamn beautiful, Sloane. You’re gorgeous, and it was never about you. It was always about me, because you are perfect and you always have been.”
She was like fucking light, air and the heaven to my darkness.
The ease to my pain.
She was everything wrapped into one, and if I’d listened to that for a goddamn second, we wouldn’t even be talking about this right now.
I wouldn’t be bringing her to tears.
The chirp in the hallway was deafening, walkie-talkies. Security stopped as Sloane pressed shaky fingers under her eyes.
“I need to go,” she said, more than aware of the eyes on her. “I don’t care if you look into my adoption. I just need to go.”
She just about clipped a security woman on her way out, and the woman extended a hand to her. She asked her if Sloane was okay, but Sloane merely waved her off. My little fighter left, stalking away.
She was always so good at running from me.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Sloane
It took me a second to find him and another to ditch security. He was going to pay for making me fucking cry in the hallway.
The audacity.
We’d had ample opportunity to have this conversation, and none of it had involved me being a blubbering mess in the middle of the hallway. He’d had time to talk to me. Plenty of fucking time.
He hadn’t gone back to class.
Dorian was sitting on a weight bench when I finally fucking found him and was naked from the waist up. He was lifting a barbell the size of like three of me, his muscles roving, his breath labored. He reset the weight with a clank, and when he sat up, I accosted him from the front.
I straddled the bench in front of him, grabbing the barbell behind him. He was going to look me in the fucking face and tell me what he had to say.
“Why wasn’t it about you?” I snapped, really fucking snapping. I had the most popular boy in school… the captain of the football team and jacked to the freaking nines, between me and a damn barbell. This boy could break me in half.
He wasn’t. He just looked at me, hands on his thighs, smelling like sweat, boy. Drops of perspiration misted his brow and muscled torso, his pecs flushed and cheeks red. Why the fuck he was in here instead of back in class, I didn’t know.
I wet my lips, a visible tremor in my arms as they hovered above his shoulders. He had two legs stamped out, our knees knocking, and his head between my forearms. Our faces were inches away from each other, but I couldn’t back down.
I refused.
“Why wasn’t it about you?” I ground out and on the verge of fucking tears. We were going to have this conversation, but it wasn’t going to be in the damn hallway in front of everybody and God. I’d already gotten enough stares being back. “You say I’m perfect, and you do these things for me…” My voice ached, cracked. “Things like being there for me the other day when I met Ramses and Brielle, and your fucking emails…”
I broke then, a tear, and Dorian’s reaction to that was his nostrils flaring. His hands gripped his thick legs, black shorts I guessed he’d changed into under his hands.
“You make accommodations for me. You fight for me.” Stop fucking crying. I blinked tears away. “I need you to tell me why not trusting me was about you. I need you to fucking say it, Dorian.”
I didn’t know why I needed this. I didn’t know why I was here. I just knew he had me crying in the middle of that hallway, and I was so sick of the pull he had over me.
Consideration moved over his face, his head down, his blond tresses thick and clumped with sweat. He’d been in here long enough to exert a fair amount of energy. “Because I’ve always known the answer.”
“What?”
His fingers weaved through his hair, the sides cropped short. The latter was hard to tell since he always wore his hair loose and with little to no product. It just looked that way, his hair perfect all the time. He pressed his hands together. “About you,” he said, glancing up. “I’ve always known the answer about you. I’ve always known your character and who you are. I know you’re a good person, Noa. I know you’re perfect.”
I gripped the barbell, trembling again.
