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I’d poisoned him.
“I know it’s hard, but me suggesting this is for you. It’s your journey. Your healing, and you need to be able to talk about this with her like you do with me, your parents, and your friends. You need to let Noa in, Dorian. You said you care about her, and it’ll only help you.”
But that was the thing. I didn’t just care about Noa. I loved her, and I was aware of that fact just as much as I was something else.
I hadn’t been the only one to say it.
She’d said she always had, always, but something had obviously held her back from saying it before. The potential reasons why scared me, and I thought a lot about that after my session with Dr. Singh. Things had been going well with Sloane, and in fact so well I forgot sometimes. I forgot she hadn’t told me she loved me at first, and the reasons why now seemed moot. Especially after that day in the weight room. I’d gone in there to wear my fucking body out after our tense conversation, and after she’d come in, everything had changed. She did love me.
The rest didn’t fucking matter.
Of course, it did matter. There had been a reason why she’d hesitated the first time I’d told her, but it was easy not to think about it. Add that to the fact that I wasn’t ready to talk about that summer with my grandfather in general, and what Dr. Singh asked me seemed impossible. I wasn’t ready to talk about it, but that had nothing to do with not trusting Sloane. I still had fucking issues, my own shit and things I still had to work through.
Sloane initially keeping her love secret from me only further made me want to bury that summer with my grandfather (and what had happened after) deep in my therapist’s office. She’d already been gun-shy about me.
This shit was just hard.
It was also the reason I was still seeing my fucking therapist, and I tucked our latest session away when I pulled up to the Mallick house. A few straggling paparazzi were still at the gate, mostly local press. Since there were fewer prying eyes, the security detail had significantly gone down. There was only one at the gate today.
It was really refreshing, and I knew it was for the Mallick family too. I knew it was for Sloane because that shit had gotten annoying in the rough of it.
There weren’t constantly people around us now, and the press were starting to forget things too. Sloane and her brother and the ordeal from mere weeks ago were starting to fade away in the eyes of the press, and everyone on the other side of it was starting to move on too.
I saw that in the backyard.
I came up on the throes of a race once I got out of my car, smirking when I got to the mini gate that separated the garage from the yard. Thatcher, Bow, and Bru were in a huddle beneath snow flurries, Wolf, Sloane, and Wells in front of them. Wolf and Sloane were hunkered down, a knee to the earth in a pair of windbreakers, and Wells stood ahead of them.
Here we go again.
Coming to find them all this way wasn’t uncommon, and I unlatched the gate, coming inside. I strode over as Wells counted Wolf and Sloane off.
“Three. Two. One…” Wells smirked, grinning. My buddy had a fucking down coat on with a furry collar like he was on a damn runaway. His tongue out, he dropped his arm. “Let’s get it.”
Wolf and Sloane shot off in a run, and I sprinted, happy for the person who made fucking leggings. They made my girl’s ass look ridiculous, and I got a nice little shot after she took off after my boy. Wolf got ahead of her pretty quick, and being an asshole started jogging backward.
“Come on, little,” he called. He raised his hands. “Why the fuck we been training?”
Sloane had started going with Wolf and me in the morning during our sprints. We rose at the crack of dawn to stay loose. We both played other sports in the spring season, Wells and Thatcher too.
Sloane claimed she was getting up with us just to hang out, but these little sprinting exercises between the two of them had started not long after that. It seemed her competitive spirit matched her twin’s.
“You fucking asshole!” she roared, pumping her wiry little arms. She looked like a not-so-fast gazelle, and it’d take her a bit if she really wanted to keep up with Wolf. He was one of the fastest motherfuckers on our team, and those long-ass legs of his only helped.
Chuckling, I caught up with the group who started walking after them. Bow, Thatcher, and Bru clapped and cheered after the two, and when I got to them, I did the same.
“They really at this shit again?” I asked, dropping arms over Bow and Thatch. Wolf passed the flag that signaled the end of the race, the little fighter a good length behind him, and I cringed.
“We tried to talk her out of it,” Bow said, cringing too. She clapped hard. “Woohoo! Good job, Sloane!”
Thatcher and I laughed, but I forced myself to stop once Sloane finished the race too. She’d fucking kick my ass if she caught me laughing.
“You fucking cheat.” Sloane shot her finger at Wolf as the three of us made our way over. Wells caught up too, joining us all. Sloane frowned at Wolf. “You’re like on ‘roids or something.”
The little fighter was having a hard time catching her breath. She had her head basically between her legs when we all got there, and I shot my shoulder into Wolf. He could have stood to go a little easier on her.
This only made him chuckle louder, roaring at this point. He tucked his hands under his arms. “I’m not on steroids. It’s called genetics, and you got the same ones, so really, you got no excuse.”
They did both come from a family of runners. Both Ramses and Brielle jogged too and actually went out well before we did in the morning.
