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What she said gave me pause, and alarm bells sounded again. I didn’t know what to feel. Anger. Frustration…
Pain.
I think I was feeling it all by the time my hand touched the doorknob, and I was so freaking tired of it. I was tired of everything when it came to this guy, and it quite literally made me sick. My forehead touched the door. “What are you talking about?”
Because all of this should have been Heath. Heath was the one bringing me all these things and helping me out.
“You didn’t make accommodations for yourself, so I did...”
I gripped the doorknob, hearing Ares’s voice in my head. He was always, always making accommodations for me. He did and long before that last day at the cabin.
Why does he hurt me like this?
He was killing me. Every day he did this shit, he was killing me. I placed my hands on the door, and Sloane eased closer behind me. I didn’t know how close, but I couldn’t face her. I didn’t know what I’d do about this situation. If I’d freak out, or even cry. I was so tired of crying too.
“He’s been missing classes, Fawn,” she said, my fingers knuckling against the door. “He’s missed too many, so he asked me to bring you everything today.”
I almost asked her to elaborate, but then I thought, why bother? I had notes… pages and pages of notes from my classes, and they were all handwritten. They were in his handwriting. I sighed against the door. “He’s been attending my classes for me, hasn’t it? Getting me notes?”
I knew the answer before I even turned around. Sloane was there, and like before, she did keep her distance. She really did know I’d been sick. She played with her hands. “Like I said, he didn’t mean any harm. He was just trying to help you out.”
“But how did he know to help me out. How did he…” I was shaking, my hands knuckling. “Why does he keep helping me out?”
She had no answers for me, but she didn’t have to have any, did she?
“I need you with everything in me…”
I was crying now. Replaying those words he’d said in my head made me cry. Steady tears blinked down my cheeks because I needed him too. I maybe needed him more than he needed me, and maybe that was where the real source of my hate came from. That my need outweighed his, and he’d made me do that. He’d made me love him with everything in me.
I couldn’t help my love. It came so hot and so fast. I wanted the feelings I had for him to just be lust. I wanted it so desperately but it wasn’t. I loved Ares Mallick.
I more than loved him.
The reality of that made me shake, and I audibly heard Sloane swallow in that hallway.
“He ran into your friend Heath,” she explained. “He asked him how bad you were. He saw your social media status.”
Of course he did.
“I need you with everything in me…”
I closed my eyes, my palms wet. I was freaking ugly crying at this point, and Sloane took the wall beside me. Again, she kept her distance.
“Fawn,” she started, but then paused. Once more, it was like she was choosing her words carefully. “Fawn, I think you’re both suffering.”
I was breaking down, shattering. I braced my arms. “He broke me.”
The words came out in a whisper, a weak, blubbering mess, and I hated it. I gazed up to see Sloane nodding, her expression terribly sad, and that made me feel even weaker. It made me feel more ashamed. She bit her lip. “I know a thing or two about that. Dorian and I had our ups and downs.”
I ran a sleeve under my eye. “Yeah?”
“Oh, yeah.” She smiled. “He’s not perfect. Neither is my brother, and I’m not either.”
Nor was I. I was the opposite of perfect.
He made you better.
In so many ways, he had, and I hated to admit that too. I had been getting better. I was talking to my mom and stepdad… I had been getting better, and I wasn’t shutting people out. It was like I wasn’t making myself suffer anymore for my dad’s accident. I was trying to live and have the life I knew he would want for me. One without guilt or hurt. I always distanced myself from my family because I couldn’t move on. I had too much guilt surrounding the accident, too much pain, and Wolf had told me that wasn’t what my dad would want for me. He’d told me to live and taught me how to love myself again.
