Page 74 of Play Dirty

“This is about what happened in the hot house, isn’t it?”

His gaze shifted uncomfortably left and right, before settling back on me.

“Nothing happened in the hot house,” he said coldly.

Too fast.

I swore. “Oh, yes it did.”

“You’re not even allowed to be in—”

“You’re mad because you lost control,” I cut him off. “You let something happen. You actually felt something for once, other than the need to—”

“I swear to God, if you don’t—”

“—hit someone.”

The words fell like a hammer. They stopped him cold.

He stepped back all of a sudden, like he needed distance. It felt like I’d crossed some kind of invisible line.

I still didn’t regret it, though.

“Ares…” I said, a bit awkwardly. “Listen…”

He spun away, leaving me wondering what the hell just happened. He didn’t look back, either. He just stomped through the doorway, disappearing from sight.

The house felt abruptly cold again, when it didn’t before. Desperate to avoid my room, I found a quiet chair in a corner of the living area and opened my tablet to do some work. The numbers wouldn’t come together, though. Every line, every column of data seemed to dance away as I tried to make sense of it, until all I could do was power the thing off.

My reflection stared numbly back at me, from the now-black screen.

But my thoughts kept circling back to Ares.

Eventually I stood up, and my feet carried me upstairs without thinking. Past my room. Past the rest of the attic.

Straight to his.

I knocked once, softly. There was pause, and the door opened.

Sebastian took one look at me, and didn’t ask a single question.

“Hey,” he said quietly.

That was it. That’s all it took.

“I just—” I started, and then stopped. It was obvious I didn’t know how to finish the sentence.

He stepped back and opened the door wider.

“Come here.”

I didn’t hesitate. His room was warm, and not just the temperature. Everything about it was welcoming. The dim lighting, the quiet. The way the downstairs noise barely touched it.

I sat on the edge of the bed, hands clasped loosely in my lap. Sebastian sat down beside me, and gently laid a hand across mine.

“You wanna talk about it?”

I shook my head. “Not really.”