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“Where?”
He didn’t answer for a second, and honestly, I just kind of asked the question off the cuff. We’d been talking, vibing. I faced him, and he’d stopped painting.
“They’re visiting D and his family,” he said, my eyes flashing. He sprayed a line. “And I got another rule.”
He didn’t give me a chance to ask, lowering his can.
Tension narrowed his eyes. “Personal shit isn’t needed with what we’re doing. In fact, it’s completely unnecessary to do what we have to do.” He fingered his hair. “So let’s not get into it. And that goes double for anything that has to do with D.”
I heard the words, the rule, but a request lingered there in his tone and the way he looked at me. It was like he was asking me for this new rule, and it was one that didn’t bother me. I didn’t want to tell him about my own shit.
I just had.
I told him more things than I ever
thought I would about my brother and my worries about him and who we were before Maywood Heights. He hadn’t even pulled my arm.
“I can be about that, Wolf,” I said, putting out a hand. “I can call you Wolf, right?”
That was something that only his football friends called him, and something that should trigger him.
But I had given him an inch. I couldn’t stand the name little.
His grin started slow.
“It’s on loan,” he said, putting his hand in mine. “While we’re working together.”
He shook once, then let go. He proceeded in his art therapy, and I did with mine. It must have worked in the end.
I didn’t check my phone once.
Chapter Fifteen
Sloane
My time spent with Ares “Wolf” Mallick required long days and even longer hours when we finally got started on our piece. The transition to the canvas had been seamless, and we hammered out a ton of work over the next few days. Actually, we worked so hard I found myself dreaming about galaxies instead of my usual stress and strain. It was a nice release.
And go figure working with him.
The two of us surprisingly worked pretty well together. He didn’t like to talk, and I didn’t either. I definitely knew who I was working with. Whenever I seemed to move, I felt his eyes in my direction, which was a stiff reminder of what we actually were. We weren’t friends.
But we weren’t feeling like enemies as much.
We’d been able to find some common ground, and that common ground kept me sane and working. He never gave me crap about checking my phone, and even less when I had no messages from my brother. He just kept working beside me, his earbuds in. I did the same while I brushed strokes along the car and canvas, and even though we were two planets working in our own little worlds, it felt as if we were on the same planet. It was probably one only another artist could get.
We had plans to work tonight too, but he sent me a text telling me he had to bow out. I was surprised until he mentioned it was football. His coach was having some of the varsity run drills. I wondered how long something like that could last since we did work long hours, but then he said he had a student council meeting after that.
Student of the Month indeed.
Something told me there was more to the boy with the attitude than met the eye. I told him fine and would probably just work on my series. I hadn’t gotten to work on it at all this week. It’d also be nice to be close to Bru even though he’d probably be sleeping, and Dr. Richardson was supposed to come by tomorrow to check on him. It was hard to tell how my brother was doing since he did sleep so much, and it’d be nice to talk to the doctor myself.
Since I did have my evening free, I decided to get some paints after school. I was coming out of the art supply store when I noticed a girl in a Windsor Prep uniform rushing into the street. She’d come from the direction of the grocery store next door, and the bottom of her bag exploded, oranges spilling into the street.
“Crap,” she squeaked, running after them. Hiking out to assist, I grabbed the closest orange, and it took me getting that close to realize who she was. She’d had her head down as she scrambled, her dark hair covering her face.
Of course, Rainbow Reed would be chasing oranges in the middle of a mini mall. I just felt like that was literally something she would do. She gathered a bunch before she followed my knee-highs up to me.
Her eyes expanded in width, but before she could say anything, a blond woman raced up behind us.
