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He did, but he hadn’t called me. In fact, I’d been trying to get a hold of him most of the night. At least, I had before my phone died. That’s how much I’d called him.
I pushed my hair around. “Can I go see him?”
Ares shook his head, and my heart sunk. He put a hand on his chest. “I couldn’t even go. It’s past visiting hours, and I’m not family.”
“Well, I am.”
“But it’s still past visiting hours, little. And you were right about that accident. The hospital is a clusterfuck right now, and I was lucky to get the few moments I did get with the kid’s doctor. The hospital doesn’t want a bunch of people wandering around. It’s a bad time, and they’re not making exceptions for anyone. Not even me.”
This was complete bullshit, all of it. I wanted to go back there and punch someone in the face. They couldn’t treat people this way.
Ares’s head tilted. “But it sounds like the kid’s doing okay. The doctor advises you to go home and apologizes for not coming out to speak to you. Once they got a hold of your Montgomery, they didn’t do anything more after that. They were busy with tha
t accident, I guess, and got sidetracked.”
And I was nobody. I wasn’t like Ares. People didn’t move because of me. I growled. “So they forgot about me. Nice.” My teeth gnashed. “Someone should fucking sue these people. They don’t have their shit together.”
“Yeah, oversights definitely tend to happen here,” he said, looking over my head. His eyes had narrowed when he made eye contact again. “But you should go home. Get some sleep. Parking out in the lobby isn’t going to get you anywhere.”
He was right, of course, but it made me feel better to be at least in the same place my brother was. At least, until visiting hours. “I should just stay. I don’t even have a ride home anyway.” I could call a ride share, but I wanted to stay anyway.
Ares studied me. “I could give you a ride.” He pocketed his hands. “I’m already here, and I’m not getting on the road to head back out of town tonight. It’s too late.”
“Where were you coming from?”
“Lake Shelley,” he stated, and my jaw fucking dropped. That was like out of state.
I started to mention that, but Ares was waltzing toward the door.
He lifted a hand. “Come on. I’ll swing you home.”
He didn’t give me a chance to negotiate, and apparently, Ares really did move people.
I went begrudgingly, but it was hard to argue knowing someone had driven a state over to help. I didn’t know why he did, but I didn’t argue with that either.
He’d gotten me answers.
Chapter Twenty
Sloane
Ares Mallick took me home.
Consider that one a win for the record books.
Another was that we managed to not kill each other on the way. We didn’t even argue. It was actually a nice quiet drive. Well, quiet outside of the blaring rock music that Ares blasted throughout his Hummer. Arm hanging out the window, he blasted that shit despite it being the middle of the night, and I didn’t complain because that was what I would have played.
It was kind of crazy how we had so much in common. I seemed to discover more and more, as we spent time together. A big commonality was our art, and it may be because we had so much in common, we fought so much. We were like two alphas constantly knocking heads. He was obviously more aggressive, but I didn’t stand down from him.
That was probably a big reason I pissed him off so much. I didn’t stand down like the rest of his sheep at school, and call me crazy, but it seemed he didn’t hate me as much either. Besides helping me out tonight, I think he played his music so loud because he witnessed me enjoying it. He caught me bobbing my head to the beat from the radio more than once.
“You need anything else before I cut out?” he asked, eyeing my living room. He mentioned some shit about not letting me walk into a dark house, which fucking floored me. He did something nice, normal even. He was surprising me just like someone else I’d rather forget.
Dorian himself had impressed me more than once in the past. He’d been kind before. He was kind until he wasn’t, a constant reminder of what Legacy was, and I couldn’t soon forget. Ares may have my back now, but I was still aware he needed me for that project. We were far from finishing it.
I kept that thought in the back of my mind as I left Ares to deposit my bag in the hall closest. I returned to find Ares in the kitchen, actually studying the area like he was looking for something or someone. I chuckled, and he turned around.
“We have home security,” I said. He saw me turn it off. “No one’s getting in here. Callum made sure of that.”
