AllFreeNovel
Share Us
They continued to play, and he wore that Court ring today. The thing was thick around his lengthy finger.
“That’s all you can say?” His head cocked. “NotI’m so sorry that happened, orI can’t imagine what you went through. That’s what everyone says when they find out. Feeling sorry for me.”
I was sure they did, and I guess I got now why no one I knew gossiped about all this. His life. He’d obviously kept a lock on the information.
His fingers folded with mine, and I liked it so much I didn’t make him stop. He studied us both together, and I wondered if he even realized what he was doing.
How crazy something like that could be so intimate. I didn’t feel like I knew his body, but I was certainly getting there. Hard not to lately.
“Ares, are you okay?” I asked again, and his chest lifted.
“Surgery took care of it, Red.” He lowered our hands. “The recovery period was a bitch, but I’m good. Didn’t take me out.”
My tongue ran across my lip. “Why did you tell me?”
“Why not?” His shrug was casual. “After all, we’re sharing, right? We’re friends.”
He was sounding very cynical right now. Like he wasn’t all right, and I hadn’t shared what I had about my dad to make him share. I hadn’t expected anything at all and really hadn’t wanted to share.
I sat up, and his arm moved from around me. I felt the heat of his stare on me, but I didn’t address it.
“You okay?” How funny he was asking me that. “Fawn…”
“Remember that girl from the pictures.” I studied his prickled jawline, his expression curious. I opened my hands. “The one you said didn’t even look the same after what I did to her.”
I didn’t know where this was coming from, and maybe there was a part of me who didn’t want him to feel vulnerable by himself. I certainly wasn’t okay either.
But maybe we could be not okay together.
Wolf sat back, his arm hooking on the top of the seat. “Yeah.”
I forced out a breath, breathing into my hands. “Well, she bullied me. Was a bully.” I cuffed my arms. “She never liked me, but she never went out of her way to do anything to me. Not until I got in her way.”
“What do you mean?” He leaned forward, invested now.
“There was this boy. This new kid.” My stomach clenched. I really didn’t want to talk about this shit. “He was cool, and the two of us started talking.”
“Talking? As in you were seeing him?” His dark eyebrows drew inward. “Okay.”
His voice had deepened, rough. He sounded like he cared about that, and maybe before a few things had occurred between us recently, I’d think the opposite. Things were certainly changing with us and so quickly.
Too quickly.
My lips moved. “It hadn’t really gone that far. He was nice to me and was about the only person who didn’t look at me like the train wreck that I was. My dad had just died, and I didn’t handle that shit well.”
I was sure he could fill in the blanks there. He knew about the alcohol abuse…
He knew about the drugs.
Wolf had access to my entire life, all my secrets at his disposal. He’d used those secrets to blackmail me, and oddly enough, once he put that out there, he’d never brought it up again. It was like he just needed me to know he knew.
I certainly did, my hands rubbing. “Anyway, this girl, my bully, was into this new kid.” I lifted and dropped my shoulders. “But he wasn’t into her. He was talking to me.”
“And she didn’t like that.” His head touched the seat, and mine nodded.
“Apparently, the new guy picking the ‘chubby girl’ over the cheerleader isn’t a thing.” I’d air quoted the chubby bit. I was aware of what I looked like, but the only people who seemed to take issue with it tended to be girls like the one who’d bullied me. They hated that I didn’t care what they thought.
They hated even more if I got something they didn’t.
