I closed that door, then started to open another with gold handles.
The voices behind the door stopped me.
Actually, his voice in particular stopped me. Dorian was speaking to someone on the other side of the door.
“I just need you to cover for me today,” he said, his voice low, tense. He always sound
ed on edge, but the rough timbre of his deep voice rattled with heat. “I won’t be long. Just for the day, but my dad’s starting to get suspicious. If he or my mom, or anyone else asks, I was at school all day. I paid my butler off to call in sick for me.”
What the fuck?
I pressed my ear to the door. I probably shouldn’t be listening but…
“This is fucked, man.” Thatcher. Thatcher Reed. “I hate that you’re even telling me this. I hate that I know this.”
“Me too.” Wells was in there with them, maybe Ares too, but I hadn’t heard him. “What the fuck? This is so fucked.”
“I know, but I wouldn’t be telling you if I didn’t have a choice. I need an excuse for today, and Wolf won’t understand,” Dorian said. He sighed. “I just need you to cover for me. Say whatever you have to say, and if Wolf asks, tell him I went out of town. It’s the truth.”
Apparently, he was going somewhere and needed them to back him up. It just didn’t make sense he was keeping Ares out of the information. I mean, he was his friend. Probably his closest the way they interacted.
“Of course, he won’t fucking understand. We don’t understand,” Wells gritted. “And you’re making us an accessory.”
“And keeping shit from Wolf.” Thatcher sighed now. “We don’t lie to each other, D. We don’t keep shit from each other.”
“I think you know, in this case, it’s necessary,” Dorian continued. “You know this will all set Ares off and I… I have to protect him from that. He doesn’t need to know.”
“Charlie wouldn’t want this,” Thatcher gritted, and some shuffling sound. I didn’t know if Dorian got up or what, but for whatever reason, Thatcher stopped talking.
The room silenced.
“I’m doing this for him,” Dorian said. More silence. “Remember that.”
“So you’re a little fucking spy now?”
I whipped around, the boy his friends were just speaking about in front of me now.
He had a black eye.
Ares literally had black ringing one of his dark eyes, his expression heated on me. He wore a silk robe and matching bed pants like some kind of prince, his familiar white tank on beneath. His curls were wet too. Like he’d just gotten out of the shower and was possibly attempting to get ready for school. He stared at the door, then me. “What are you doing?”
I was too busy looking at his eye.
Someone had obviously hit him. I folded my arms. “Nothing.” I frowned. “What happened to your eye?”
Like he remembered, he touched it, wincing a little. It was definitely fresh, and since he hadn’t had that shiner last night, something had happened recently.
“Ask your brother,” he said, surprising me, and my jaw dropped. He shrugged. “It seems he didn’t like the little joke I played on you last night.” He nodded. “I have to say, I respect it. If you were my sister, I would have done the same.”
I felt like I was in an alternate universe right now. My mouth parted. “Bru hit you?”
“Yeah.” He faced me, eyeing the hallway like he didn’t want to admit it. He started to say something, but he possibly thought better of it because he closed his mouth. He eyed the door again. “Stop being a nosy little shit. It’s rude when you’re in someone else’s fucking house.”
Had he known the conversation behind that very door included him, he might have felt differently.
Ares passed me with a huff, and I cursed when something in his pocket punctured my thigh.
“What the hell?” I gazed down, seeing blood. A small dot of red expanded on my thigh. “You scratched me. What the hell is in your pocket?”