“We’ll figure out what happened today, but I know my brother. It’s not what you’re thinking,” Ares offers.
Chapter 7
“It’s not what I’m thinking, Ares; it’s what he told me.” My voice is flat. I want to believe him, but I’m still struggling to wrap my head around what I’m feeling and what Ares just told me about his willingness to share our relationship with the others. Could I really do that to them: expect them to share me without sharing them? It’s what I want, but it’s not fair to them.
The back door opens, and I pull myself from my thoughts. When I look up, I see Milo and Ollie waving from Dante’s car. I give them a tight smile and wave in return. I know Dante is in the car with us, but I can’t bring myself to look at him. He hasn’t spoken either.
“Hey, man,” Ares greets him.
“Hey,” Dante mumbles back.
The car begins a slow roll forward, getting in line with all the other people trying to escape school for the weekend. “So,” Ares prompts looking from me to the rearview mirror. “Laura said you had an interesting day.” Dante makes a scoffing sound but doesn’t elaborate further. “Well… do you want to tell me why she said you told her you kissed Delilah.”
“Delaney,” I correct automatically.
“Whoever,” Ares counters.
“I didn’t tell her I kissed Delaney, I told her Delaney kissed me…”
“Ah. See now, that makes more sense,” Ares adds, nodding his head.
“But I kissed her back,” Dante adds before Ares is even done defending him. He sounds nearly as dismayed about it as I am.
Ares hits the brakes a little harder than necessary. “What the fuck?” He turns to face his brother in the seat behind me, with the car at a full stop.
“It just happened. They came in to announce I was the winner. She jumped up to hug me. She kissed me before I realized what was happening. It was just a little kiss. But before I pushed her away… there might have been a second where… I kissed her back. I don’t know, it happened so fast. And the photographer for the Independent was snapping pictures. I didn’t mean it. It wasn’t a real kiss.” His words are rushed together in a mess of information.
Ares turns back to face the windshield, and he lets his foot off the brake, so we inch forward again. His head shakes back and forth a few seconds later, like it took him that long to digest the information. His lips in a tight line, he opens his mouth like he might say something, but he looks in my direction and snaps his mouth closed and shakes his head again.
“It didn’t mean anything,” Dante whispers, sounding completely dejected. I’ve sat in silence the entire time. I don’t know what to say. I really don’t think I have the right to say anything considering the situation, but that’s not what my heart is telling me. That, and my head keeps telling me I can’t expect something from them that I’m not giving myself.
“It’s okay Dante, I’m not mad.” I cross my arms over my stomach, my own shoulders rounding down, making myself smaller.
“Well, I am, and even if you’re not admitting it, you’re something—mad, hurt, something.” Ares huffs repositioning himself in the seat.
“You don’t care, but you left school?” Dante leans forward, sounding skeptical, maybe even a little sad.
“I didn’t say I didn’t care. I said I wasn’t mad. How can I be? I could do the same thing to any of you.” I shrug my shoulders looking down at my lap.
“Thanks for making this even harder, you dipshit,” Ares grates. “Laura doesn’t think she has the right to be pissed because she gets all of us, and we only get her. She thought that she would have to share us in the same way, and you just confirmed her assumptions.”
“But that’s… no. That’s not how it is. It’s just us,” Dante adds, his voice more urgent.
“I know that, but this is all new to her, she doesn’t fully understand the bond yet. And we’ve been doing a piss-poor job of explaining it to her, if she thinks she can’t be pissed off because you kissed another girl. Which can I just say again, what the fuck, Dante?” Ares ends on a shout.
I duck my head instinctively, he can be scary. His big palm returns to the back of my neck with gentle fingers, massaging my stiff muscles.
“If I hadn’t been caught off guard, it never would have happened,” Dante pleads.
I snort. “That sounds like the same kind of excuses I’ve heard guys at school say to girls. ‘I was drunk, it meant nothing.’ ‘My hand wasn’t down her pants, I was falling.’” I mean, really; do guys think girls are that stupid? They only believe that shit because they want to. They don’t want to see the truth in front of their faces, so they believe the lie because it’s easier, and it hurts less.”
Angry now, I turn in my seat, dislodging Ares's hand. “What happens the next time when she does more than just kiss you? That won’t be your fault either? You’ll be so caught off guard that the next thing you know, you’ll be having sex?” My voice is rising with my anger. “How would I ever be able to trust you?”
Dante shrinks away from me, turning his head so his neck is bared. He won’t even look at me. I flip back around facing the front. We’re out of the school lot and on the road that leads to Turtle Creek. “Where are we going?” I bark.
Ares clears his throat and says, “I got a hit on the security system, I wanted to go check out the camper and see if anything is out of place.”
“Well, what did the video show?” I focus on Ares’s profile as he grips the steering wheel.
“Nothing—there was interference. Whoever was there knew there was surveillance equipment, or they took precautions in the event there was. That’s why I wanted you to take a look around, to see if you notice anything. And I want you to talk to Mark, learn if he saw who was there.”
I nod my head and bite my lip, eager now that I have something to focus on other than Dante and Delaney. It’s not long before Ares turns into the front drive of Turtle Creek. I haven’t been here in a few days, but everything looks exactly the same.
There are a few long-term trailers parked around the pond, along with Mark’s mobile home. We creep past the front area slowly, taking the narrow drive toward the back where my mom parked. I didn’t complain—never did—when she wanted to be as far away from others as she could be. I was just happy we weren’t too far from the bathhouse.
We pass by the storage lot where local people stow their trailers and campers for the cooler months, or if they don’t have the room at home, and I spot our old motor home. The yellowish paint has faded into an off-white, but the stripes of orange and brown are still vibrant. I notice nothing out of place as we slow to a stop a few feet from the rear end of the RV. I never mastered backing the thing into these narrow spots, but Mom didn’t care.
“You good?” Ares asks when I make no move to get out of the SUV.
“Yeah, it feels like it’s been longer than a few days since I’ve been here. The RV feels empty, like it’s been out here for years.” A few weeds around the blacktop pad we parked on are rising up to the underside of the motor home. Usually they’d be matted down with my comings and goings, between trips to the grocery store and the laundromat, but the motor home hasn’t moved in at least two weeks. That only adds to the abandoned feel.