Page 65 of Furious
“I’m here for as long as you want.”
He leans back, stretching onto the blanket. “Come here.” He pulls me down with him and I go willingly. Sitting on the soft grass under this odd plaid blanket, tucked into Ares’s side, is oddly comfortable.
“I hope you don’t think I’m a weirdo for bringing you here,” Ares finally says. “I just realized that this is our first date, and I took you to a cemetery. Maybe I should have asked you first if you were ok coming here.”
He lowers his gaze, but my fingers trace his jaw, encouraging him to look at me.
“If you had asked me, I would have said yes.”
The corners of his lips quirk up in his typical barely there smile. “I don’t know how you do it, princess.”
If he’s teasing me, I walk right into his trap. But for once, I’m not worried about winning a verbal sparring match with him. “How I do what?”
“How you always do and say what I need you to do and say. Since Dad told me and Chance that he expected us to treat you like a sister, I’ve been conflicted. His wishes aren’t the only obstacle in our way. There are Chance and Lev, too. It would be easier to walk away, but I can’t. It isn’t just because I like you and I need you. I’m not an easy man to be with, but you seem to know how. You know when to push me, when to fight me, when to hold my hand. You make it extremely hard not to fall for you.”
The way Ares is looking at me is everything. Everything I’ve always wanted, even if I didn’t know I needed it.
“You make it hard not to fall for you, too.” I admit.
His silver irises have stormy blue spots in them, and all I want is to get lost in their depths.
“I know there are a lot of things to figure out between us,” his voice is a low, deep rasp that reverberates in my chest, causing my pulse to quicken. “But not today. Today, I just need you to be with me. Do you think you can do that?”
I don’t need to think about it. I just nod.
“My birthday has been painful for the last two years. It left a bitter taste in my mouth. Today is the first time I don’t hate it. Because you’re here. My sweet princess.”
His lips find mine and our kiss is brief and shallow, but it finds its way into my heart.
I know I’m not just falling for Ares. I fell for him two years ago, the second he stepped between me and Cal to save me.
What I can’t be sure of is if Ares will be able to accept that I feel the same for his brother and for Lev.
There’s also something else that’s been weighing on my heart and I need to come clean about it. I need to confess that I was on that racetrack two years ago. While I’m not the one who hit Atlas, I was the target of the stray bike that caused the accident.
I don’t know that for sure, and I can’t prove it, but that bike belonged to Cal’s team. He was furious with me after I left him tostay with Ares and his team. It isn’t a stretch of the imagination to think that he would pay someone to hurt me.
Whoever went after my Ducati on that racetrack must have known I was JJ Smith. I’ve been obsessing about that for two years. DJ was the only person who knew I was racing. He helped me fix Dad’s old bike, brought it to Bridgeport and registered me for the race. He’s been my friend for almost ten years. He’s someone I would trust with my life. So the only possible conclusion is that someone else must have known that I was racing.
Cal is the only person who could have guessed it. The night before the qualifying race, I stayed in his trailer.
When Ares found him trying to force himself on me, Cal had just walked in on me when I was changing back into my street clothes after the qualifier. He wanted to work off the adrenaline from the race by having sex and came looking for me when he hadn’t found me in the paddock. It’s ironic that when I had followed him to Bridgeport, I was planning to sleep with him. I changed my mind when he became pushy and aggressive for no apparent reason.
He kept asking me where I had been, why wasn’t I where I was supposed to be, watching the race like a good girlfriend. It felt like an interrogation. Back then, I thought he was just jealous, but maybe there was more to his reaction. Maybe I hadn’t closed my bag fast enough when he came into the trailer. He might have seen the race suit and the helmet.
I had rushed out of his trailer with the intention of finding DJ and to give him my bag to keep until the race, but Cal had followed me outside.
That’s when Ares saw us struggling and intervened. When I refused to stay with him and cave to his demands but followed Ares and his brothers, he felt slighted.
Cal is a vindictive man. I had witnessed that trait many times in the few months I had been dating him.
If I’m right, while I’m not directly responsible for what happened to Atlas, I was the catalyst for the moment that destroyed Ares’s life.
I’m terrified that when I tell him, Ares’s feelings for me will be tainted forever. But I know I can’t start a relationship with him without being completely honest. I need to tell him.
Just not today. I want him to have the best birthday he can possibly have, and digging up the most painful part of his past would ruin everything. My reasons aren’t totally selfless, of course. If telling him might mean losing him forever, I want to have this day together, too.
A fat drop of water lands on my shoulder, pulling me out of my own thoughts.
