Somehow, I manage to say, “How do you think breakups happen? We had a fight. We broke up.”
Finally, she’s lost her smile and there’s a frown on her forehead. And I’m not sure if I like that better than her constant stretch of lips.
“Well, there must have been a reason, right? Breakups don’t just happen.”
That’s the thing.
It happened. It fucking happened. And I didn’t see it coming.
I didn’t see the knife in her hand.
Not until she stabbed me with it.
I’m sorry, A. I didn’t mean for it to happen…
That’s what she said. After.
After she took eight years of our love and threw it away.
That she didn’t mean for it to happen.
I dig the knuckles deeper into my jittery thighs and say, “Ours did. It happened.”
“Yes. But what happened?”
The bugs have started to sting me now. They’ve started to bite at me. And I’m seriously considering smashing something.
“I don’t see how that’s relevant.”
“I think it’s extremely relevant,” she insists. “You broke up and that’s what has caused everything, so again, what happened to break you guys up?”
You know what, it’s not going to be my fault.
If I do break her table, I mean.
It’s not going to be my fault that Dr. Lola Bernstein is going to lose her glass coffee table and that little cactus she has sitting on it. Because she’s the one asking stupid questions.
Questions that have no bearing on why I’m here.
“How much is that coffee table?” I ask, tipping my chin at it.
She frowns again but this one is lighter. “Why?”
I shrug, cracking my neck slightly. “It’s extremely…” Breakable. “Attractive.”
“You like it?”
I open and close my fists. “Yeah. As attractive as the rest of your office.”
She looks around the office. “I thought you hated it. You didn’t look too happy when you sat down on my couch.”
“I don’t hate your couch. I love your couch. And I love pink. Pink is my favorite.”
She takes her smile one step further. She turns it into a low laugh. “Now I definitely know you’re kidding. Pink cannot be your favorite. Because your mouth is saying one thing and your face is saying something else altogether.”
"What is my face saying?”
“That you’re angry.”
I curl one side of my mouth into a tight smirk. “Huh. And here I thought your job was to not make me angry.”
“My job isn’t to not make you angry. My job is to fix the problem that’s causing the anger.”
“Well, then you should really think about redecorating your office. And not asking questions that have nothing to do with anything.”
“So you don’t like being asked questions?”
“Not particularly, no.”
She nods. “What about them pisses you off, exactly?”
“The fact that they’re stupid and irrelevant.”
She hums and this time she writes something in her notebook.
“What the fuck are you writing?” I can’t help but ask.
She parts her lips in an O. “Was that a question?”
“That’s definitely not an answer.”
She laughs again.
I just lose it then.
Because her laughter is loud. Her jewelry is even louder.
And I can’t control my temper when my skin is crawling and my body is tight and I have this urge to break her furniture.
“I don’t think this is going to work out,” I clip.
“Why do you think that?”
Another stupid question.
“Because I don’t think you understand what your job is.”
“Why don’t you explain it to me?”
“Your job is to give me tools to curb my anger. That’s it. That’s all. You tell me a few little tricks that I can use to get rid of this anger so I can go back to playing the game that I’m good at. That’s your job description.”
She purses her lips. “I don’t think it works that way.”
“Well then, you’re no use to me.” I spring up from my seat, my body all hot and tight, and glance around her office. I focus on the degree that’s hanging on her wall. “You should take that down. And probably ask for a refund from Harvard. Given the circumstances, you should be eligible for one.”
That’s all I say to her before I storm out of her pink fucking office.
I’m going to have to call my manager and have him arrange my appointments with someone else. Someone more competent and professional.
Someone who doesn’t ask stupid questions. Someone who doesn’t talk about things I don’t want to talk about.
Why does she want to know what happened anyway? It happened.
End of fucking story.
It happened and it almost destroyed my life and my career. And now I’m stuck here, teaching a bunch of schoolgirls who know nothing about soccer instead of being where I belong.
With the team, winning games.
So I need someone who can help me get there, rather than stoke my anger and make things worse.
After leaving the therapist’s office, I ride over to the sports club that my dad used to go to. They have a private area where I can practice my drills and no one will bother me or talk to me about my disastrous injury.
I run. I do weights. I fucking run again.
I do everything I can to get rid of this violent streak that Dr. Lola Bernstein has evoked in me.
When exercising doesn’t do me any good, I decide to ride to St. Mary’s and work on my joke of a job. Maybe there are books that can make it easier, that can teach me how to teach girls who giggle at everything I say and bat their eyelashes at me like I’ve got any fucking interest in their schoolgirl antics.
So I go to the library in search of a textbook or something, anything to take my mind off what a shitshow my life has become.
But instead, I find someone else.
Someone I hadn’t noticed before. Someone who’s always been in the background.
The little sister.
Salem Salinger.
Eight years ago when my mom told me that two girls would be moving in with us, I didn’t care. I had heard of the Salingers before but never took any interest in them. I had other concerns in life, bigger concerns like soccer and my grades, along with some smaller concerns like girls.
As long as the new arrivals didn’t interfere with that, I didn’t care who moved in or not.
But then Sarah happened.
She was hot. I was horny. I was supposed to take notice of her and I did.
I was popular at school, a star athlete, a straight-A student.
Even though I never had time for friends, people followed me around and I let them instead of wasting my energy and telling them to fuck off. Sarah was supposed to be interested in me like everyone else, and she was.
I thought it would be a fling because girls usually are flings. I don’t want anyone disturbing my focus.
But turns out, Sarah was like me.
She was ambitious, focused, driven. It was like finding a perfect match.
An easy match.
It just made sense for us to be together. It made sense to date her, to make future plans with her. It made sense to convince my mother to let us be together when she found out that we had been going out behind her back for a couple of months. She had objections – namely, about my ability to handle soccer while I was also dating because my mom has always insisted that nothing at all should ever take my focus off the game – but when I won every game that year, we managed to put her mind at ease.
It also made sense to buy her a ring and propose to her.
What doesn’t make sense is that I’m standing here, at the school library, and watch
ing her little sister get up on the ladder to retrieve a book of her own.
I’m not only watching her, I’m studying the curve of her spine and the dip of her waist. I’m studying the tight globes of her ass.
To me, she’s always been Sarah’s little sister.
A kid in the background who hated the cold but loved ice cream. I always thought that was a pretty strange combination but whatever.
I also remember Mom lecturing her about her bad grades and her breaking curfew and whatnot. Sarah would bitch about her too, from time to time.
But honestly, I didn’t care.
Nothing about Salem has ever affected me.
Not until now.
Not until I saw her at the bar with her wild hair, all loose and scattered about her shoulders, her eyes narrowed, her cheeks flushed – so flushed that it was visible in the darkened space – and her lips, parted and painted dark.
At first glance, she looked like Sarah.
Same golden eyes, same color hair, same pert nose. The same pale skin, standing there chewing me out for kissing someone else other than her sister; honestly, I don’t even think I’d heard her talk before that night.
But then, I noticed the differences.
Like the shape of her eyes. They might be the same color as Sarah’s, rare, but they arch up at the corners. They tilt up, making them look like she’s always up to something bad, something mischievous.
Also her hair. Unlike Sarah’s, her hair is curly. So much so that it bounces when she walks, independent of her body. As if it has a wild mind of its own. As do her lips. They’re poutier, much poutier. Like her mouth likes to show off, be the star of every fantasy.
And her skin.
It’s pale but it’s marked by tiny dot-like freckles. They have spread on her skin like wildfire, again with a mind of their own, on her nose and under her arched-up eyes.
Thirteen.
I saw that on the soccer field yesterday.
Thirteen freckles on her nose and seven in total under her eyes.
They moved when I humiliated her in front of everyone. They trembled when she raised her chin defiantly and turned toward the crowd in front of which I crucified her.
I know I was being a little harsh but she deserved it.
She deserved my wrath for playing the way she did. So magnificently.
So fucking gloriously.
How did I not know this about her?
She lived with my family. She lived in my fucking house for years and I never knew this. I never knew that she shines brighter than any star that I’ve seen on the soccer field.
It was such a shock.
Such a… betrayal somehow, that I was never made aware of this. That’s why I couldn’t stop looking at her, watching her pumping her little legs up and down the field. That’s why I couldn’t look at anyone else.
She forced me, didn’t she?
She forced me to look at her. She blindsided me, distracted me from other players and made me sloppy at my job.
What else don’t I know about her? What else is she hiding?
So yeah, Salem Salinger deserves my wrath.
She deserves my anger for barging into my life like a storm.
For being a rulebreaker, and I absolutely fucking hate rulebreakers.
She deserves my wrath for affecting me the way she does.
Mrs. Miller, my guidance counselor, heard what happened on the soccer field yesterday.
During our first session, when she tells me that I need to clean her apartment for the next few weeks, I’m not surprised.
My new friends told me that this is what Miller does. She abuses her power in small ways and no one says anything to her. Because Leah is always busy with her conferences and so she has given Miller – who lives on campus by the way – the full rein of this place.
I should probably keep quiet and leave Miller’s office now that we’re done.
I’m not her favorite person and rightfully so.
I created a scene on the soccer field. And on top of that, I played wrong and got put in my place.
For which, I’m not at all mad at Arrow. I’m not.
I mean, he didn’t have to be such a jerk but he was right. I wasn’t trying to play for the team. I was trying to play for him and that was wrong.
So the best course of action is to leave. But I don’t.
Because I want to say something first.
“You know, I know you hate me. I know you think I’m trouble and I don’t blame you. I get it. I’m here, aren’t I? But Leah and Arrow, they wouldn’t treat me any differently just because I lived with them.” I lick my lips. “I just thought you should at least know that.”
Miller looks up from her desk. She already has a notebook open and an old-fashioned-looking ink pen poised in her hands.
“The fact that you called your principal and your coach by their first names tells me everything that I need to know.” Her eyes are narrowed. “A lot of people here don’t care about what the students did before they were sent to St. Mary’s. They’re ready to give these girls a second chance. But I’m not one of them. What you did and the reason you’re here define you. And so I’ll be watching you very, very carefully.”
And then she goes back to her notebook and I get up from my wooden chair – she has special chairs for her sessions with the girls – and leave the room, with things even worse than they were before.
I should’ve kept my mouth shut.
I just wanted to make sure that she didn’t blame the Carlisles for any of my bad behavior. But lesson learned. I’m not going to say unnecessary things now. Not in front of Mrs. Miller.
And I’m going to learn to call Leah and Arrow by their proper designations. I’m going to fucking remember that she’s my principal now and he’s my coach.
My coach. My coach. My coach.
Hours later, I’m still repeating that in my head as I climb up the ladder to retrieve a book, all the way in the back of the library.
And maybe because my focus is on my new coach, my foot slips on my way down and my book plunges, crashing down on the floor with a thump, and I know that I’m going to be next.
I know that in two seconds I’m going to fall and break my neck and I clench my eyes shut and grab the rung of the ladder hard, squealing and oh my God, I…
Out of the blue though, everything stops moving, and I feel a hand – a big, giant hand – on my lower back.
A warm hand.
No, wait. There are two hands.
Yes, two of them, one on the small of my back and the other on my front – my stomach, stabilizing me and the ladder.
With my chest jerking up and down, I pop my eyes open and dip my head to look at them, the arms grabbing my tiny body and keeping me from falling.
They are bronzed and dusted with dark hair, darker than the dirty blond hair on his head. There are taut veins lurking just under his sun-kissed flesh.
God, they’re muscled and thick, his arms. And it only gets better from there.
His arms only get stronger and more curved and flexed the higher up I go, toward his shoulders, bursting out of his gray t-shirt.
And I realize he caught me. He caught my fall.
At the thought, my eyes whip up and land on his face to find him staring at me.
“You caught me,” I repeat my thought on a broken, panting whisper.
His dark eyes flare. “You were falling.”
I was going to thank him but something else slips out of my mouth. “I didn’t…”
“You didn’t what?” he rasps.
“I didn’t know that your eyes could do that.”
“Do what?”
I study them for a moment. I study their color, the dark flecks, his ever-expanding pupils, the thick, forest-like eyelashes surrounding them.
“Become dark like that. Navy blue. I-I always thought your eyes looked like the summer skies. Like lazy Sunday afternoo
ns and bike rides and…” I trail off when his hold on my body flexes. And I realize something else.
That he’s touching me.
I mean, that’s obvious; he just stopped my fall, but I hadn’t realized that his hands are splayed wide on my torso. And that his fingers are so big and large and so dominating in their presence that when he dips the pads of those fingers into my flesh, I feel it all over.
I feel it so much that I suck in a breath on parted lips.
“You like my eyes, huh?” he murmurs, watching my mouth for a second.
And I can’t help but nod. “Yeah.”
“Summer skies. Sunday afternoons and…” He pauses, a slight frown appearing between his brows. “And what was the last one?”
“Uh, bike rides,” I say automatically.
Something about my answer makes him move his thumb on my belly, and if I wasn’t already holding in my breath, I would swallow it down now.
I would swallow it and destroy it and never breathe again because he’s moving his thumb, circling it. I know it’s only through layers of cloth but I never thought the slight scrape of his digit against my body would be so hypnotizing.
“Bike rides, yeah,” he rasps, nodding. “That’s quite the list.”
“I –”
Those eyes of his become heavy then, hooded, as he replies over me, “I mean, I’m used to my groupies screaming my name and all the things they want me to do to them but you’re the first groupie to wax poetic about my eyes.”
My spine straightens up at that.
Great.
He’s mocking me again.
“I’m not your groupie.”
“It’s okay. It’s not you, it’s me. I’m just that charming. Girls can’t stop thinking about me.”
“Charming. Yeah, I don’t think you need to worry about that with me. I can definitely resist your supposed charms.”
He ignores me, his lips stretching into a smirk, his thumb drawing circles around my belly button. “What else do you like about me? My cheekbones, perhaps? That seems to have a devastating effect on the female population.”
I tighten my fists around the rung of the ladder. “You know, you’re such a jerk.”
My Darling Arrow Page 9
