Before he raises his dark blue eyes. “I thought you didn’t need me to remind you that you’re just the little sister.”
His words hit me somewhere in my chest but still, I don’t budge. “I don’t.”
“So is there a reason why you’re acting like a jealous little groupie again?”
That one hits me too, but I refuse to move.
I refuse to get out of his way so he can go to that girl and do things with her. Ask her to be his distraction for the night, touch her lip with his thumb and smirk at her.
“Yes.” I raise my chin.
“I’m all ears,” he clips, his bright eyes shooting fire.
“I’m not a thief,” I tell him with a determined voice. “You called me a thief, didn’t you? You asked if it was my thing, stealing? It’s not. I don’t steal things. For your information, I worked. I had a job at a restaurant. Ever heard of St. Mary’s Date Diner? All the high school kids go there. You went there, remember? I worked there as a waitress. I work. For money. I only stole that money from your mom because I needed the cash. I’d just bought myself a new pair of soccer cleats and so I didn’t have any savings left and I needed to get out of here as soon as possible, understand? And I was going to give it back to her. The entire one hundred and sixty-seven dollars. Once I was settled somewhere and had a job again, okay? And you’d know that if you’d bothered to ask me rather than throwing out accusations.”
Okay, so I had a lot of anger inside of me tonight. More than I was anticipating.
But whatever.
It’s not as if I’m lying. I did work at that restaurant. But I only started working there after he left for California with my sister. That I chose that restaurant in particular because he frequented it with his high school friends and my sister is a tidbit of information I’m not willing to give him.
Anyway.
There’s an unfathomable look on his face as he stares down at me. A glint in his eyes that I don’t understand.
But it makes me think that he wants to take a deeper look at me. Another look.
A second look.
I don’t know. The point is that I should stop. I’ve said my piece. I’ve even gotten my apology now. Not that he was nice about it but still.
But the thing is, I don’t wanna stop. I don’t wanna walk away, because there’s something else.
Something crazy and dramatic and drastic that I wanna do before I leave and go cry in a corner of this dark bar. Because as soon as I leave, he’ll go find a girl and distract himself.
I shouldn’t do it. I shouldn’t.
I have to though.
I absolutely have to.
Because what I’m about to do will make my statement, ‘I’m not a thief,’ completely true. It will make me a borrower, at the worst.
So when it looks like he’s about to break his intense scrutiny and open his mouth to say something – probably derogatory – I take half a step back and blurt out, “And there’s something else too.”
And then, I do it.
I grab the hem of my t-shirt – I’m not wearing a sweater tonight; I only have a t-shirt on, his, among other things – and tug it up.
I clench my eyes shut and pull it all the way up and take it off my body.
Yup, I take my t-shirt, or his t-shirt, off in a crowded bar. A bar full of drunken people, people who might have witnessed my shameful, slutty act.
At least I’m not naked underneath.
No, I’m wearing another t-shirt. My own.
Because I’d come prepared.
Like a fool, I not only thought that I’d run into him again, I even readied myself for it. All the while I was putting on my own top underneath, I told myself that I wouldn’t do it. There is no chance in hell that I’d ever take my clothes off in a crowded bar.
I guess I underestimated myself.
And now his t-shirt is wadded up in my hand and I throw it at his chest.
“Here’s your stupid t-shirt back,” I tell him, ready to make my grand exit now.
Ready to go somewhere in a corner, curl into a ball and cry while he finds someone to curb his pain.
But all my thoughts about leaving and crying in a corner vanish when all of a sudden, he bends down toward me and snatches my wrist. He not only snatches it, he puts pressure on it and pulls me toward himself.
That’s when I get a good look at his face.
I’ve been so agitated and embarrassed at what I did that I forgot to pay attention to him, but I’m paying attention now.
I’m paying attention to his rippling chest, going up and down with his harsh breaths. I’m paying attention to his chain that seems to be jerking up and down as well.
And his eyes.
God, his eyes are so narrowed with anger, they’re almost slit-like.
“You’re coming with me,” he growls.
I swallow. “C-coming where?”
“Where you belong.”
“What?”
He tightens his hold on my wrist, almost crushing my bones, and my eyes sting. “I told you not to let me catch you where you don’t belong, remember? So I’m taking you back. To St. Mary’s.”
“I’m not –”
“You like making scenes, don’t you?” he says with clenched teeth. “If you don’t come with me right now, I’ll make you such a star of your little striptease show that you’ll be crying about it for days to come. So we’re leaving, you and me.”
I thought I’d seen him angry but he’s furious right now. Furious, and I wonder if he was like this when he punched that guy.
If his cheekbones looked that sharp or if there was sweat dotting his forehead. If his shoulders looked as massive and mountainous as they appear right now, wrapped up in vintage leather.
“Okay. B-but…”
“But what?”
I don’t know. I have no idea what I was going to say. I had no idea that he’d react this way either. So violently.
I mean, I knew he’d react and maybe get angry, but I never thought he’d be on the verge of blowing up.
“I came here with my friends and –”
He bends even closer, his swinging chain almost hitting my chin. “You better pray that I don’t find out who your friends are or I’m going to bury them so deep in detention that they won’t be able to get out for the entire year. And not because they broke the rules and came here. But because they brought you here, in that t-shirt, looking like that.”
“L-looking like what?”
“Like a goddamn fuck doll.”
“I’m sorry?”
“If you didn’t want my attention, then you shouldn’t have taken your clothes off in front of me. You shouldn’t have worn that joke of a t-shirt.” He grits his jaw and almost smashes the tendons of my wrist with his hold. “So walk before I make you.”
My t-shirt got his attention?
Seriously?
It’s a normal white crop top, baring my midriff. Well, it’s off-shoulder too, but I always wear things like this. Usually underneath my chunky sweater, but tonight I wanted to make some asinine point that I can’t even remember right now. So I went without it.
It definitely does not warrant a reaction like this.
My outrageous actions do, sure. But not what I’m wearing.
I look at his seething features before looking down at my t-shirt. “You have a problem with m-my t-shirt?”
“I have a problem with your cocktease of a t-shirt, yes.”
I flinch. “But I wear this all the time.”
He doesn’t like that and the havoc he’s wreaking on my wrist with his fingers increases. “Well, consider this your first and only warning. You’re not wearing it anymore.”
“But I… What’s wrong with it?”
“What’s wrong with it is that every drunk guy within ten feet of you is looking at you like you’re a piece of meat. Like they wouldn’t mind getting their hands on some of that.” He jer
ks his chin at me and I’m starting to feel even more self-conscious than before. “Because you’re taunting them, flashing them your pale-as-fuck belly and that swipe of a belly button. That’s what you’re doing, aren’t you? Teasing them. Making them look at you. Stealing their attention. Don’t tell me you thought there wouldn’t be consequences.”
“I wasn’t taunting anyone. I was…”
Trying to make a point.
“Walk.”
“You don’t like that? Guys looking at me.”
I don’t know why I ask that but it simply comes out and his eyes narrow even more. He bends even further down until the rim of his cap is grazing my forehead. Until his lips are so close that when he opens his mouth to reply, I feel him writing those words on my skin. “No.”
"Why?
“Because I want you to keep being who you are. Who you’ve always been.”
“W-Who am I?”
“The little sister. The one who hangs out in the background and doesn’t get seen. The one who keeps her head down and doesn’t make a noise. And the one who definitely doesn’t demand my attention. So are you going to walk or not?”
He’s so freaking pissed off that I do as he says.
I walk.
I make my way out with him at my back as if he’s my bodyguard and we take the hallway in the back that leads out to the parking lot. A few people are lingering outside, but no one pays us any attention as we make our way to his bike. He’s still at my back, as if I need protection here as well.
By the time we reach it, I’m a panting mess. I have my arms wrapped around my waist and I don’t know what to do.
How to make them go away, the past few minutes. How to make it better.
All I wanted to do was give him a little hell for being so awful to me this past week and then make peace with him.
“Arrow?” I say in a small voice.
Without responding, he leans over the seat of his motorcycle and grabs his helmet, offering it to me. “Put it on.”
“Can we talk, please?”
His chest jerks up and down with a harsh breath. “Put it the fuck on.”
My eyes sting. “Please. I didn’t know you’d freak out like this. I was just… You were so mean to me last night and I just wanted to make a stupid freaking point and I know I got a little dramatic back there but I… I honestly didn’t mean to make you mad.”
His nostrils flare. “Salem.”
I take a step closer to him.
My name from his lips, even curled up in anger, makes me want to touch him. Makes me wanna put a hand on his chest and fist his t-shirt and press close to him but I don’t.
I don’t want to make him even more angry.
I don’t want him to reject my touch.
“Please? Don’t be like this, okay? I don’t like it. I don’t like it that we’re fighting and you’re all angry. And we’re acting like we’re enemies. We’re not. You’re not my enemy, Arrow, and I’m not yours. Please, I’ll do anything. Just… can’t we be friends?”
As soon as I say it, my witchy heart starts pounding in my chest.
It’s pounding and pounding, making my body vibrate.
With a certain need, a craving.
A desperate desire to be his friend.
A bone-deep desire. A desire that has burst forth from my soul and I can’t ignore it.
Because for some very strange reason, we keep clashing, him and I.
For some crazy reason, we keep rubbing each other the wrong way. We keep creating sparks and friction. We keep creating fire.
And I’m done.
I’m done fighting with him.
I’m done arguing over stupid things.
I love him. He’s the boy I’ve loved since I was ten. I don’t wanna fight with him.
I never wanna fight with him.
So this is my peace offering.
I even offer him my outstretched hand. “Will you be my friend, Arrow?”
I know it’s a childish question.
But I don’t know how else to voice it. How else to tell him that this is an important moment in the history of my entire existence.
Asking him to be my friend.
Besides, I think he could use one, a friend.
He could use someone to just… be with. Maybe even to talk with, I don’t know.
He could just use someone.
Although Arrow still hasn’t looked at my hand. He still hasn’t moved his gaze from my face to glance at my offering and I don’t know how to stop the despair that’s spreading through my body. Just when I think my arm won’t stay up and will fall to my side, he takes it.
He takes my offered hand and catches me. This time from my fall into despair. Into sadness and melancholy.
I wouldn’t have believed it, if I wasn’t looking at it, our joined hands, with my own eyes. If I wasn’t feeling the scrape of his large palm against mine.
So this is what he feels like. This is what his skin feels like against mine.
Hot and strong, and sand and velvet at the same time.
Finally.
I smile up at him and find him watching me, watching my smiling, painted lips. He does his lip-lick thing for a second before he squeezes my hand and pulls me forward.
He comes forward too and then he’s hanging over me, his face dark but so beautiful.
“But I’m still taking you back,” he growls.
I flex my fingers against his hand, trying to wrap my head around the fact that I’m finally touching him and that our fingers are threaded together. “Okay.”
His grip increases even more. “And I’m keeping my eyes on you until I see you enter your dorm building.”
“Yes.”
“Then you’re going to go into your room, climb into your bed and go to fucking sleep, you understand?”
I jerk out a nod.
“And you’re never wearing a shirt like this. Ever again.”
I bite my lip at the vehemence in his voice and nod again.
He narrows his eyes at my mouth. “Good.”
“Arrow?” I whisper, blinking up at him, holding onto his hand like it’s my lifeline.
“What?”
“Before we go back to St. Mary’s, will you take me somewhere else first?”
He squeezes my hand to the point that I think he’ll break my skin and crush my bones.
But I don’t care.
He can do whatever he wants with me.
He can stab me with a knife and I’ll be lying on the ground, dying, drawing little hearts in blood.
His eyes stay on my smiling lips for a second before he replies, “Fine.”
I’m sitting on Arrow’s motorcycle.
I’m riding with him, my inner thighs hugging his outer, my arms around his waist and my cheek stuck to his sweet-smelling t-shirt as it rests on his shoulder blades.
Before we took off, I told him, “So Friend, this is my first motorcycle ride and I have a feeling that I’ve got a thing for speed. Which means that you should really step on it.”
I’m not even going to deny how much I loved saying Friend.
How much I’ll always love saying it.
He’s my friend. My Arrow.
Something moved over his features when I said that. A ripple of something that shone under the fat red moon.
He settled the helmet on my head. “Yeah, I’m not surprised.”
“Why not?”
“Because, Friend,” he buckled the helmet under my chin a little sharply, making me bite my lip. “I’m starting to realize that you’ve got a thing for everything that’s dangerous and crazy.”
I shouldn’t have smiled at that. It wasn’t a compliment.
Like it wasn’t a compliment when he said I was worse than bad, but still, it felt like one.
Maybe because when he finished settling the helmet on my head, he stepped back and took off his vintage leather jacket.
/> I watched his shoulders rolling and his biceps bunching as they did the work of taking it off and then draping it over my shoulders. When I put my hands through the sleeves, he then proceeded to zip it up, right up to my chin like I’m a child or something.
When I said thank you, his jaw moved.
And then we took off and he did step on it, while I hung onto him.
Now we’re here, at my favorite place ever.
My little darling place.
It’s a bridge in Bardstown over the largest and bluest river that I’ve ever seen. It connects the main highway of the town to… nothing.
Well, okay. So it’s old and rusty, this bridge, with a two-rod metal railing, stretching between an abandoned dirt road that’s broken off the main highway to wild woods.
I’m not sure why they made it.
It’s not really serving a purpose, connecting a dirt path that no one really knows about to savage, unnavigable woods. It simply sits here, taking up space, looking all dark and desolate and empty.
A lot like doomed love of eight years.
Which doesn’t serve any purpose either. It’s dismal and useless. Bleak.
And yet so fucking beautiful.
Just because the one you love is in love with someone else doesn’t mean your love isn’t gorgeous or real. It doesn’t mean that your love should be killed or it should be torn out of your heart and thrown into a river or burnt down like an extinct piece of architecture.
No, it’s still love. Like this is still a bridge.
“What the fuck is this place?” Arrow asks distractedly as he looks around, his bike parked on one side.
I watch him under the moon, all sparkly and glowy.
His hair’s all messy and sticking up in places after he took off the helmet – he gave me his spare one – and his fingers are not helping things. He rakes them through the strands, messing them up even more, making him look the most stunning that I’ve ever seen him.
“Do you like it?” I ask, smiling, feeling warm and cozy in his jacket, that I unzipped during the ride because his proximity was hot enough, and loving it.
At my words, he focuses on me.
I’m by the railing, gripping the metal rod, using it to stretch back my spine.
My Darling Arrow Page 12
