I squeeze him then, and clench my eyes shut against the onslaught of fat, thick tears. I don’t wanna cry. Not right now when I need to be strong.
When I need to be there for him.
“Where did you go?” I whisper.
His open palms move up and down my spine. “If I say I went to a bar, you’re not going to start acting like a jealous little groupie, are you?”
Chuckling sadly, I say, “I called you. I even texted. You never replied back.”
I did.
I dug up my old phone that Leah had given me when we moved in with her and Arrow. She’d also fed her and Arrow’s numbers into our cell phones.
Needless to say, I never used it, his number. I’d stare at it though, several times a day.
But I used it tonight.
It kind of felt weird, texting the guy I’ve been writing secret letters to. A clash of modern, cold technology with how I’ve come to love him.
In an old-fashioned way.
“So acting like a jealous groupie it is,” he murmurs.
“I was worried,” I whisper.
As soon as I say it, I press my forehead on his chest and open my mouth. My lips are right where his heart is and I breathe out large puffs of air as if I’m trying to resuscitate it.
His dead heart.
As if I’m giving all my breaths to that precious organ of his. So it comes alive. So he doesn’t feel empty.
But he doesn’t let me revive his heart.
Instead, he grabs my hair and pulls my neck back. When I open my eyes, I find him staring down at me with a dark, intense gaze. “You know, I thought one of the advantages of not having a girlfriend would be that I wouldn’t have to go through the whole ‘I was worried’ routine. Not that I ever went through it before. But still.”
I fist his t-shirt at his back. “Too bad. You do have a girlfriend.”
His frown is immediate and thunderous. “What the fuck?”
“I am a girl. And I’m your friend. So girlfriend,” I say, the most cliché thing in the history of all things.
He watches me a beat. “You learn that from a chick flick?”
I don’t know how he can make me smile at a time like this, but he can and he is. “Yes. We should watch some together.”
“Yeah, over my dead fucking body.”
“Oh, I think you’ll be alive.”
His fingers pull at my hair as if emphasizing every word he’s saying. “I think this friend thing isn’t going to work out.”
I shake my head in his hold and study his features, whispering, “Again, too bad. You’re stuck with me.”
The moon is red again tonight, a fireball, and it highlights the lithe lines of his body and lean angles of his face.
Bringing one hand to the front, I reach up and do what I wanted to do back when he was talking to my sister and smooth out the messy strands of his hair. I push them away now, and he clenches his jaw.
“What the hell are you doing out here?” he asks, irritated. “In the cold.”
I huddle my shoulders and rub my cheek in his vintage leather jacket that I put on after Sarah left and Leah went to sleep. “You kept me warm.”
His fingers squeeze my scalp, making me crane up my neck even more. “Shouldn’t you be out there, haunting some bridge or empty street somewhere?”
My heart swells in my chest. It becomes so big that it’s pressing against my ribs. It must be pressing against his too, I bet. He must be able to feel it.
Feel the size, the drumming rhythm of my heart.
When I’m done setting his hair in place for him, I bring my hand back once again and grip his t-shirt. “That’s why you gave me that permission slip, didn’t you? So I could be free.”
Something passes through his face, clenching everything for a second. “It’s Friday. Would you have snuck out to go dancing?”
I bite my lip and nod.
He bends down then, his chest pushing at mine, his fingers tightening in my hair to make a fist and his other hand pressing in the small of my back.
“So consider this, me reining you in,” he growls. “Me putting a leash on you and making you follow the rules.”
A current runs through me at his low, rough growl, at his dominating words. “I don’t wanna go haunt a bridge or a street somewhere.”
“So you decided to haunt me, instead?”
Something about that makes me bite my lip again. “Yes.”
“And why’s that?”
“Because I wanna talk to you.”
“Talk to me about what?”
I swallow as my eyes sting with tears. “I know. I know why you beat him up. Ben.”
His eyes grow bright then, violent even, his jaw clenching hard. “Why?”
“Because you wanted to,” I whisper, pressing my knuckles on his back. “It wasn’t because he was the first person you saw. It wasn’t a bad coincidence. It was because you were looking for him. Because he betrayed you. Because my sister betrayed you.”
There’s no surprise on his face when I say that.
In fact for a second there’s something very akin to a dark sort of amusement rippling through his stunning features. “You heard.”
“You were standing under my window.”
“I was.”
Suddenly I understand. “You were… you knew I’d listen in.”
His mouth curls up in a tight lopsided smile. “You looked pretty upset when you had to leave the room after dinner ended.”
“Was this your way of putting a leash on me so I wouldn’t go around breaking rules to find out what happened?”
“Yes.”
My hands move then.
I let go of his shirt at the small of his back, and creep both my arms up and get them around his neck just to hold him closer, tighter.
Putting a leash of my own around him.
“I hated dinner,” I tell him. “I hated everything about it.”
His chest undulates on a slight chuckle. “Why?”
I tug at his hair. “Because you ate everything on your plate.”
“And that’s somehow objectionable to you.”
“Yes,” I insist. “You ate everything and you were so quiet. You even cleaned up after. When I knew, I could see how…” – I flick my eyes over his sharp, jutting features – “angry you were. Your shoulders were all tight and the way you’d clench your jaw every two seconds. But you never said a word. You were so nice, Arrow.”
My tone sounds accusatory and he hears it too.
It thickens the lines of amusement around his mouth and eyes, and his own arms move, both his hands burying in my loose and wild hair. “I thought you wanted me to be nice.”
I shift on my feet, restless. “Not like that. Never like that. I don’t want you to hide your emotions, ever. I like you the way you are. All mean and rude. Completely impolite. And I promise I’ll never hit you.”
“What if I deserve it?”
I chew on my lips, thinking about it. “Well, maybe I’ll hit you then. But only a little bit.”
A smirk blooms on his mouth. “Very charitable of you.”
“Stop making jokes. This isn’t funny. This…” I grab his chain at the back of his neck. “Why didn’t you say anything? All this time. All this time I thought… I thought I could do something to get you guys back together, and this dinner…” I take a deep breath. “I went to Leah, Arrow. I went to see your mom and I told her that we should do something to… to make you both see reason. And she’d already planned this dinner. But I want you to know that I knew about this. I knew about the dinner and that Sarah was going to be here. I hid it from you because I thought you wouldn’t show up and… God, I’m so sorry, Arrow. I put you through this. I could’ve saved you. I could’ve spared you the pain and –”
“No one could’ve spared me the pain,” he speaks over me with an almost lashing voice. “No one could’ve saved me.”
I swallow painfully. “Why didn’t you say anything, Arrow?”
His eyes flick back and forth between mine, a painful, tormented look flashing in them, and my witchy heart squeezes and squeezes.
“For months,” he whispers, his rough words vibrating between us, “she lied to me. He lied to me. He was my closest friend. I trusted him. I trusted him with my game. He knew about my plans. He knew that I was going to propose to her. He knew that. He knew I had a ring. But I was stupid, wasn’t I?
“I was blind. I was fucking dumb. Because for months, they went behind my back and I didn’t suspect anything. I had no clue. I had no goddamn clue. I thought everything was fine. I thought everything was okay. Every fucking thing was perfect. But it wasn’t. You hear stories about guys who get taken on a ride and you think, how fucking stupid do you have to be to miss that? How fucking stupid do I have to be to miss that? I’m The Blond Arrow. I’m supposed to win. I’m supposed to be perfect. Flawless. But I’m not, am I? I’m a failure. I failed in my relationship.”
Oh God, no.
Please, please don’t let him think that. Don’t let him put this on himself.
Arrow puts so much pressure on himself as it is. He thinks everything is his fault and he beats himself up over it so much. I don’t want him to think this is his fault too, his failure. When it’s not.
This is absolutely not his fault and he’s making me cry and I can’t cry right now.
If I start, I won’t stop and I can’t do that. I have to be there for him. I have to tell him that he’s not a failure.
I grab his face then. I grab it and I dig the pads of my fingers in the hollows of his sculpted cheeks.
“You didn’t fail, Arrow. You were betrayed, okay? She betrayed you and I still can’t believe that she did that. But it’s not your fault. It’s not your failure.”
He grinds his teeth for exactly eight seconds – I counted – before saying, “Well, I got cheated on, didn’t I? And I was the one who didn’t know about it so whose failure is it, if not mine?”
I go to say something else, something that will make him understand.
Only I don’t know what to say.
I don’t know how to make him understand when he believes himself so wholeheartedly. When it’s written all over his face, his tight and stubborn features.
His pained features.
God, there’s so much pain. So much torment and I don’t know what to do.
Except…
Except pull him closer and kiss his clenched jaw.
And his thrumming cheek.
I do it all lightly, simply a peck. But the effect of it on him is loud and jarring.
His brows snap together as his eyes focus on me. They lose their cloudy, pained look and a light flashes in them.
“What are you doing?” he growls, his fingers flexing in my hair.
“Giving you the answer to the question you asked me a long time ago.”
Or at least it feels like it. That it was a long time ago. When in reality, probably only a couple of weeks have passed.
“What question?”
I rub my thumb in the hollows of his cheek and kiss him again.
I know he told me to not kiss him. He told me that he’s a nightmare for girls like me. A walking talking heartbreak.
But he doesn’t know that heartbreak is my friend.
That it’s been my friend for years now. Since the day I saw him in the kitchen. That fifteen-year-old boy has grown into this tormented, betrayed, dangerous man and I’m more in doomed love with him now than I was eight years ago.
Arrow doesn’t know that when your love is doomed, you’re not afraid of a little heartbreak. You walk with it. You dance with it. You breathe it in.
So I ignore his rule and gather the courage to place a soft kiss on his gorgeous, exceptionally soft lips. “You asked me if I’d be your rebound girl. So I’m telling you that yes, I will be. I’ll be that girl for you. The girl you come to, to fuck all your frustrations out. The girl who spreads her legs for you the moment she sees you’re jacked up and you need it.”
When I finish, I place one last kiss on his cheekbone.
It’s like kissing the sharp edge of a knife, that cheekbone. That jaw. I always knew it would be though.
I did.
What I didn’t know was what he would do when I did kiss him.
I didn’t know that he’d slowly straighten up. That he’d slowly, with deliberate movements, let go of my hair and that when he does, I’d actually miss his tight grip. I’d miss the leash of his fingers, feeling unbalanced.
“Arrow, what –”
My words cut off when he puts both his hands on my waist and picks me up like he did back in his office.
But tonight, there’s no desk where he can set me down.
Tonight, there’s only his body and he makes me climb it.
My arms go to his working and corded shoulders as he boosts me up and causes me to wind my thighs around his waist before moving.
Without taking his eyes off me, he begins to walk with me in his arms.
He doesn’t tell me where we are going and I don’t ask him about it either.
Mostly because I’m panting and I’m busy adjusting my body in his lap and feeling all his hard and corrugated muscles.
But also because strangely, I know.
I know where he’s taking me. And when my spine hits the wall, I’m proven correct.
We’re standing under my window.
His favorite spot.
“You want to be my rebound girl?” he asks when I’m settled between him and the wall.
“Yes,” I whisper, my hands sliding down from his shoulders to go to his chest and rub circles.
“You want to spread your legs for me when I need it?”
His chest moves, jerks up and down, and I feel it all under my palms, in my own chest even. “Yeah.”
“You want me to use you to fuck all my frustrations out,” he keeps repeating my own words to me and somehow, it ramps up my restlessness.
“Yes. All of them.”
I even arch up against him to tell him that I really mean it.
And it’s not a hardship, see. It’s not hard to tighten my thighs around him and bow my back and rock against his athletic body.
It’s not hard to let him know that I need him.
What is hard and has been hard was to hide it.
My need for him. My love. For eight whole years.
But not anymore.
I won’t stop myself. I won’t even feel embarrassed about my love for him.
Because I’ve realized something.
Something very important about myself.
My sister called me a whore. She said that if I ever made a play for him then I’d be a slut.
But that’s the thing, isn’t it? I’m not making a play for him. I’m not trying to steal him.
For the past eight years, I’ve been living in this fear that one day my love will make me do the unthinkable.
My doomed love will make me so desperate, so dangerous that I will try to get him, grab him, keep him for myself.
But now I know that I never would have done that.
Because in this moment when he’s hurting, I’m hurting. When his pain makes his jaw clench, my insides clench. When anguish burns his eyes, my skin feels it.
In this moment, I can see everything clearly.
I can see that I never ever would’ve made a play for him. I never ever would’ve tried to wreck his relationship so he could be mine.
Even my attempt to kiss him on the bridge wasn’t born out of malice or because I wanted to steal him away. It was born out of pure, overwhelming love.
A love I didn’t want to fall in but I did anyway.
I didn’t do it to hurt anyone. I didn’t fall in love with my Arrow to hurt my sister.
I fell in love with him like dead leaves fall from the branch of a tree and rai
n falls from a swollen cloud. I fell in love with him like tears fall when you’re sad and like blood oozes out of your skin when you step on broken glass.
It was natural.
So it’s natural for me to heal his pain, or at least put a balm on it. Love him when he can’t love himself and thinks he’s a failure.
And when the time comes for him to leave, to go back to where he belongs, it will be natural for me to let him go.
Because his happiness is my happiness.
Until then, I’ll be a girl in doomed love and I won’t be ashamed of it.
Until then, I’ll stay here and love him.
“And then what?” he bites out, his dark eyes glittering, his hands kneading the flesh on my waist where he’s holding me. “Discard you? Fuck you and forget you? That’s the job of a rebound girl. You know that, don’t you? She’s supposed to be a fuck doll. She’s a girl who gets fucked and forgotten.”
His words are his namesake.
Arrows.
They pierce my heart. The heart that’s not so witchy after all. They make it holey. They make it bleed.
But still, I forge on. “Yes. I know.”
He shakes me, my spine rubbing against the brick wall. “And do you remember what I told you? What I can do to you. What I’m capable of doing to you.”
“I remember.”
I remember every word he said. That he can burn everything down. That he can wreck things.
I know.
He shakes me again. In fact, he pulls me forward before shoving my spine into the wall, almost making me moan with his strength and dominance. “So what the fuck are you talking about?”
“I-I’m talking about being your rebound.” I grab his chain and pull him closer to me. “This isn’t going to be a relationship, is it? You’re not going to be my boyfriend and I’m not going to be your girlfriend. So it doesn’t matter what you said.”
He exhales a sharp breath and I feel it pushing into me, his breath, his chest. His whole body.
We’re in a more secluded spot now, I think. Darker and hotter. I feel sweat beading on my skin, his leather jacket drowning me.
I feel him drowning me too, the way he’s staring at me, keeping me pinned to the wall with his large hands.
“I don’t want your fucking pity,” he snaps.
My Darling Arrow Page 18
