Since when does he read books?
Since when does he not clean his room?
“What happened?” I breathe out, looking around, my heart picking up speed.
“I just… didn’t clean up. Wasn’t expecting company,” he says from behind me and I spin around to face him.
He’s by the door, standing with his feet apart and his fists clenched, watching me.
“Since when do you not clean up?”
“Since my therapist said that I might have a mild case of OCD,” he replies. “She wants me to embrace the chaos.”
“Your therapist?” I breathe out, thinking of all the times he implied that he hated going to her. “The one… you don’t like.”
His eyes flick back and forth between mine. “I think I was a little hasty in my judgement.”
“So you like her now?”
“I’m still deciding.”
I look around the room again, feeling stunned. “Did she also tell you to read books?”
He narrows his eyes. “No, she told me to get a life.” I frown and he continues, “Apparently, I don’t have one. Well, if you don’t count soccer. And having a life involves a thing called hobbies. She told me to pick one.”
“So you picked reading?”
“It would appear so, yes.”
He runs his fingers through his hair again and messes it up, making the strands fall on his forehead, making me clench my fists again so I don’t accidentally run to him and smooth them away.
“I remembered,” he begins with a slightly lost expression on his face, “that I liked to read. When I was a kid. Which isn’t a surprise because I’ve always been a straight-A student. Given the choice though, I’d rather watch game tapes than sit and read, but…”
“But?”
He shrugs, his shoulders jerking up and down tightly. “But I guess I’m trying to see if it sticks, reading. Getting a hobby.” He swallows tightly, audibly even. “Not sure how my dad would react to it though. I, uh, try to picture his expression. You know, if he knew that I was using my time to read, for pleasure. Something other than textbooks, instead of working on my game. But I can’t. I can’t picture it. I know what my mom would say. She’d tell me that while it was commendable I was taking an interest in books, I’m still wasting my time reading English literature. She’d probably throw them away.”
My chest feels tight and I let out a breath as I watch him, watch how he stands, a little away from the door, how his toes dig into the carpet, how his fists are clenched.
How adrift and unmoored he looks.
“You’re not. You’re not wasting your time and I don’t think your dad would mind,” I tell him, wishing again that I could touch him.
I wish I could go to him and ask him how it was while he was growing up.
I only know bits and pieces of it from after I came to live with him, and I wish I could talk to him about all of it.
“Actually, I think that even if he did mind, I wouldn’t care. Not so much. Not as much as I thought I would. I think I’d…” He pauses and licks his lips, pondering his next words. “I think I’d mind more if I didn’t get to read. If I didn’t get to find out what else I like. What else I can do. What else is hidden inside of me other than The Blond Arrow.”
My knees tremble. They almost buckle at his words.
It’s a mystery really how I’m able to stand up.
Actually, I’m lying.
I know how. It’s him.
It’s his eyes, the power and intensity in them. He’s keeping me tethered and balanced.
“Is that what your therapist told you? To find out what’s hidden inside of you?” I ask with choppy breaths.
He shakes his head slowly. “No. It was someone else.”
I take a moment to just… breathe.
I take a moment to just stand on my feet and watch him. To absorb what he just said.
For the past two weeks, I’ve been going crazy.
I’ve been making up theories in my head. About why he’s doing what he’s doing.
Is it to punish himself and atone for his supposed mistakes when it comes to me? Or is there something else?
Something… wonderful.
Something that scares me. Something that steals my breath and gives me hope.
It’s giving me hope right now and I’m petrified.
“It’s been two weeks,” I whisper after a while.
“I know.”
“Why didn’t you come see me?”
His nostrils flare and his chest undulates on a large breath. “I was going to come see you.”
“You were?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow.”
“I’m leaving for St. Mary’s tomorrow.”
I am.
That’s why I came tonight looking for answers. That’s why it’s so imperative for me to know.
God, I just want to know.
“I know that too,” he says. “I’m taking you.”
“What?”
He nods in confirmation. But that’s not the only thing he does.
He moves as well.
He takes a slow but deliberate step toward me and strangely, I move back.
“I thought two weeks would be enough time for you to rethink your decision of going back to that hellhole,” he tells me as he comes closer. “But if you won’t change your mind, then I’ll be the one to take you.”
My feet stumble slightly but I keep going. I keep moving back as I whisper, “It was you. You came up with two weeks.”
“You needed your rest. But more than that, you needed some time away from that place. After everything that happened.” A dark look ripples through his stunning features, a menacing look. “And I thought it would give you time to make the right decision. But I guess I should know better by now, shouldn’t I? No one can control you. No one can bind you by rules or put you in a box or rein you in. You’re Salem. You’re probably why they name hurricanes and natural catastrophes after girls like you.”
I swallow at the possessiveness in his tone, at the possessiveness in his eyes.
Actually, it’s more than that.
It’s more than possessiveness.
There’s some tenderness as well. Some helplessness and torment. A hint of amusement.
All at the same time.
And it makes his eyes glow.
“I have to go back,” I whisper, still moving back. “My friends are there. They need me.”
“I know. That’s why I’m going to take you. And I’m going to make sure no one, no one at all, dares to even look at you wrong, let alone says anything to you. And if they do, then it’ll give me great fucking pleasure to take care of them. To take care of anyone who bothers you.”
Finally, I come to a stop.
My butt hits something. It’s the edge of his desk that’s laden with his books.
His new hobby.
Despite the fact that I want to go back, that I want to see my friends and especially be there for Callie, I am really nervous.
I’m nervous about the gossip, the looks I’ll get from the girls, from the teachers. By now everybody must know that I have a thing for him. By now everyone must hate me even more, if possible. So his promise to me, spoken in such an authoritative and possessive tone, makes my body all lazy and heavy.
Cozy.
But I can’t give in to it. I can’t.
It’s dangerous.
He is dangerous.
Hope is dangerous. At least for a girl like me.
A girl in such hopeless love.
“And then what?” I ask hesitantly.
“What?”
“Once you’ve dropped me off, and made sure that I’m taken care of, will you leave then?”
That’s when he reaches me, at my question.
And my heart jumps into my throat.
Especially when he dips his f
ace and bends his body and cages me in like he always does.
“No,” he rasps, looking me in the eyes, his hands on either side of me.
“Why not?”
“Because I’ve got other things on my mind.”
“Other things than… soccer?” I ask, clutching the edge of his desk.
“Yeah. Soccer can wait.”
“Y-you’re kidding.”
“No.” He shakes his head. “Fuck soccer. There are other things that I’m thinking about.”
God.
God, I’m so scared.
“Like what?”
Something happens to him then.
A strain comes over him and his arms flex, his fingers crinkling the pages of the open book that they’re pressing on.
“Like a girl with witchy eyes and thirteen freckles,” he replies.
"What?”
“Yeah, and how fucked up I am over her. So much that everything hurts.”
“Everything hurts?” I whisper, digging my nails into the wood and clenching my stomach.
“Yeah. Everything.”
“Why?”
“Because I was an asshole who didn’t have his shit together when I met her and so I made her cry. And because even when I decided to stop being an asshole and get my shit together, I made her cry then as well.” Then, “They had to sedate you, didn’t they? The day I showed up. Because you wouldn’t stop crying. That’s why I stayed away. For two whole weeks. That’s why I didn’t see you. I didn’t deserve to see you because they had to inject you with a drug to put you to sleep. Just because I was there. Just because I came to tell you.”
“Arrow –”
“I wanted to tell you the night you snuck out to see me too,” he continues, his words rough and guttural, cutting mine off, his fingers abusing the pages of the book. “But you ran away from me. So I thought, I’ll tell her tomorrow. I’ll go to her in the morning and pull her out of class. I was even making plans and thinking of scenarios where you’d refuse me and I’d make you listen. I’d beg you to listen.” He swallows. “But then Mom called me. And I never got the chance. But I was going to take my chance tomorrow. I was going to tell you.”
“Tell me what?”
“That you’re that girl for me.”
“What girl?”
He licks his lips before saying, “The girl who haunts me.”
“I-I haunt you?”
He nods. “Yeah. You’re the girl who keeps me awake at night. The girl who makes me look out the window and count the stars in the sky. I not only count them. I look for patterns. I look for shapes that match the freckles on your nose and under your eyes. You’re the girl I wait for at midnight because she wants to go for a ride and she has a thing for speed. But she’s always late and when she does show up, I complain about it because I’m an asshole. But the truth is that you’re the girl I’d wait hours for. You’re the girl I’d wait and wait for just to get a glimpse of you in my leather jacket. Just to see what color lipstick you’re wearing and just to hear you say the weird fucking name of it in your sweet voice.
“You’re the girl whose notes I waited for like a junkie back at St. Mary’s. And some days you’d write me two notes and I’d be over the moon. But I’d hide it. I’d hide it because again, I’m an asshole. I’m an asshole addicted to your words. To your letters. That’s why I stole them. I stole your letters just so I could read them over and over and write you back. Just so I could write to you every night.
“You’re the girl, Salem, who makes me want,” he bites out, the tendons on his neck standing taut. “I want. So many things, you understand? And I don’t know what it means. I don’t fucking know. I don’t understand and it terrifies me. It shakes me right down to my soul but still I want to find out. I want to know. I want to know why it hurts to see you cry. Why it hurts when you’re in pain, when someone upsets you. Why the thought of you in that godforsaken place with barred windows makes me want to break something. Break the world. Why it makes me sick to my goddamn stomach, whenever I think of you walking away from me like you did that night. I want to know what it all means. Because I’ve never felt this way. I’ve never felt this… need. This craving. Not until you. Not until you walked up to me that night at the bar like a vision of some sort. A vision that haunts me. That haunts my body, my soul. My heart. So yeah, you haunt me, Salem.”
His eyes are glassy and shiny by the time he finishes and I’m a mess too.
I think my eyes reflect the same glow. The same brightness.
I think my heart is beating just as fast as his when I blurt out on a thready whisper, “I know what it means. I know why.”
His nostrils flare, his eyes sharp. “Why?”
I let go of the desk then.
I unclench my fingers from around the wood and bring my hands up. I put them both on his chest, flat and splayed.
And he shudders.
Violently.
I think he even rips the pages he was tormenting. I hear the sound and it echoes in my stomach.
In all the places that were left hollow in my body ever since the night when the cold and brutal snow came to the earth.
“The fact that you write letters to me every night. The fact that you stole and that you hurt when I hurt. The reason that I haunt you is because you haunt me too. You’ve been haunting me for eight years. And it only means one thing.”
Finally, he brings his hands away from the desk too and puts them on my face. He cradles my cheeks and tilts my neck up. “Say it.”
I blink.
I take a deep breath and fist his t-shirt, before I reply, “It means that you love me.”
Again, a shudder goes through him.
But this one is even more violent. It’s an earthquake.
His whole body shakes. His eyelids flutter. His grip flexes.
It’s like an explosion inside his body.
The fall of a mountain inside his chest. The fall of a bridge, a building inside his gut.
The fall of him.
But it’s okay because I’m here to catch him.
I’m here.
“I was wrong the first time,” he whispers, his fingers burying themselves in my hair. “I was wrong. I didn’t know for eight years. I didn’t want to be wrong again. I didn’t want –”
I shake my head, my heart writhing inside my chest. “You’re not wrong. You’re not. This is what it feels like.”
His lips part and a breath escapes him, loosening up his body and fanning over my lips, hot and sweet. “This is what it feels like.”
“Yeah. You love me.”
“I love you,” he whispers, as if testing the words in his mouth.
I think he likes them, the taste of them.
Because he says it again and he says it strongly, with his possessive, needy fingers twisting in my hair. “I fucking love you, Salem.”
That’s when it hits me.
It hits me right in the center of my chest.
He loves me.
Arrow loves me.
That’s why he’s been writing me letters. That’s why he hasn’t left. That’s why.
Because he loves me.
Because I make him want.
Because I want…
Because I’m the girl for him.
“You love me,” I whisper again, my eyes getting blurry, a smile trembling on my lips.
His jaw clenches for a second before he whispers gutturally, “I know I hurt you, Salem. I know that. I know I don’t deserve you. You were right to send me away at the hospital. You were right to scream at me and hit me and… I’m rude and uptight. I have so many rules. I could be so focused and self-centered. So emotionally stunted. I have this sickness, this need to be perfect all the time and it can consume me. But I’ll do everything in my power, every fucking thing in my power, to make you happy. You said that to me, remember?”
“Yes.”
His eyes bore into mine. “N
ow, I’m saying it to you. I’ll do everything I can to make you happy. I’ll tear my heart out and throw it at your feet if I have to. Because it’s yours. My heart that I thought I’d killed is yours. It beats for you, Salem. Like a crazy fucking maniac that doesn’t know when to quit. And if you want, you can stomp on it and set it on fire and stab it with a knife. You can do whatever you want to it, it will still be alive. It will still beat for you. Just give me—”
“I won’t,” I whisper and he freezes.
It’s okay though.
It’s okay because I’m about to tell him as well.
All the things.
All the pretty, lovely things.
“I won’t stomp on it.” I lean my body against his, giving him my softness, and he grabs onto it. “I can’t. Because you’re that guy for me too. You’ve always been that guy for me, Arrow.”
“What guy?” he rasps and I hear the sweet tinkling of hope in it.
“The one who makes me feel warm,” I reply, hardly believing that I get to tell him, hardly believing that he loves me. “The one who protects me and takes me out on rides. Who buys me ice cream and complains about my chick flicks but still watches them with me, who makes all the rules that I love to break. You’re the guy who gave me this.” I fish out the chain from under my sweater and show it to him. “I put it on the day you gave it to me. I’ve had it on for two weeks now.”
He licks his lips, his fingers fisting in my hair and his body pushing into mine. “I don’t want you to take it off. Ever.”
I suck in my stomach at his rough, commanding tone. “I won’t. So you see? I know that you hurt me, and you made me cry.” I raise my arms up and around his neck and he snakes his hands down to my waist. “And you’ll probably make me cry in the future as well. But it’s okay. Because you’re the guy I’ll cry for. Because you’re also the guy who’ll wipe off all my tears when I do. So we’ll figure it out. Together.”
"Together.”
“Yeah. Together. That’s what I’ve always wanted, you know? I’ve always wanted to be your girl, and when I came here tonight, I was so scared. I was terrified that I wasn’t –”
“You are,” he says fiercely. “You are that girl. My girl.”
“Your girl.”
“Yeah.”
I smile at him and a rush of a breath escapes him then.
A huge gust of a breath.
My Darling Arrow Page 35