It sways the loose hair on my forehead and warmth explodes in my chest.
Warmth and fire and flowers.
The whole world of emotions sprouts up just under my skin but then something occurs to me. “Oh my God, wait.”
He goes alert. “What?”
I fist his hair. “I’m going to St. Mary’s tomorrow.”
Arrow slowly relaxes, his fingers resuming their kneading of the flesh on my waist, his nose bumping against mine. “I know. I’m taking you, remember?”
“But Arrow.” I squeeze my thighs around his body because holy shit, how can he be so clueless? “They won’t let me have any privileges, you idiot. After what I did, and I don’t think I can sneak out anymore.”
He throws me a lopsided smile. “So then, I’ll call you every Saturday. We’ll talk for ten whole minutes. And when they have visiting weekends, I’ll be the first one at the gate.”
“You will?”
“Fuck yeah.”
“And when you go back? To LA?”
His jaw clamps shut, stubbornly. “I told you soccer can wait.”
“But you have to go sometime. You have to –”
“I don’t have to do anything.”
“But –”
“Shh. I don’t care about that right now,” he whispers. “You said we’ll figure things out, right?”
I bite my lip. “Yeah.”
“So that’s what we’ll do. We’ll figure it all out.”
I look into his blue eyes.
Determined and burning and blazing.
There was a time when they reminded me of calm summers. But now they remind me of a hot flame.
Of wild, savage fire.
Fire that I love. Fire that made me believe in myself, inspired me to be more.
I know that fire, his fire, can burn down the world, if it comes to that.
So he’s right.
We’ll figure it out, me and him. All of it. All of the things that are uncertain but don’t really matter if we wanna be together.
For now, I’ll just revel in this moment.
I’ll just revel in the fact that my love isn’t doomed.
My love is flourishing. It has a life. It will grow. It will live. It will become something now.
With him.
“You love me, huh?” I whisper, playing with the sun-struck hair at the back of his neck.
Those eyes of his smile. “Yeah.”
“And you stole my letters.”
“I did.”
“So you’re a thief,” I tease.
Slowly, a smirk stretches his lips. “Looks like it.”
“It does.”
“I’m not just a thief though.”
I squeeze my thighs around his hips. “No?”
He shakes his head slowly. “No. I’m also a poet.”
“What?”
He bends over me, curls his sleek, cut body all around me, making himself my world. Flicking his eyes all over my face, he whispers, “Dark curls; Golden eyes.” He rubs our noses together. “Thirteen freckles; Flowers between her thighs.” He skims his lips over mine. “Sweet; So sweet; My heart; My sweetheart.”
My lips part on a shaky breath. “You wrote me a poem.”
His lips part too to inhale the air from my lungs. “Well, you do have a thing for poetry, so.”
“You called me your sweetheart.”
I mean, he’s called me ‘baby’ before, in the heat of the moment. But never this.
Never sweetheart.
“Because you’re my sweetheart, aren’t you?”
“I am.” I nod, feeling like I’ll burst. “And you are my darling.”
“I am.”
I blink, forcing my tears away. “I love it.”
“Yeah?”
“I love you.”
He stares at me for a second before whispering, “I love you too.”
I kiss my darling then.
And my darling kisses his sweetheart.
The baseball cap.
That’s the first thing I see when I finish talking to a girl and turn around, the cap that he’s had for years now, hiding his glorious sun-struck hair.
He’s at the ice cream booth, placing our order.
With a happy smile on my face, I take him in.
I take in his wonderfully muscled shoulders draped in his vintage leather jacket. Not the original jacket that I’ve always loved and now belongs to me because he gave it to me back at St. Mary’s – the one that I’m wearing right now over my usual t-shirt and cargo pants – but a different one. This one we bought together in LA.
He also has his typical V-neck gray t-shirt on along with a pair of washed out jeans. Usually, I tell him to wear other colors but today I didn’t wanna bug him.
I wanted to be nice.
Because today’s special.
Of course I don’t think he remembers.
If the past two years have taught me anything, then it’s the fact that the love of my life can be forgetful sometimes. He can remember all the plays and strategies. He can also remember the plot of a book, a tiny piece of a poem that he’s read; yeah, his reading hobby? That definitely stuck. But he forgets important milestones and dates.
He definitely tries but it’s a losing battle.
But hey, he’s got me, right?
I always remind him. And then I make him pay a little. Just for fun.
I’ll remind him today too.
But first, I wanna see how long it takes for him to find out that I’ve broken his rule.
Turns out, it’s not so long.
Because once he’s placed his order, he turns around to check on me. But when he doesn’t find me at my original spot where he’d left me before going to get our ice creams, his jaw clenches. He runs his eyes, which I’m sure are dark right now, around until they land on me.
And I smile.
He frowns.
My lips part at his sexy glare and my fingers grip the silver chain sitting on my chest that he also gave me back at St. Mary’s. He told me to never take it off and I haven’t.
Not once in the past two years.
His gaze shifts to where I’m clutching his chain before coming back to my face. Just to play with him, I wink and pout my lips.
His eyes flash – dangerously, seductively – before his lips twitch.
Before leaving to get the ice cream that I told him I so desperately wanted, he told me to stay put because the place was crowded and he wanted to be able to see me from the booth. We’re at a carnival-like thingy and I admit that the place is packed.
But come on.
I’m not a delicate flower or a child. I can go wherever I want.
It’s just that my boyfriend – boyfriend; yay! – is kinda possessive and dominating and he thinks he owns me.
Which he totally does.
But still.
He likes to take care of me like I’m his most cherished possession – again, which I am – and so he tends to go overboard. But since I own him too, I put him in his place at times.
Like now.
By breaking his rule.
Once the ice cream guy hands him the cones, Arrow begins to walk back. His eyes are still flashing and gosh, the way he’s walking, almost prowling, over to me, makes me clench my thighs.
Makes me shiver.
Two years, and still I’m not at all equipped to handle his sexiness.
I’m so not equipped, and I know that as soon as he reaches me, I’m going to throw myself at him like a lovesick schoolgirl, which I’m not. Not anymore.
I graduated from St. Mary’s two summers ago.
But it’s not a secret that I can be a little crazy and emotional.
A little reckless.
And in the time that we’ve been together, I’ve been both. A lot.
Maybe because it hasn’t been easy, the past two years.
First, it was St. M
ary’s.
As Arrow promised that night – the night he confessed his feelings and said that we’d figure everything out – he dropped me off at St. Mary’s the very next day. He wasn’t allowed into the dorm building though, which he didn’t like at all, so he kissed me goodbye at the door in front of everyone and told me that he’d call me Saturday.
He did, too.
He called me every Saturday until I graduated. He also came to see me on visiting weekends and took me out on dates. Again, as he had promised.
There was gossip as I’d feared and nobody at St. Mary’s warmed up to me until the end – well, except for my awesome friends with whom I still keep in touch – but nothing I couldn’t handle.
Anyway, the rest of the time, up until my graduation, we emailed.
Writing traditional letters to each other – which we did also – is fun but technology does have its perks. Especially when you’re in a long-distance relationship with your boyfriend, who’s also a very busy and bright athlete.
Arrow stayed in town for Christmas that year before leaving for LA.
I still remember how hard it was when he left.
Even though I wasn’t sneaking out to see him like I used to do before they found my letters, the thought that he was close, in that gray motel room, had been a comfort.
But then he left because he had to.
So those first couple of months were not pretty.
I would cry a lot during our Saturday phone conversations and he’d try to console me. I’d write him long emails and he’d write me even longer ones. Sometimes he’d be the sad one instead of me, which he basically showed by being short and abrasive, always blaming soccer for our distance. I’d be the one to soothe him then and tell him that this separation was only for a few short months.
And I was right.
Because after I graduated, I joined the Galaxy’s youth summer program all the way in California.
Honestly, I did that more to be close to him than for soccer.
But whatever.
It was a happy time because I could see him and talk to him without all the million freaking rules and restrictions.
Well, overall happy. Because that was also when I broke the news to my sister.
I hadn’t been looking forward to it but it had to be done.
I had to tell her. And I had to do it in person.
So I’d asked Arrow – and also Leah – to keep our relationship a secret until I could get a chance to see Sarah. Arrow wasn’t happy about it but he did it for me. He also wanted to be there when I told her, but I refused.
I had to do it alone and I did.
We met for coffee – she wouldn’t agree to lunch – and I told her.
And she told me that I was a whore. That I broke her trust and betrayed her in the worst possible way.
I mean, it wasn’t unexpected.
I had always known that she’d say those things. I always knew she would never forgive me for loving Arrow.
But still, it hurt. It made me cry for a few days when I got back from our little coffee date.
Now my sister and I, we don’t talk.
We haven’t talked in ages. She doesn’t return any of my phone calls or emails. She even quit her job with the team and moved to New York a few weeks after I’d broken the news to her.
As much as it still hurts, I get it.
I get her anger.
It’s the same anger that I have for her, for doing what she did to Arrow. For betraying the guy I love.
But Arrow doesn’t get that. He is mad. At Sarah, I mean.
Not because of what she did to him. I think he lost all his anger the night he realized the truth about their relationship. I don’t think he even considers what he had with Sarah a relationship.
He’s mad on my behalf.
He’s mad because Sarah has never treated me like a sister and he doesn’t like that.
I try to put him at ease though.
I try to tell him that it’s okay. That I have him and he’s the only one I need to be happy.
But he’s adamant in his hatred and fury.
Honestly, I get that as well.
I know how he feels. Because that’s exactly what I feel for Leah.
What I’ve been feeling for Leah for the past two years, ever since I found out the whole truth of what she did when Arrow was a child.
After Arrow decided that he was going to stay in St. Mary’s awhile, he also started seeing Dr. Lola Bernstein regularly. It took him some time to open up, but slowly, he told her things from his childhood.
He told me things too.
Things that I had no idea about.
Horrifying things. Things that made me cry for the little boy he was, scared and trying to be perfect for a mother who was never happy with anything.
Things that I now call abuse, and rightfully so.
It was abuse.
The way Leah would make him work harder than any other kid. The way she always dangled his father’s death as the reason to be the best.
I always knew she could be very strict and exacting. Always expecting the best from Arrow. I also knew – after he came back into my life – that he could be very self-critical and intense about perfection.
But gosh, it’s worse than I thought.
Much worse.
I only moved in with them when he was fifteen. By then, Leah had successfully trained him into a perfect freaking son.
So I hadn’t really known about it – the depths of damage that Leah had caused – until he opened up to me last year about the things he’d gone through when he was just a kid.
His mom was cruel to him. Beyond cruel.
And I don’t think I can ever forgive her. I can be civil to her for Arrow’s sake but my loyalties lie with my deeply damaged and dark sun.
So that’s the second thing that has been hard for us: Leah and how her actions have affected Arrow.
But we said that we’d figure it out and that’s what we have done.
And that’s what we’re doing.
I come back to the moment when he reaches me, tall and handsome, his large fingers curled around the delicate ice cream cones.
“Hi, boyfriend,” I say, before taking one of the cones from his hand. “Thank you.”
I lick the chocolate ice cream with sprinkles while peeking at him through my eyelashes and he grumbles, “You can’t follow a rule to save your life, can you?”
I pout. “Sorry.”
“Are you?”
Biting my lip, I shake my head before leaning up to kiss his cheek with ice cream lips. “No.”
I go to move away but he grabs the back of my neck and keeps me pinned to his hard body as he growls, “Maybe I should make you.”
I raise my eyebrows. “Maybe you should.”
“There was a reason I told you to stay put. You could’ve been lost.”
“I was perfectly safe. I just wanted to say hi to Cleo.”
“Who’s Cleo?”
Seriously?
God, my boyfriend.
He doesn’t remember anything, does he?
I’ve talked about Cleo a thousand times before. I’ve talked about her husband, Zach, a thousand times before too. We’re at his show, for God’s sake.
Zachariah Prince, aka The Dark Prince, is a performer who does amazing things with his motorcycle. He flies it over holes. He circles the wall of death – like he did at the show that we just saw. He jumps off ramps and does all sorts of daring and dangerous things.
Cleo Prince, his wife, handles all his social media and that’s where we became friends. Because I wouldn’t stop fangirling on Zach’s Instagram and somehow, she found out that I’m Arrow’s girlfriend and she’s a huge fan of The Blond Arrow aaaand yeah.
Today was the first time I met her in person and I totally loved her.
We’re planning on going out to dinner together, all four of us. I just have
to convince Arrow and she has to convince Zach because Zach gets a little jealous when Cleo fangirls over Arrow.
And well, we all know how Arrow gets when I fangirl over someone else other than him.
But come on, The Blond Arrow and The Dark Prince together? It’s so happening.
Anyway I remember telling Arrow about meeting Cleo at the carnival thingy.
I sigh.
I shouldn’t find this so adorable, but I do.
So much so that I kiss his jaw again.
“She’s the wife of the guy we came to see.” I explain further when he doesn’t seem to grasp it, “The Dark Prince. Zach. The amazing guy who does wonderful things while riding a motorcycle, remember? We just saw him.”
Finally, the bell rings and a thick frown appears between his brows. “I wouldn’t say wonderful.”
“You’re kidding, right? It’s beyond wonderful. Above and beyond.”
His grip on my neck contracts and goes tighter. “I thought you were my groupie.”
Warmth blooms in my chest at his possessive tone. “Are you jealous?”
“Keep it up and you’ll find out.”
I shake my head at his irritated tone. “You’re so cute.”
“Cute.”
I wish his cap was off so I could grip his hair. His wonderful, rich, sun-struck hair, and mess it all up.
Because he looks a little too uptight, a little too irritated for such a wonderful occasion.
“Yes. You’re the only one who gets to write his name on my chest. Don’t you know that by now?”
His beautiful eyes move to my chest and my breaths start to come out in soft gasps. My bra-less breasts tingle and my nipples get all hard and achy.
Maybe because he did write his name there, last night. He also wrote his name on my stomach and way high up on my thighs.
He likes to do that.
Write his name everywhere on my body.
And then, he likes to fuck me really, really hard while he stares at me, at the girl who belongs to him.
At the girl who has his name on her skin. Because he put it there. Because he wants to declare to the world that I’m his. He has claimed me.
I think I’ll have it tattooed one day, his name, on my ribs, where my heart is.
A flush comes over his gorgeous high cheekbones when he lifts his eyes. I’m so busy staring into his dark gaze that I don’t even notice when he’s crept his hand forward and grasped the chain sitting between my heaving breasts.
My Darling Arrow Page 36