Chapter 8 #2
That’s what he told me last night. And he’s not even wrong about it because they do.
I do.
And I am crazy for him. Crazy and stupid and sad. All for him.
But I’m also going to give him a piece of my mind, and he probably knows that. Because it’s all reflected on my face, my tipped-up chin and heaving chest. And unlike the last time when I found him engrossed in the girl, he is engrossed in me.
Yeah, he’s watching me with his shining, flaming eyes.
The eyes that I stupidly waxed poetic about.
I fist my hands at my sides and strangely, those eyes shine even more. Like two beacons on his shadowed features.
A hot shiver runs down the length of my body and I move toward him.
He watches me make my way through the drunken throng with an inscrutable look while leaning casually against the brick wall.
I’m about to reach him when he bends down and whispers something in the girl’s ear. He does it without taking his eyes off me and she leaves him with a nod.
I feel her pass me by but I don’t pay her any mind. My eyes are still glued to him and his to me.
When I reach him, he drawls, “I thought we were staying away from each other.”
Ignoring him, I ask, “Did you humiliate her too, like you did the last girl? To make her leave so quickly.”
He flicks his bright eyes over my face. “No. After you showed me the error of my ways, I was nice.”
“Oh, you were.”
He nods slowly. “I just told her the truth.”
“The truth. Really?”
“Yes.”
“I can’t wait to hear your truth.”
He studies me a beat, something rippling through his sharp features. “I just told her that a crazy groupie is headed my way. And she’s got a bad habit of getting jealous when I talk to other girls.”
I clench my teeth and a few lines of amusement deepen around his mouth. “You wish, you asshole.”
“You sure? Because you look a little…” He searches for the word. “Flustered.”
“Oh, I’m sure. I’m very, very sure.”
His eyelids flicker and go down to my darkly painted lips. “That’s too bad then, because I was kind of looking forward to reminding you that you’re just the little sister.”
It takes me a few moments to gather my thoughts.
Mostly because I’m remembering the touch of his thumb on my lower lip. The roughness of it, the heat while he was flicking it back and forth, almost playing with my flesh.
And I was letting him.
I was letting him play with my lip, with my witchy heart. With me.
But not anymore.
“You can keep your reminders to yourself because I’ve got something to say to you,” I snap.
Even though he hasn’t moved away from the wall, I know he has lost all his casualness. It’s in the way his eyes flash and his jaw clamps.
“And that is?”
I take a step closer to him and stab my finger in the air.
“What you said to me last night was horrible. It was awful and completely uncalled for and you know it. You fucking know it. You treated me like shit and that’s not cool.
Actually, no.” I pause and take a deep breath, and then say all the things that I didn’t even know were bubbling up inside of me.
“You’ve been treating me like shit since you arrived, when I’ve been nothing but nice to you.
I don’t deserve your assholishness and cruelty and your public humiliation and your stupid propositioning. So apologize to me. Right now.”
When I’m done, I’m breathing hard and I’m sweating like crazy. My finger that still hovers in the air is trembling.
That could also be because he’s looking at it.
He’s staring at my finger and he does it for a second or two before looking up.
But even then, he doesn’t look into my eyes, no. For some insane reason, he’s staring at my nose. He’s staring really hard at it and I don’t know what to think.
I’m about to speak up when he finally looks away and up into my eyes, tipping his chin at me. “You’re right.”
“I’m right?”
“You didn’t deserve it.”
“I didn’t?”
“That’s what I said.”
I stare up at him, my neck craned, my finger tired and shaking, still pointed at him. “So you’re apologizing. You’re saying you were wrong.”
Was it that easy?
He straightens up then, his chest expanding on a sharp sigh. “You want to get your finger out of my face and move?”
I curl my finger into my hand and bring it down to my side. “Why?”
His cheekbones thrum with irritation. “You don’t want to be my distraction, do you?”
I swallow as another shiver rolls down my spine. “No.”
“Then stop wasting my time and get out of my way.”
I do the opposite.
I plant myself in his way. I widen my feet and stand my ground.
Slowly, very slowly, Arrow glances down at my soccer cleats, and I tighten my muscles. I watch as he grits his teeth once, twice. Three times.
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.