Chapter 8 #3
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 jerks 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.”