Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
I’m sitting on Arrow’s motorcycle.
I’m riding with him, my inner thighs hugging his outer, my arms around his waist and my cheek stuck to his sweet-smelling t-shirt as it rests on his shoulder blades.
Before we took off, I told him, “So Friend, this is my first motorcycle ride and I have a feeling that I’ve got a thing for speed. Which means that you should really step on it.”
I’m not even going to deny how much I loved saying Friend.
How much I’ll always love saying it.
He’s my friend. My Arrow.
Something moved over his features when I said that. A ripple of something that shone under the fat red moon.
He settled the helmet on my head. “Yeah, I’m not surprised.”
“Why not?”
“Because, Friend,” he buckled the helmet under my chin a little sharply, making me bite my lip. “I’m starting to realize that you’ve got a thing for everything that’s dangerous and crazy.”
I shouldn’t have smiled at that. It wasn’t a compliment.
Like it wasn’t a compliment when he said I was worse than bad, but still, it felt like one.
Maybe because when he finished settling the helmet on my head, he stepped back and took off his vintage leather jacket.
I watched his shoulders rolling and his biceps bunching as they did the work of taking it off and then draping it over my shoulders. When I put my hands through the sleeves, he then proceeded to zip it up, right up to my chin like I’m a child or something.
When I said thank you, his jaw moved.
And then we took off and he did step on it, while I hung onto him.
Now we’re here, at my favorite place ever.
My little darling place.
It’s a bridge in Bardstown over the largest and bluest river that I’ve ever seen. It connects the main highway of the town to… nothing.
Well, okay. So it’s old and rusty, this bridge, with a two-rod metal railing, stretching between an abandoned dirt road that’s broken off the main highway to wild woods.
I’m not sure why they made it.
It’s not really serving a purpose, connecting a dirt path that no one really knows about to savage, unnavigable woods. It simply sits here, taking up space, looking all dark and desolate and empty.
A lot like doomed love of eight years.
Which doesn’t serve any purpose either. It’s dismal and useless. Bleak.
And yet so fucking beautiful.
Just because the one you love is in love with someone else doesn’t mean your love isn’t gorgeous or real. It doesn’t mean that your love should be killed or it should be torn out of your heart and thrown into a river or burnt down like an extinct piece of architecture.
No, it’s still love. Like this is still a bridge.
“What the fuck is this place?” Arrow asks distractedly as he looks around, his bike parked on one side.
I watch him under the moon, all sparkly and glowy.
His hair’s all messy and sticking up in places after he took off the helmet – he gave me his spare one – and his fingers are not helping things. He rakes them through the strands, messing them up even more, making him look the most stunning that I’ve ever seen him.
“Do you like it?” I ask, smiling, feeling warm and cozy in his jacket, that I unzipped during the ride because his proximity was hot enough, and loving it.
At my words, he focuses on me.
I’m by the railing, gripping the metal rod, using it to stretch back my spine.
He takes me in, my slightly swaying form, before settling his gaze on my hair. It’s fluttering in the breeze and it’s so long that if I stretch myself back even more and go parallel to the ground, it’ll touch the dirt. I’ve tried it before; it’s fun.
Finally, he looks up from his perusal of me. “Do I like it?”
I raise my eyebrows. “Yes.”
“What’s there to like?”
Straightening up, I gasp. “Are you serious?”
His lips twitch. “As a heart attack.”
I shake my head at him and his amused lips.
“God, you’re so… unimaginative. This is my favorite place in the world.
I used to come here all the time when I rode my pretty yellow bicycle, which I totally miss doing, but anyway.
Look at the water.” I stick my hand in the air and point to the water.
I actually turn around myself to look at it.
“It’s shimmering under the moonlight. It’s sparkling.
And it’s so vast. It’s the only thing your eyes can see.
And look at the moon.” I point with my hand again.
“It’s so red. Like a fireball or something.
I bet it’s hot. Like the sun. And the woods.
” I turn to point to the woods as well. “So dense and mysterious and wild. Everything is so pretty here. Raw and natural and stunning.”
It is.
The glinting dark water, the fat red moon and the thick bramble of woods.
Biting my lip, I turn to look at him again. Or at least try to, because somewhere in my twisting and turning, my feet slip and I stumble. My arms sort of flail and I manage to grab hold of the railing to stop my fall, but turns out I shouldn’t have bothered.
Because he is here.
My Arrow. My friend.
He comes to my rescue, grabbing my bicep and pulling me up. He even sets me against the railing, all within three seconds.
“You have –”
I raise my finger and shake my head, cutting him off. “Uh-uh. You can’t say anything mean to me now.”
“Why?”
He looks really bothered about that and I want to laugh at his disgruntled expression. “Because you’re my friend now. You have to be nice to me.”
His eyes flick back and forth between mine. “Is that right?”
Nodding, I smile. “Yes. In fact, that’s the first rule of friendship. Be nice.” I go up on my tiptoes to get closer to his face. “And for a rule-follower such as yourself, it shouldn’t be too hard, should it?”
He stares down at me, his hand still wrapped around my bicep. “If you think it’s not hard then you’re underestimating yourself.” I narrow my eyes at him but he continues, “And for a girl who plays soccer so gloriously, it shouldn’t be too hard to stay upright, should it?”
Gloriously.
I play soccer gloriously, he said. He said the same thing last night in the library but he was being such an asshole to me that it didn’t make the impact that it should have.
But it does now.
That word drips down from my chest and settles somewhere low in my belly, like a warm dose of honey or sunshine.
My favorite soccer player in the whole world thinks I play gloriously.
Biting my lip, I say, “Well, I’ve got you now. To save me. Don’t I? My friend.”
Something dangerous and delicious flashes through his eyes. “What did you do before?”
“Before?”
He squeezes my bicep as if he’s making sure that I don’t fall again. “Before I came around to catch you.”
I swallow at his question. At the inadvertent meaning of it.
What did I do before he came around to catch me?
What did I do when I didn’t have his arms to break my fall and when I didn’t have his gorgeous eyes looking at me like he wants to know all my secrets?
“I fell,” I whisper.
His features become sharp for a second, snap taut, and I think I’ve said too much. I think he knows everything now. He hears everything now too, the loud drumming of my heart and the slight change in my breathing.
But I’m wrong.
He doesn’t know and I’m never going to tell him.
This isn’t even about that, about my witchy heart and my secret longing. This is about him, being his friend.
“You fell,” he whispers back, his tone even lower than mine.
“Yeah.”
“And hit your head?” he asks, his eyes grave.
“What?”
“Because that’s the only explanation as to why you like this place.”
It takes me a second to absorb his words and when I do, I push at his chest. As expected, he doesn’t go anywhere; his chest is a solid, unmovable mass. My useless movements only make him chuckle and it’s so adorable that I can’t hold onto my anger.
“Just FYI, that is bordering on mean, friend.”
His chuckle dies out. “It’s harder than I thought, actually.”
“Being nice to me?”
He shakes his head once. “Being nice to anyone.”
I don’t know where my boldness is coming from tonight – first taking off the t-shirt in a crowded bar, then asking him to be my friend.
But it’s here, my boldness, and it’s here to stay, at least for tonight.
So I stretch my neck to get even closer to him, where I can clearly see the pulse on his neck, thick and thrumming. Where I can map out his silvery features, the hills and dips of his cheekbones.
And then, I touch him.
I raise my hand and put it on his cheek and he stiffens.
Last night, everything happened so fast that I didn’t get to feel it, feel the bones and the structure of his darling face. The face I see in my dreams.
But tonight, I feel everything.
His cheek is as hot and alive as his hand was, back when we shook hands at the parking lot. Slightly rougher though from the five o’clock shadow.
When I feel his jaw ripple, I whisper, “I’m sorry I hit you.”
He stiffens even more, if possible. “Don’t be.”
I rub my thumb over the arch of his cheek. “I’ve never seen you like this.”
“Like what?”
“So… uninhibited. So rough around the edges and sharp as broken glass.” His jaw thrums again. “So cut open.”
That’s what he is, I realize.
He’s cut open.
Like all these years, his emotions were under wraps, they were shoved somewhere deep inside of him. He was calm and collected and unruffled by anything and everything, always focused on his game. But now they’re coming to the surface.
Now they’re rushing through his veins and pooling under his skin, making him intense and hot and edgy.
Somehow, making him all the more irresistible to me.
He was right.
I do have a thing for everything crazy and dangerous.
“Cut open, yeah.” His eyes glow as he stares down at me. “I’m that.”
I’m compelled to say, “It won’t help, you know. Hurting other people. Revenge.”
His skin heats up just under my touch, becomes hotter than before, and my fingers skitter over his cheek, hitting all the sharp, stunning bumps of his face.
My sun.
“It feels fucking fantastic though,” he says with a cold lopsided smile before moving away.