Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
Elanor gives me weird looks the next day and the day after that, and the day after that.
Or maybe it’s me.
Maybe I’m imagining things.
Because honestly, she always gives me weird looks, along with her other three friends. Although they don’t harass me anymore.
Not since Arrow put them in their place.
So I don’t know if I should be worried about what happened that night, the night I got back from my ride with Arrow.
I don’t know if I should be worried that my roommate might know something. And if she knows then other people might come to know too.
People like the principal, my guardian, Leah.
She’ll be super disappointed in me for sneaking out and breaking rules like this, when her main aim in sending me here was to learn to follow them. If she finds out that I go to see Arrow, then I don’t know how severely she might react.
I’m not an ideal candidate for her son. Not that we’re in any kind of a relationship but still.
And my sister.
She’ll definitely think I’m a whore. Even though in my heart I know that I’m not.
Not to mention my letters.
I still need to hide them. But the thought of not having them close gives me so much anxiety that I haven’t been able to move the shoeboxes.
But I will.
I promise myself that I’ll be smart and I’ll hide them as soon as I get a chance.
Meanwhile though, I should stop.
I know. I shouldn’t take the risk.
If by some miracle Elanor doesn’t know anything and I’m imagining everything, then I got really lucky that night.
I shouldn’t tempt fate.
In fact, I’m not the only one who’s tempting fate. There’s someone else too.
Callie.
She sneaks out like me, all alone. I think she goes out to see Reed Jackson. The guy we saw at the bar a few weeks ago.
I’ve caught her a couple of times but never said anything because she’s always given me my space. But I decide to say something after the Elanor incident.
“Is it him?” I ask her one day, pulling her aside in the library, and she flushes.
I don’t have to explain to her who him is. Her gorgeous villain.
“Not really. But yeah.” Then, “Is it him?”
And she doesn’t have to elaborate on who my him is either. My darling Arrow.
“Yes.” I nod. “Are you going to stop?”
She bites her lip for a second before shaking her head.
I smile sadly at her. “Yeah, me neither.”
“You love him, don’t you?” she asks, but when I clam up, she raises her hands. “It’s okay. You don’t have to tell me and I don’t need an answer… to know.”
I smile. “Do you? Love him, I mean.”
She doesn’t clam up but there’s a sad smile on her lips. “Guys like that, you don’t love them. You get consumed by them and then you wonder if there was ever a time you didn’t think about them or feel them or hear them. Or see them in your dreams.”
Yeah.
She’s right. You don’t love guys like that. You get eaten up by them and you love every bite they take out of you.
So we’re both tempting fate. And the truth is that we probably will keep doing it.
Or at least, I will.
I will keep sneaking out of my room, scaling the fence and meeting Arrow at midnight. I will keep going out on rides with him where he speeds and I lean back and open my arms, letting my hair fly. I will keep going to his motel room with him too.
That dull gray room where I became his.
Because how can I not?
He needs me, doesn’t he?
He needs me to distract him from all the things inside of him.
He needs me to be a giant pain in his ass and tell him to put out his stupid cigarette when he gets stressed over his supposed failures.
Over the fact that he wasn’t with the team, helping them win.
When he doesn’t listen to me and puts out his cancer stick, he needs me to put my mouth on his and kiss him, inhaling that smoke into my own lungs.
When he fists my hair and pulls my mouth back, looking all hot and angry, he needs me to tell him, “If you wanna kill yourself, then I’ll die with you too.”
And when he gets all jacked up by that, he needs me to spread my legs so he can fuck it all out of his system.
Oh, and he needs me to show him all the chick flicks so he doesn’t keep watching the game tapes over and over, analyzing his team’s every move.
And when he works out too hard, he needs me to wipe off his sweat.
Because Jesus Christ, he does.
He does work out too hard.
All those weights in his room that I saw the first night, they are for his training. Just because he’s sitting this season out doesn’t mean that he can slack off.
In fact, he’s working harder than ever.
Every morning, he goes for a run. He works on his own drills at the local club house.
Every night when I go to sleep after the awesome sex – he was right; I do slip into a coma-like nap after sex – he works out again, a few feet away from the bed.
One night I wake up from my nap and catch him doing pushups on the floor. On one fucking hand. His other arm is up and folded at his lower back, and he’s shirtless.
When I turn on my stomach to get a good look at him, Arrow’s eyes snap up.
They’re all dark and burning up with this aggression inside of him.
Sweat drips from his forehead as he watches me and does rep after rep. I see the planes on his back moving and shifting, like wings of some kind.
Tight muscles that bunch and release. Or maybe mountains, emerging from his back before disappearing within his body with every rep.
It’s such an aggressive and masculine thing, the dance of his muscles and his harsh stare, that I rise up from the bed.
I let the sheet fall away from my shoulders and pool at my knees, leaving me naked, my hair swaying at my back.
Arrow’s nostrils flare at the sight of me, but he doesn’t falter.
He keeps going up and down, his breaths noisy and whooshing, his muscles in a state of constant making and unmaking.
When I’m on the floor, I come down on all fours and begin to crawl over to him.
He narrows his eyes at me, still going up and down, and I crawl and crawl until I reach him.
Until I’m so close to him that his sweat-drenched hair grazes my chest and my stomach. Until the puffs of his heaving breaths explode on my naked skin and his silver chain hits my ribs and my belly button.
I put my hand on his shoulder to find that he’s burning.
“Stop,” I whisper.
His muscles flex and he works harder, if at all possible.
“Stop, Arrow.”
No effect.
“Please? For me?”
That does it.
He stops then.
But if I thought he’d go down on the floor in a heap of tired and burning muscles because God, they’ve got to be burning, then I’m wrong.
Because he comes up on his knees, sweat running like a river between his heaving pecs, and grabs my hair in a fist, making me look up at him.
“I had it,” he bites out, glaring at me.
I put my hand on his sweat-shiny chest; his dead heart is thundering. “I know you did.”
“Twenty more reps and I would’ve been done,” he pants. “I would’ve broken my record.”
See? I knew it.
I knew he was trying to break some kind of a record.
My stupid, darling Arrow, always trying to prove something. Always trying to be perfect when he already is so, so perfect.
“And probably killed yourself in the process.”
He leans down on me and the droplets of his sweat plop down on my body like rain. “I. Had. It.”
I study him for a beat, his panting, tight body, and I wind my arms around his neck. I go flush with his chest, his sweat slathering on my tits and stomach.
“Do you remember the time in your junior year?” I ask against his lips, my tongue peeking out to lick up the sweat and I can barely contain my moan at his musky taste. “You had a game. And you were playing your rival school and you guys were trying man-to-man marking for the first time?”
His eyes go back and forth between mine. “Yeah.”
“And since it was new to you, you practiced like crazy, and the night before the game, you didn’t even come home. Because you were practicing.”
He didn’t; I remember that.
I wonder if he was smoking then. If the stress of the game became too much for him and he almost killed himself for it, like he’s doing now.
“What about it?”
I shake my head at him. “It was stupid then and it’s stupid now.”
His fist tightens in my hair and he finally puts his other hand on me. On my ass; he loves my ass. Or at least, he loves spanking it and worrying and plumping the flesh.
Arrow pulls at my cheek. Hard. “Excuse me?”
But I don’t get deterred; I pull at his sweaty hair in response. “You were and you are.”
“We won that game.”
I know. I was there. He doesn’t know it but still.
“So? Winning doesn’t mean you kill yourself for it. If that’s what you’re doing all the time, all this stress and all this pressure, then how do you enjoy it? The game that you love so much.”
“I don’t play to enjoy the game. I play to win it.”
“So what do you do when you want to have fun?”
“I fuck you.”
I clench my thighs. “So are you going to?”
“Is that why you crawled over to me? All naked and pretty. Because you want to get fucked?”
My channel is pulsing at his rough tone. “Yes. But also to stop you.”
“From killing myself.”
“Yes.” I pull at his hair again. “Because if you wanna kill yourself, I’ll die with you too. Remember?”
His fingers on my body tighten and tighten to the point where it hurts so deliciously. “You’re a goddamn pain in my ass.”
“But will you still kiss me?” I ask, all shy and pretty like a good girl.
And he does.
He kisses me and then he fucks me on the floor and I spread my legs as far as they go and arch my back. I let him take out all his frustration on my body as he grinds into me with his big, fat cock.
But that’s not all he needs me for.
He also needs me to slip sexy little notes into his mailbox at St. Mary’s.
Because the other day, he ordered me to stop or I’m risking being caught flirting with the coach. Not to mention, it’s his rule that he won’t do anything on the school grounds.
Please.
Obviously, I break both his rules so he can break them too, and see that the world doesn’t fall apart when he does.