Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
Something is wrong.
Very, very wrong.
I mean, of course I knew that. I knew that something was wrong because not only did he come back from LA feeling all mysterious and strangely restless, he also actually told me that he had a shitty week.
So I know things aren’t all that great.
But then as soon as we were done back in the alley behind the bar and he dressed me up like I’m really his doll – without looking into my eyes though and with very tight, angry movements – it started to snow.
The very first snow of the season.
That’s when I realize it’s November now. Mid November.
I’ve been at St. Mary’s for two and a half months. That’s almost the same amount of time that Arrow – new Arrow – has been back.
Ever since he arrived, I’ve lost all sense of time. I’ve been living in a dream, walking on clouds and I don’t like the reminder.
I don’t like this reality check.
I don’t like the snow either.
I know people think snow is pretty and auspicious and whatnot. But I’m the girl who loves summer and sunshine and open roads.
Snow interferes with all of that.
Now I have this foreboding in my chest that something awful is going to happen.
But I try to push it aside. I try to be rational and strong as I climb off his motorcycle when we reach St. Mary’s.
As soon as my feet hit the ground, the wind brings the flakes of snow into my face and I huddle inside his vintage leather jacket that I’d worn to the bar. And I’m reminded of the first night that I saw him, kissing that girl.
He was so unapproachable back then, so deliberately tight-lipped.
And right now, he appears exactly like that first night. Tight and agitated. He hasn’t even looked at me, actually.
He’s staring straight ahead, into the darkness, his back all rigid. His fingers are clenched so tightly around the handlebars that I want to reach out and loosen them up.
I want to loosen him up.
Clutching the lapels of his jacket around my neck, I ask, “What happened?”
‘In LA’ is implied, I think.
I’m right when he clenches his jaw and says without looking at me, “You should go.”
I take a step closer. “Arrow, tell me what happened?”
This time, the clench lasts longer. He even flexes his fists around the throttle. “I said you should go.”
The longer he doesn’t look at me, the louder my heartbeats become, and I have to grab the sleeve of his wrinkled suit jacket. “Arrow, please. Tell me. Did you see her? Did you see Sarah?”
I’m not sure if it’s because I’m clutching onto the sleeve of his damp jacket or if it’s the mention of her name, but he snaps his eyes over to me.
His dark, furious eyes.
And God, again, I think of the first night at the bar.
When the mention of my sister’s name changed everything.
It changed everything that I believed in. Everything that I thought to be true.
That just makes me even more frantic, more desperate. Desperate enough to pull at his sleeve with not one but both hands.
“Arrow, tell me. Did you see her? What’d she say?”
“Leave,” he says curtly.
But I don’t listen. I can’t listen.
How can I leave when he looks like this? When he looks… so furious and so flushed with anger. So scarlet, like his blood is rushing too close to the surface.
“Not until you tell me.” I shake my head. “Just tell me what happened. Tell me what she said.”
“Salem. Just leave.”
His voice is quiet but it’s dripping with warning. It’s dripping with authority and a heavy threat. I should heed it.
I know that.
But the next question that bursts out of my mouth is so reckless, so fucking thoughtless and yet so urgent and important that I don’t know how else I could have said it, if not in a squeaky, high voice, with my nails digging into his arm, my body trembling with dread.
“D-do you love her? Do you still love my sister?”
I think I screamed it. I think everyone heard it.
Everyone at St. Mary’s heard that I asked the guy I love if he’s still in love with my sister.
Or at least that’s what I feel for a few seconds, because my eardrums are ringing.
My chest is vibrating.
The only thing silent and frigid, frozen over by the snow, is him.
The guy I asked this question to.
If I thought he was tight before, I was wrong. If I thought he was furious and hot before, I was wrong again.
He’s burning up now, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he melts all the snow on ground.
Especially, when he glances down – for the first time – at my fists in his jacket and I feel my hands sting.
Keeping his chin dipped, he lifts his eyes. “Get out of my face.”
“What?”
“Just get the fuck out of my face before I lose it, okay?”
“But I –”
He jerks his arm then and my fists are shaken loose, making me stumble back a little.
But it’s enough.
It’s enough to give him the space he probably wanted because his foot goes to kickstart the motorcycle, and I know that as soon as he does that, he’ll leave.
He’ll leave me here, standing in the snow, with so many unanswered questions. With so many emotions and feelings that I will explode.
I won’t make it through the night.
So I do the only thing that I can. The only thing that I can think of.
I hurl my heart at his feet, my beating, pulpy heart at his kicking feet, and hope that it’s enough to make him stay.
“I love you.”
I screamed that too, I think.
Everyone heard it.
Everyone heard my secret.
Holy. Shit.
Holy fucking shit.
I press a hand on my stomach because I can’t breathe. Because all my organs are in disarray or at least it feels like it because I just told him.
I told him.
My secret of eight years.
My secret because of which I stole and lied and cried and lived in misery for eight long years. My secret because of which I was sent here, to St. Mary’s.
I just told it to him and turns out, it was enough for him to stop.
It was enough for that foot to stop, the one resting on that lever. It was enough for him to stare back at me. Not only with his eyes but also with his body. He twists his torso in my direction as if he’s completely attuned to me now.
Completely attuned to what I just said.
And maybe, maybe I would’ve taken that. I would’ve taken the way his body looks tight and coiled, turned toward me.
But then, he goes ahead and climbs off his Ducati.
He actually swings his thigh over and comes to a stand and I have to step back.
Because he’s standing in front of me, his feet wide apart, his hands on his sides curled into fists and his chest moving up and down, all hot and snowy.
“What’d you just say?” he asks in a low voice.
In the most dangerous voice I’ve ever heard. A voice that causes my hickey – the very first love bite that he gave me – to burn and throb.
I swallow, pressing my hand further into my stomach, feeling chilled. “I-I…”
“You love me.”
I swallow again. “I didn’t mean it.”
“So you don’t love me.”
“No, I do. I…”
His eyes narrow. “Well, which is it?”
Oh God.
Why does he have to look so intimidating right now? So tall and big and dark, his sun-struck hair all wet and brown.
I don’t know how to handle this.
But I have to handle it, right?
I just said it. I can’t take it back.
I won’t take it back.
Just because it’s scary doesn’t mean I shouldn’t do it.
Just because it was only a half-formed idea in my head to tell him, doesn’t mean it’s not true.
So I take a deep breath and say, “Okay, let me just start at the beginning. I write you letters. Not the ones we’ve been exchanging these past few weeks but others.
Like, really long ones where I tell you about my day and I tell you what I did and who I talked to and who I saw and you know, where I just make general conversation with you.
And I’ve been doing that for the past eight years. ”
I take a pause here to look him in the eyes; they’ve turned inscrutable now, his gaze along with his smooth, unruffled features as the snow falls around us.
“Since I was ten,” I continue. “Since the day I saw you in the kitchen and you told me not to tell your mom about the juice thing and you asked me if I was cold. I… I wanted to answer you. I wanted to tell you that I wasn’t.
I mean, I was. But then you came in through the door, all sweaty and panting and the room was all yellow, you know?
Because the sun was streaming through the windows and you appeared so…
sun-struck. And as soon as I saw you, I felt this strange warmth flowing inside my body.
And it made me feel so good and I wanted to tell you that. But then…”
I part my lips and my breath comes out all foggy and white and I bite my lip to compose myself. I bite my lip because he’s all frozen now.
Frozen and smooth and listening.
He’s listening to me, to my story. As if he’s riveted.
Or maybe I’m imagining things because I wanna make it easier for myself.
“But then, I couldn’t. I couldn’t tell you that I wasn’t cold.
That you made my cold go away. And I couldn’t talk to you like I wanted to.
So I started writing you letters. Every night I’d write you a letter and I’d fold it and put it in an orange envelope, and then I’d put that in a shoebox that I hid under my bed.
When I moved to St. Mary’s, I brought that box with me.
It’s a couple, more than a couple of shoeboxes actually because I’ve written you a lot of letters.
And I had them with me the night I was running away too. ”
I sniffle and rub my chilled nose with the back of my hand before straightening up my spine and beginning the awful, awful part of the story. “You asked me why I was running away that night and if there was a boy involved. There was and that boy is you.”
My confession wrings out a tiny reaction on his part.
A very tiny, one-syllable word that he says in a flat tone.
“Me.”