Chapter 22 #2
I jerk out a nod. “Yeah. I was running away because of you. Because you were gonna marry her. Because the day I saw you and you asked me if I was cold and I could never answer you? It was because Sarah came in that very moment and you looked at her and… you never looked away,” I whisper, thinking about all the times I wanted him to look at me but he’d stare at Sarah.
“I think you forgot I was there. A tiny, messy, blanket-wrapped ten-year-old. And then you never remembered me after that. Never really paid any attention to me, even when I was there.” I shake my head, wishing things could be different.
“Anyway, you used to be so fascinated with her, you know? I’d watch you watch her and I knew you were falling in love with her.
And she was falling in love with you and I watched it all happen.
And all the while… all the while I was falling in love with you too.
With my sister’s boyfriend. I’ve spent years feeling terrible and awful about it.
That’s why I kept myself away from you. That’s why I’d never look at you or talk to you or just leave the room when you were there, because I loved you.
Because you were Sarah’s and what kind of a sister would I be if I did something to hurt your relationship.
That’s why I was running away. I didn’t want to sully your wedding with my presence.
I didn’t want to be there, the girl with a witchy heart, in love with her sister’s groom.
But back then, I didn’t know something about myself. Something really important.”
“What?”
I fist my hands at my side and raise my chin.
“That I’d never do anything to jeopardize what you had with her.
I’d never do anything to come between you two.
No matter how desperate I got. Because your happiness is my happiness.
When you smile, I smile. When you hurt, I hurt.
So if you love her, then you should be with her. ”
When I stop, I make myself tight.
I clench my muscles and I flex my fists. I keep my eyes on him, unflinching.
If he wants to hate me for falling for him, for loving my sister’s ex-boyfriend while he was still with her, then he can do that.
I’ll take his hatred and whatever he has to say to me. Because as I said, I do regret it. I do regret that I fell in love with him when he was with Sarah.
But I refuse to regret the very act of loving him. I refuse to regret loving him to the point of misery and doom.
But all he does is blink and say, “And if I don’t?”
I shift on my feet, more ready than ever. “If you don’t what?”
“Love her.”
It takes me a few seconds to put together what he meant.
If I don’t love her…
That’s what he meant, right?
If he doesn’t love her then what?
Up until now, I felt like my breaths were frozen. I thought my body was chilled to the bone and I’d never be able to get any feeling back into it.
But everything comes rushing back. Everything comes hurtling back and punches me in the chest. It punches me in the gut, and I let out a shocked breath.
“Then I’d say…” I open my fists and loosen my body. “Choose me.”
“You.”
I nod. “Yeah, choose me.”
“Why?”
This is the easiest thing for me to say, the easiest of all the things that I’ve ever said to him. “Because I love you, Arrow. I’ve loved you for years and if you give me a chance, I can make you happy.”
“You can make me happy.”
I swallow. “Yes.”
“By loving me.”
He’s saying all these things in a flat tone but that’s not the part I’m worried about, or at least not the only part.
The fact that he keeps repeating everything that I say is even more concerning to me.
“Y-yes,” I reply.
He nods.
Then he ducks his head and shifts on his feet before looking up. “I just have one question though.”
“What question?”
He cocks his head to the side and asks very casually, “Did I ask for love? From you.”
“I…”
“Answer me!”
He yells out the words and it’s such a shock after his curious tone that I flinch and whisper, “No.”
“What did I ask for?”
“Arrow –”
“Answer the fucking question, Salem. What did I ask for?”
“My body.”
He narrows his eyes. “Bingo. I asked for you to spread your legs for me. All I ever asked from you was your tight little pussy. That’s it.
I asked for a good fuck. Because you’re supposed to be my fuck doll.
Or did you forget that? Did you forget what your job is supposed to be?
Your job is to shut the fuck up and take it.
That is your job. Those are the rules.” He scoffs then, shaking his head.
“But then, who am I talking to? You can’t follow a fucking rule to save your life, can you? ”
I wring my snowy, cold hands and blurt out, “But I just thought if you could try…”
To love me…
“Try to do what?”
“T-to open your heart and maybe love –”
Something about that makes him laugh.
It not only makes him laugh, he even throws his head back and lets out that bark of a sound – a broken glass sound – up to the snowing sky.
The flakes settle on his harsh face and disappear. They settle on his agitated chest, his shoulders, his sun-struck hair and disappear.
I watch them, wishing I could be like that.
I wish I could be like snow. I wish I could touch him.
I wish I could disappear.
I wish…
A second later, he lowers his face and it’s… agonized. The hollows of his cheeks, the arch of his brows, the line of his jaw, bathed in some kind of misery.
Some kind of torture.
“You wanted to know what happened in LA, yeah?” he says, his voice tight and heavy with both anger and something I don’t understand right away except that it’s hurting him.
“You wanted to know if I still loved her. You wanted to know that, right?” He laughs again.
“Yeah, okay. Okay. Let me tell you. Let me tell you that no, I don’t still love her. I never loved her.”
“What?”
He scoffs, looking at the sky again, running his fingers through his hair, fisting the strands almost, before looking back down at me with tormented, desolate eyes.
“All this time I thought our relationship was perfect and she was perfect and that she threw everything away. And I couldn’t figure out why.
I couldn’t figure out why she would do that to me, why she’d break my trust like that, why she would cheat on me and destroy eight years of our love.
I couldn’t figure out how my perfect relationship, my perfect love fell to pieces.
But the truth is that it wasn’t love. There was no love between us. There never was.
“What I thought was love, what I thought love looked like, turned out to be convenience. Apparently, it was easy to be with her. It was easy to be with someone who was exactly like me. Ambitious, perfect, driven. Someone who didn’t interfere with my precious fucking soccer.
Someone who didn’t distract me from my goals.
“Well, until she did. Until I read those goddamn messages and I lost my focus. Until my perfect girlfriend became a distraction and I lost a game. And last night in LA, I realized that I’m angrier about that lost game than I am over the fact that I lost my girlfriend.
I’m angrier about the fact that my perfect relationship turned out to be a lie than I am about the fact that she slept with someone else.
“Last night in LA, I realized that I was never in love with her and she was never in love with me. We were just two perfect people in love with perfection. And I was so damn focused on my career and my game and my strikes and kicks and how much I can bench press, that I never noticed. We were together for eight years and I never fucking noticed. I never noticed that the girl I was going to marry was with me because she had high ambitions and I was with her because she never interfered with those ambitions.”
He pauses here.
But I don’t think it’s to take a deep breath or gather his thoughts.
He pauses because he wants to let his words sink in.
He pauses so he can stare at me, look me in the eyes and say, “The fact that I didn’t see you wasn’t because I was falling in love with your sister, it was because I was fucking blind.
Because I’ve never noticed anything other than my soccer.
So you didn’t betray her because what you thought was love, what I thought was love, turned out to be a simple matter of convenience.
That’s what you thought, didn’t you? That I loved her.
That’s why you wanted us to get back together.
That’s why you were so tormented over our breakup.
Yeah, you should save yourself the heart attack. It wasn’t love.”
Yeah, that’s what I thought.
That it was love.
That’s what he thought too. I can see it on his face. I can see it on his rigid body. He thought he was in love.
He believed it.
He believed it with every fiber of his being but somehow, it turned out to be a lie.
Somehow, Arrow and Sarah were a lie.
They were a perfect lie.
And the pain of it is so visceral.
The pain of it is so big and huge that it almost feels like it’s here. It’s here with us. It’s standing somewhere off to the side, casting its shadow on him and I have to go to him. I have to hug him and absorb him in my body.
I have to hide him from it.
But he doesn’t give me a chance because he goes on.
“So now you know what happened. Now you have all the answers, don’t you?
Now you know that I’m not only your nightmare, I’m worse than that.
I’m worse because she didn’t make me empty, I’ve been empty all along.
She didn’t kill my heart, my heart was dead all along.
It was dead because I killed it myself. I killed it in my pursuit of perfection.
I killed it because I wanted to be motherfucking perfect.
I wanted to be the best of the best, to be on top. I wanted to be The Blond fucking Arrow.