Chapter 28 #3
“You’re the girl, Salem, who makes me want,” he bites out, the tendons on his neck standing taut.
“I want. So many things, you understand? And I don’t know what it means.
I don’t fucking know. I don’t understand and it terrifies me.
It shakes me right down to my soul but still I want to find out.
I want to know. I want to know why it hurts to see you cry.
Why it hurts when you’re in pain, when someone upsets you.
Why the thought of you in that godforsaken place with barred windows makes me want to break something.
Break the world. Why it makes me sick to my goddamn stomach, whenever I think of you walking away from me like you did that night.
I want to know what it all means. Because I’ve never felt this way.
I’ve never felt this… need. This craving.
Not until you. Not until you walked up to me that night at the bar like a vision of some sort.
A vision that haunts me. That haunts my body, my soul.
My heart. So yeah, you haunt me, Salem.”
His eyes are glassy and shiny by the time he finishes and I’m a mess too.
I think my eyes reflect the same glow. The same brightness.
I think my heart is beating just as fast as his when I blurt out on a thready whisper, “I know what it means. I know why.”
His nostrils flare, his eyes sharp. “Why?”
I let go of the desk then.
I unclench my fingers from around the wood and bring my hands up. I put them both on his chest, flat and splayed.
And he shudders.
Violently.
I think he even rips the pages he was tormenting. I hear the sound and it echoes in my stomach.
In all the places that were left hollow in my body ever since the night when the cold and brutal snow came to the earth.
“The fact that you write letters to me every night. The fact that you stole and that you hurt when I hurt. The reason that I haunt you is because you haunt me too. You’ve been haunting me for eight years. And it only means one thing.”
Finally, he brings his hands away from the desk too and puts them on my face. He cradles my cheeks and tilts my neck up. “Say it.”
I blink.
I take a deep breath and fist his t-shirt, before I reply, “It means that you love me.”
Again, a shudder goes through him.
But this one is even more violent. It’s an earthquake.
His whole body shakes. His eyelids flutter. His grip flexes.
It’s like an explosion inside his body.
The fall of a mountain inside his chest. The fall of a bridge, a building inside his gut.
The fall of him.
But it’s okay because I’m here to catch him.
I’m here.
“I was wrong the first time,” he whispers, his fingers burying themselves in my hair. “I was wrong. I didn’t know for eight years. I didn’t want to be wrong again. I didn’t want –”
I shake my head, my heart writhing inside my chest. “You’re not wrong. You’re not. This is what it feels like.”
His lips part and a breath escapes him, loosening up his body and fanning over my lips, hot and sweet. “This is what it feels like.”
“Yeah. You love me.”
“I love you,” he whispers, as if testing the words in his mouth.
I think he likes them, the taste of them.
Because he says it again and he says it strongly, with his possessive, needy fingers twisting in my hair. “I fucking love you, Salem.”
That’s when it hits me.
It hits me right in the center of my chest.
He loves me.
Arrow loves me.
That’s why he’s been writing me letters. That’s why he hasn’t left. That’s why.
Because he loves me.
Because I make him want.
Because I want…
Because I’m the girl for him.
“You love me,” I whisper again, my eyes getting blurry, a smile trembling on my lips.
His jaw clenches for a second before he whispers gutturally, “I know I hurt you, Salem. I know that. I know I don’t deserve you.
You were right to send me away at the hospital.
You were right to scream at me and hit me and…
I’m rude and uptight. I have so many rules.
I could be so focused and self-centered.
So emotionally stunted. I have this sickness, this need to be perfect all the time and it can consume me.
But I’ll do everything in my power, every fucking thing in my power, to make you happy. You said that to me, remember?”
“Yes.”
His eyes bore into mine. “Now, I’m saying it to you.
I’ll do everything I can to make you happy.
I’ll tear my heart out and throw it at your feet if I have to.
Because it’s yours. My heart that I thought I’d killed is yours.
It beats for you, Salem. Like a crazy fucking maniac that doesn’t know when to quit.
And if you want, you can stomp on it and set it on fire and stab it with a knife.
You can do whatever you want to it, it will still be alive.
It will still beat for you. Just give me—”
“I won’t,” I whisper and he freezes.
It’s okay though.
It’s okay because I’m about to tell him as well.
All the things.
All the pretty, lovely things.
“I won’t stomp on it.” I lean my body against his, giving him my softness, and he grabs onto it. “I can’t. Because you’re that guy for me too. You’ve always been that guy for me, Arrow.”
“What guy?” he rasps and I hear the sweet tinkling of hope in it.
“The one who makes me feel warm,” I reply, hardly believing that I get to tell him, hardly believing that he loves me.
“The one who protects me and takes me out on rides. Who buys me ice cream and complains about my chick flicks but still watches them with me, who makes all the rules that I love to break. You’re the guy who gave me this.
” I fish out the chain from under my sweater and show it to him.
“I put it on the day you gave it to me. I’ve had it on for two weeks now. ”
He licks his lips, his fingers fisting in my hair and his body pushing into mine. “I don’t want you to take it off. Ever.”
I suck in my stomach at his rough, commanding tone.
“I won’t. So you see? I know that you hurt me, and you made me cry.
” I raise my arms up and around his neck and he snakes his hands down to my waist. “And you’ll probably make me cry in the future as well.
But it’s okay. Because you’re the guy I’ll cry for.
Because you’re also the guy who’ll wipe off all my tears when I do. So we’ll figure it out. Together.”
"Together.”
“Yeah. Together. That’s what I’ve always wanted, you know? I’ve always wanted to be your girl, and when I came here tonight, I was so scared. I was terrified that I wasn’t –”
“You are,” he says fiercely. “You are that girl. My girl.”
“Your girl.”
“Yeah.”
I smile at him and a rush of a breath escapes him then.
A huge gust of a breath.
It sways the loose hair on my forehead and warmth explodes in my chest.
Warmth and fire and flowers.
The whole world of emotions sprouts up just under my skin but then something occurs to me. “Oh my God, wait.”
He goes alert. “What?”
I fist his hair. “I’m going to St. Mary’s tomorrow.”
Arrow slowly relaxes, his fingers resuming their kneading of the flesh on my waist, his nose bumping against mine. “I know. I’m taking you, remember?”
“But Arrow.” I squeeze my thighs around his body because holy shit, how can he be so clueless? “They won’t let me have any privileges, you idiot. After what I did, and I don’t think I can sneak out anymore.”
He throws me a lopsided smile. “So then, I’ll call you every Saturday. We’ll talk for ten whole minutes. And when they have visiting weekends, I’ll be the first one at the gate.”
“You will?”
“Fuck yeah.”
“And when you go back? To LA?”
His jaw clamps shut, stubbornly. “I told you soccer can wait.”
“But you have to go sometime. You have to –”
“I don’t have to do anything.”
“But –”
“Shh. I don’t care about that right now,” he whispers. “You said we’ll figure things out, right?”
I bite my lip. “Yeah.”
“So that’s what we’ll do. We’ll figure it all out.”
I look into his blue eyes.
Determined and burning and blazing.
There was a time when they reminded me of calm summers. But now they remind me of a hot flame.
Of wild, savage fire.
Fire that I love. Fire that made me believe in myself, inspired me to be more.
I know that fire, his fire, can burn down the world, if it comes to that.
So he’s right.
We’ll figure it out, me and him. All of it. All of the things that are uncertain but don’t really matter if we wanna be together.
For now, I’ll just revel in this moment.
I’ll just revel in the fact that my love isn’t doomed.
My love is flourishing. It has a life. It will grow. It will live. It will become something now.
With him.
“You love me, huh?” I whisper, playing with the sun-struck hair at the back of his neck.
Those eyes of his smile. “Yeah.”
“And you stole my letters.”
“I did.”
“So you’re a thief,” I tease.
Slowly, a smirk stretches his lips. “Looks like it.”
“It does.”
“I’m not just a thief though.”
I squeeze my thighs around his hips. “No?”
He shakes his head slowly. “No. I’m also a poet.”
“What?”
He bends over me, curls his sleek, cut body all around me, making himself my world.
Flicking his eyes all over my face, he whispers, “Dark curls; Golden eyes.” He rubs our noses together.
“Thirteen freckles; Flowers between her thighs.” He skims his lips over mine.
“Sweet; So sweet; My heart; My sweetheart.”
My lips part on a shaky breath. “You wrote me a poem.”
His lips part too to inhale the air from my lungs. “Well, you do have a thing for poetry, so.”
“You called me your sweetheart.”
I mean, he’s called me ‘baby’ before, in the heat of the moment. But never this.
Never sweetheart.
“Because you’re my sweetheart, aren’t you?”
“I am.” I nod, feeling like I’ll burst. “And you are my darling.”
“I am.”
I blink, forcing my tears away. “I love it.”
“Yeah?”
“I love you.”
He stares at me for a second before whispering, “I love you too.”
I kiss my darling then.
And my darling kisses his sweetheart.