Epilogue
Two years later
The baseball cap.
That’s the first thing I see when I finish talking to a girl and turn around, the cap that he’s had for years now, hiding his glorious sun-struck hair.
He’s at the ice cream booth, placing our order.
With a happy smile on my face, I take him in.
I take in his wonderfully muscled shoulders draped in his vintage leather jacket.
Not the original jacket that I’ve always loved and now belongs to me because he gave it to me back at St. Mary’s – the one that I’m wearing right now over my usual t-shirt and cargo pants – but a different one. This one we bought together in LA.
He also has his typical V-neck gray t-shirt on along with a pair of washed out jeans. Usually, I tell him to wear other colors but today I didn’t wanna bug him.
I wanted to be nice.
Because today’s special.
Of course I don’t think he remembers.
If the past two years have taught me anything, then it’s the fact that the love of my life can be forgetful sometimes.
He can remember all the plays and strategies.
He can also remember the plot of a book, a tiny piece of a poem that he’s read; yeah, his reading hobby?
That definitely stuck. But he forgets important milestones and dates.
He definitely tries but it’s a losing battle.
But hey, he’s got me, right?
I always remind him. And then I make him pay a little. Just for fun.
I’ll remind him today too.
But first, I wanna see how long it takes for him to find out that I’ve broken his rule.
Turns out, it’s not so long.
Because once he’s placed his order, he turns around to check on me. But when he doesn’t find me at my original spot where he’d left me before going to get our ice creams, his jaw clenches. He runs his eyes, which I’m sure are dark right now, around until they land on me.
And I smile.
He frowns.
My lips part at his sexy glare and my fingers grip the silver chain sitting on my chest that he also gave me back at St. Mary’s. He told me to never take it off and I haven’t.
Not once in the past two years.
His gaze shifts to where I’m clutching his chain before coming back to my face. Just to play with him, I wink and pout my lips.
His eyes flash – dangerously, seductively – before his lips twitch.
Before leaving to get the ice cream that I told him I so desperately wanted, he told me to stay put because the place was crowded and he wanted to be able to see me from the booth. We’re at a carnival-like thingy and I admit that the place is packed.
But come on.
I’m not a delicate flower or a child. I can go wherever I want.
It’s just that my boyfriend – boyfriend; yay! – is kinda possessive and dominating and he thinks he owns me.
Which he totally does.
But still.
He likes to take care of me like I’m his most cherished possession – again, which I am – and so he tends to go overboard. But since I own him too, I put him in his place at times.
Like now.
By breaking his rule.
Once the ice cream guy hands him the cones, Arrow begins to walk back. His eyes are still flashing and gosh, the way he’s walking, almost prowling, over to me, makes me clench my thighs.
Makes me shiver.
Two years, and still I’m not at all equipped to handle his sexiness.
I’m so not equipped, and I know that as soon as he reaches me, I’m going to throw myself at him like a lovesick schoolgirl, which I’m not. Not anymore.
I graduated from St. Mary’s two summers ago.
But it’s not a secret that I can be a little crazy and emotional.
A little reckless.
And in the time that we’ve been together, I’ve been both. A lot.
Maybe because it hasn’t been easy, the past two years.
First, it was St. Mary’s.
As Arrow promised that night – the night he confessed his feelings and said that we’d figure everything out – he dropped me off at St. Mary’s the very next day.
He wasn’t allowed into the dorm building though, which he didn’t like at all, so he kissed me goodbye at the door in front of everyone and told me that he’d call me Saturday.
He did, too.
He called me every Saturday until I graduated. He also came to see me on visiting weekends and took me out on dates. Again, as he had promised.
There was gossip as I’d feared and nobody at St. Mary’s warmed up to me until the end – well, except for my awesome friends with whom I still keep in touch – but nothing I couldn’t handle.
Anyway, the rest of the time, up until my graduation, we emailed.
Writing traditional letters to each other – which we did also – is fun but technology does have its perks. Especially when you’re in a long-distance relationship with your boyfriend, who’s also a very busy and bright athlete.
Arrow stayed in town for Christmas that year before leaving for LA.
I still remember how hard it was when he left.
Even though I wasn’t sneaking out to see him like I used to do before they found my letters, the thought that he was close, in that gray motel room, had been a comfort.
But then he left because he had to.
So those first couple of months were not pretty.
I would cry a lot during our Saturday phone conversations and he’d try to console me.
I’d write him long emails and he’d write me even longer ones.
Sometimes he’d be the sad one instead of me, which he basically showed by being short and abrasive, always blaming soccer for our distance.
I’d be the one to soothe him then and tell him that this separation was only for a few short months.
And I was right.
Because after I graduated, I joined the Galaxy’s youth summer program all the way in California.
Honestly, I did that more to be close to him than for soccer.
But whatever.
It was a happy time because I could see him and talk to him without all the million freaking rules and restrictions.
Well, overall happy. Because that was also when I broke the news to my sister.
I hadn’t been looking forward to it but it had to be done.
I had to tell her. And I had to do it in person.
So I’d asked Arrow – and also Leah – to keep our relationship a secret until I could get a chance to see Sarah. Arrow wasn’t happy about it but he did it for me. He also wanted to be there when I told her, but I refused.
I had to do it alone and I did.
We met for coffee – she wouldn’t agree to lunch – and I told her.
And she told me that I was a whore. That I broke her trust and betrayed her in the worst possible way.
I mean, it wasn’t unexpected.
I had always known that she’d say those things. I always knew she would never forgive me for loving Arrow.
But still, it hurt. It made me cry for a few days when I got back from our little coffee date.
Now my sister and I, we don’t talk.
We haven’t talked in ages. She doesn’t return any of my phone calls or emails. She even quit her job with the team and moved to New York a few weeks after I’d broken the news to her.
As much as it still hurts, I get it.
I get her anger.
It’s the same anger that I have for her, for doing what she did to Arrow. For betraying the guy I love.
But Arrow doesn’t get that. He is mad. At Sarah, I mean.
Not because of what she did to him. I think he lost all his anger the night he realized the truth about their relationship. I don’t think he even considers what he had with Sarah a relationship.
He’s mad on my behalf.
He’s mad because Sarah has never treated me like a sister and he doesn’t like that.
I try to put him at ease though.
I try to tell him that it’s okay. That I have him and he’s the only one I need to be happy.
But he’s adamant in his hatred and fury.
Honestly, I get that as well.
I know how he feels. Because that’s exactly what I feel for Leah.
What I’ve been feeling for Leah for the past two years, ever since I found out the whole truth of what she did when Arrow was a child.
After Arrow decided that he was going to stay in St. Mary’s awhile, he also started seeing Dr. Lola Bernstein regularly. It took him some time to open up, but slowly, he told her things from his childhood.
He told me things too.
Things that I had no idea about.
Horrifying things. Things that made me cry for the little boy he was, scared and trying to be perfect for a mother who was never happy with anything.
Things that I now call abuse, and rightfully so.
It was abuse.
The way Leah would make him work harder than any other kid. The way she always dangled his father’s death as the reason to be the best.
I always knew she could be very strict and exacting. Always expecting the best from Arrow. I also knew – after he came back into my life – that he could be very self-critical and intense about perfection.
But gosh, it’s worse than I thought.
Much worse.
I only moved in with them when he was fifteen. By then, Leah had successfully trained him into a perfect freaking son.
So I hadn’t really known about it – the depths of damage that Leah had caused – until he opened up to me last year about the things he’d gone through when he was just a kid.
His mom was cruel to him. Beyond cruel.
And I don’t think I can ever forgive her. I can be civil to her for Arrow’s sake but my loyalties lie with my deeply damaged and dark sun.
So that’s the second thing that has been hard for us: Leah and how her actions have affected Arrow.
But we said that we’d figure it out and that’s what we have done.
And that’s what we’re doing.
I come back to the moment when he reaches me, tall and handsome, his large fingers curled around the delicate ice cream cones.
“Hi, boyfriend,” I say, before taking one of the cones from his hand. “Thank you.”
I lick the chocolate ice cream with sprinkles while peeking at him through my eyelashes and he grumbles, “You can’t follow a rule to save your life, can you?”
I pout. “Sorry.”
“Are you?”
Biting my lip, I shake my head before leaning up to kiss his cheek with ice cream lips. “No.”
I go to move away but he grabs the back of my neck and keeps me pinned to his hard body as he growls, “Maybe I should make you.”
I raise my eyebrows. “Maybe you should.”