These Thorn Kisses (St. Mary’s Rebels 3)

His stillness though. That doesn’t go anywhere.

He’s as still as he was when I first broached this conversation.

As still as he was yesterday, and even before that.

At that wedding party where I saw him for the first time.

Again I dig my nails into the bark. Again I scrape through the harsh, biting surface.

Because this time I’m imagining a thousand thorns pricking his heart. I’m imagining those thorns dragging through his bruised organ.

How painful it must have been for him. How killing.

To watch that.

To watch the woman you love being married to someone else.

And yet… yet he stopped to help me. He sat on the curb and listened to my petty, silly, teenage story.

Because he couldn’t not.

Because he’s a good man.

And I want to do the same right now. I want to ask him everything.

Ask him where he met her; how long has he known her? Why did she marry someone else? Why did he let it happen?

Why aren’t they together when from what I saw yesterday they both clearly love each other?

I don’t get it. I don’t understand…

“Are you having an affair with her?” I speak out, confusion clear in my voice.

God.

I feel dirty. My mouth feels dirty.

Affair.

Such a damaging word.

I’ve seen the damage it does first hand. It’s rampant in Wuthering Garden. Husbands having mistresses. Wives either ignoring it or swallowing down pills to battle the toxicity of it. And other times they have affairs of their own.

My mom has chosen the path of ignorance.

So I know.

I’m aware of how destructive an affair could be.

And I can’t imagine, can’t fucking imagine, that a man like him who would stop to help a strange girl on the street, who gave up everything to be there for his family, would do something like this.

He’s too good for it.

Too moral to do something so wrong.

“What I’m doing,” he says, “is none of your business. I want —”

“Are you serious?” I blurt out, interrupting him. “I saw you almost make out with another teacher and you’re saying it’s none of my business? It is my business. She is married. She has a husband. I know him. I know her. I know her entire family. And I know you. I know you can’t do this. I know that. There’s no way. So you have to tell me. You have to tell me that what I saw, what I’m thinking isn’t real. You have to tell me that the note in your drawer doesn’t mean anything. You have to tell me that —”

“The note.”

That lone word from him puts a stop to my agitated ramblings. And puts something else into perspective.

The fact that I told him something I never wanted to.

I spilled a secret.

Fuck. Fuck.

And he knows it. He absolutely knows what I did accidentally.

“That day in my office,” he concludes, his mouth so tight that it barely moves.

Swallowing, I press my back against the tree as I jerk out a nod. “Y-yes. I saw it in your drawer. I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry. I know it was personal and I —”

He cuts me off.

Not by his words, no. Not even by a motion of his hand or a shake of his head.

He does it by grinding his jaw so hard that I feel the ache in my own teeth. He does it by breathing so sharply that I feel my own lungs hurting.

And he does it by taking a step — half a step — toward me. Before coming to an abrupt halt.

Before letting his chest expand with a large breath and letting his eyes fall shut for a second.

He kills all my words by very visibly controlling himself and his anger. Right in front of my eyes.

I bite my lip then.

At his legendary control, the effort it has taken him to gain back his patience. At the fact that I want to go to him and just… hug him. Apologize for invading his privacy.

And when he reaches up and massages the back of his neck, I want to do that for him too.

Finally he opens his eyes, blue and glittering, and says in a resigned tone, “Are you going to tell?”

“What?”

“About what you saw,” he explains. “Yesterday.”

“Tell…” I shake my head. “Tell who?”

He moves his jaw back and forth. “Your friends. My sister. Other girls in the school. Are you planning to tell them what you saw?”

I open my mouth to answer him but nothing comes out.

Not one word.

I wasn’t expecting him to ask this question, let alone have to answer it. Because it never occurred to me. To tell.

I’ve been so distraught at what I saw yesterday, what it all could mean, that it didn’t even occur to me to go tell someone. I’ve been so distraught over the pain that he must have gone through at that wedding party that telling someone was the last thing on my mind and…