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

“I do, yeah,” he rumbles. “I remember you.”

“B-because I reminded you?” I ask. “The other day.”

“No.” He shakes his head. “Because I never forgot.”

And then I’m glad I’m standing stuck to a dresser because I know if I wasn’t, I would’ve lost my footing.

I would’ve fallen down to my knees because they’re trembling.

They’re trembling so badly.

As badly as my heart.

As badly as all the places where his name is written on my self-decorated body.

In fact, all those places hurt.

They hurt with the intensity of my shivers. With all these thorns that I’ve drawn in his honor pricking at my skin. “You never forgot.”

“No,” he says, his voice thick. “I didn’t forget a girl I met on the side of the road. I didn’t forget that she was sitting all alone on the curb in the middle of the night. And that she was drawing roses on her thighs. I didn’t forget any of that. I never did.”

I open my mouth to say something when I run the words he just said through my mind.

The same words he said under that tree. The same words I’ve been hearing over and over in my dreams: as pink as the roses you keep drawing on your thighs.

“You saw that,” I say, my eyes wide. “You saw that I was drawing roses on my thighs that night.”

“I did.”

I lick my dried lips. “But I hid them. I covered them with my dress as soon as I heard your footsteps.”

“Not fast enough, no.”

Like I wasn’t fast enough the day he saw me sketching his eyes. And then I remember something else. Something that he’d said, at the library, referring to my dad.

He made you cry…

“You also saw that I was crying.”

That makes him clench his jaw. “Yes.”

I bow my head because suddenly it seems too heavy for my neck to hold up. Suddenly I feel so many emotions that my whole body feels too small to hold them.

There were so many clues.

So many hints, but I never picked them up.

But then why didn’t he say anything?

Why didn’t he tell me before?

I want to ask those questions of him, but he speaks and I look up. “I also remember that you were supposed to go to a posh boarding school. Where every rich kid went.”

“Yes,” I say, staring into his denim blue eyes.

“But you’re here. At St. Mary’s instead.”

“Yes, because I drew —”

“Because of me,” he says, speaking over me. “Because of me you did the thing that you did and ended up here. At a prison-like school. With barred windows and brick walls. At a school with a million bullshit rules and a fucking privilege system. Which I took away from you, by the way. I was the cause for all this. For you ending up at a reform school in the middle of fucking nowhere because you ran into me one night. Because I inspired you.” He scoffs. “I’ve hated the fact that my sister goes here. I’ve hated the guy who was responsible for that. But turns out I’m exactly like that motherfucker, aren’t I? Because I’m responsible for sending my sister’s best friend to this hellhole.”

I get myself unglued from the dresser as soon as he finishes.

Actually I was already unglued way before he finished talking. I’m now a quarter of the way across to him. And in the next couple of seconds, I make the whole journey.

I reach him and stand so close that I can feel his heat, smell his spicy sweet scent.

My thorn.

So close that I have to tilt my head way back to look up at him, into his angry, regret-filled eyes. “You did inspire me. I was ready to give it all up. I was ready to go to that boarding school. I was ready to do everything that my parents wanted me to do. I was ready to break all my dreams because no one understood them. No one supported them. But you told me not to. You told me to be what I wanted to be. It’s not your fault that I chose to make such a big show out of it, though. I could’ve been subtler. I could’ve been —”

His head is bent way down too so he can look into my wide and what I hope are grateful eyes as he cuts me off. “Were your parents subtle about their objection to your art?”

I swallow, shaking my head. “Not really. But —”

“So then as I told you before, what you did was right,” he says, boring his eyes into mine. “What you did was fucking justified.”

Warmth floods my chest at these words.

At his anger on my behalf.

“See? You’re the only one who’s ever been angry on my behalf,” I tell him, so happy that I finally get to tell him how wonderful he is. “The only one who’s ever been so proud of me for doing what I did. Except for my friends here. Whom I met because I came here. To St. Mary’s. I know this place has a lot of rules, but I love it here. For the first time ever, I have friends. I never had friends, back in my town. No one even wanted to be my friend. I was never invited to any parties. I was never invited to sit with anyone at lunch even. People moved away from me at school because I was always untidy and my fingers were always dirty and ink-stained from all the drawing and sketching.