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

“But look.” I show him my dirty hands, looking at them myself. “Here I can draw and no one cares. Everyone knows that I’m Wyn, the artist, and they all accept me for who I am.”

I glance up at him to find that all this time he was looking down at me and not at my hands. “I can’t do that back home anymore. I can’t draw. I’m not allowed to after what I did with my dad’s car. Which I completely get. They think I’m dangerous with all the paints and stuff. But do you understand what I’m saying to you? I can be myself here. I belong here. I have a best friend here. Three best friends. And it’s all because I ran into you one night.”

He keeps looking down at me with the same angry sort of look and I keep my smile in place.

To melt that frown between his brows.

To show him that I’m really, truly happy and it’s all because of him.

“You’re not allowed to draw back home.”

“I’m —”

He shakes his head, his eyes narrowed. “Your fucking parents don’t quit being pieces of shit, do they? Well, maybe I should give them a reason to —”

I put a stop to it this very second.

By reaching up and placing a hand on his mouth.

Holy fuck.

I’m touching his mouth.

I’m touching his very warm and soft and plush mouth.

Such an anomaly on his otherwise all hard and sharp face.

But I ignore all that.

I ignore his flashing blue eyes even as I say, “That’s all you got from that? I said all those wonderful, true things but you picked up the wrong thing to listen to. And no, you’re not doing anything to my parents. My dad’s the DA, okay? He can do things to you. So don’t even joke about it. The moral of the story is that you’re wonderful, period. And I love St. Mary’s, and I never would’ve gone here if not for that night. If not for you.”

My hand still covers his mouth and maybe that’s why his eyes look so pretty and so dangerous.

Maybe that’s why they feel like the center of my world in this moment. And so when something passes through them, a dark sort of amusement, I feel it in my belly.

I feel it all over my skin and I take my hand off his mouth as if electrocuted.

“I’m wonderful,” he says, staring down at me.

I fist the hand by my side, the one with which I touched his lips. “Yes.”

You’re also my thorn.

His jaw clenches as if he heard me. “Then you’re crazier than I thought.”

And also your flower.

His jaw clenches again as if he heard that too before saying, “And I can do things to your dad too. The kind where he’d be limping for the rest of his life. So you don’t need to worry about me.”

My skin breaks out in goosebumps at his confidence.

Arrogance.

The sheer masculinity.

Swallowing, I ask, “Why didn’t you say anything?”

He knows what I’m talking about.

He knows I’m asking him about pretending to forget when he never did.

“Because it doesn’t matter.”

“What?”

His features rearrange themselves in his usual blank, cool look as he explains, “It doesn’t matter that we met one night and I walked you back home. What matters is that I’m your coach and you’re a student at St. Mary’s.”

Damn it.

Again.

Again he brought St. Mary’s between us when I was happy to have forgotten its existence. I love that place — I do — but I’m really starting to hate it.

I’m really starting to hate how he creates this distance between us.

This professional, respectable, appropriate distance.

But I’m not going to let him do that anymore. I’m not going to let him create any sort of distance between us.

“I don’t care about that. I don’t care that you’re my coach,” I say vehemently. “Because you’re not just my coach, are you? You’re the man who changed my life and I know you.”

When his eyes narrow, I continue in a determined voice, “Yes, I do. I know all the things that I wanted to know back then. That night. Things you never told me. I know the sister you were talking about back then, because of whom you stopped to check on me. That sister is Callie. I know you have three other siblings, three brothers, all younger than you. I know the town you live in. I’m in your town. And I know what your name is and what people call you.”

His jaw clenches at my last statement.

A little throwback of his own words, the ones he said to me at the library the day he so thoroughly crushed my heart.

Because he wanted to push me away.

I’m not letting him do that anymore though. Not again.

So I keep going. “You kept it from me. That night. Didn’t you? You didn’t tell me your name. You didn’t tell me anything about you. Maybe you wanted to keep a distance between us, but guess what, I don’t care. And I know now. I know everything. ” I take a deep breath and just say it, “I know that you’re not having an affair with her. I know that.”