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

“But I —”

“Enough. You’re not allowed to say yes anymore. Do you understand?”

“Conrad, I —”

“Shut the fuck up,” he thunders. “For once in your life, shut your fucking mouth, Bronwyn. Because it’s time to stop talking and start listening: painting time is over. I’m putting you in my truck and taking you back to St. Mary’s and you’re not allowed to talk. You’re not allowed to say even a single word to me. You’re not allowed to let me talk. To you. The way I just did. Like you’re a filthy slut I picked up from a bar instead of an innocent wallflower of a girl that I met on the side of the road and walked back home, understand?

“You’re not allowed to get down on your knees in front of me. And you’re not allowed to wear this fucking dress ever again. If I ever catch you wearing this rosy goddamn dress, waving your stripper ass and your milkmaid fucking tits under my nose, I’ll take it off you myself. I’ll tear it down the middle and rip it off your tight little body in front of the whole school. The whole world, you got that? And we’ll see what happens to my fucking reputation then. So this here, this is the end. I’m putting a stop to it. There will be no gratitude here, all right? I don’t want it. I don’t want you to thank me. I don’t want you to talk. I don’t want you to think. I don’t want you to say my fucking name.”

No.

No. No. No.

A thousand fucking times no.

I’m not doing it. I’m not fucking doing it.

I’m not taking what she’s throwing at me. I’m not.

She’s young.

She’s my sister’s age.

She’s my sister’s best friend.

She’s my student.

With every pounding step I take on the pavement as I run and run and fucking run and probably won’t stop running all night tonight, I repeat this mantra.

I’m not taking her. I’m not taking what she is so eagerly giving.

No one and I mean no one has ever aggravated me the way she has. The way she does.

Not anyone that I’ve ever met. Not even Helen.

Still I’m not doing it.

I’m not.

It doesn’t matter that every chant in my head is followed by her sweet voice: you want my mouth to suck your cock.

It doesn’t matter that every chant is followed by a waft of the scent of her soft, soft hair: roses.

It doesn’t matter.

There’s a mailbox on the door of his office.

It has a thin slot where you can pop things in — things like memos and documents and letters — and those things will slide down and drop to the bottom. And sit there safely until he opens it with a little key that’s given to every faculty member, and retrieves them.

That’s where Salem used to put her letters for Arrow.

Back when Arrow was our soccer coach.

Yes, she used to write him secret letters. Secret and sexy. Because she was trying to seduce him.

God, we’re definitely the St. Mary’s rebels, aren’t we?

Salem for falling in love with Arrow and seducing him when he was the soccer coach here; Callie for getting pregnant, the first girl to do so while still at St. Mary’s; and now me.

For falling in love with the new coach and seducing him.

Because I am.

I haven’t given up on that. Of course not.

I know he wants me to.

Which I expected.

He wouldn’t be the man I fell in love with, all good and moral and professional even when he doesn’t need to be, if he didn’t fight against it.

If he didn’t try to push me away and scare me.

Which he tried to do – again – when he drove me back in frothing silence that day.

After the painting/failed seduction session, he put me in his truck and drove me back. Although I did notice that before putting me in his truck, he tore the page — the page with his sketch that I’d made — out of my sketchbook, folded it neatly and put it in his pocket.

Which sort of made me smile.

But anyway, not once did he look at me, let alone talk to me on the way back.

Not once did he stop clenching his jaw or taking long breaths.

I know that what I’m doing right now, today, might make him do all those same things again.

But I have to do it.

So standing outside of his office first thing Monday morning, I reach out, ready to drop something — the thing that I’ve brought him — into that tiny little slot on his mailbox.

But at the last second, the door swings open and the person whose mailbox I was trying to get into is standing there himself.

Wearing his usual black hoodie and track pants and his typical big frown.

I bring my hands back, hiding the thing from him, which he notices with a flick of his navy blue eyes. Before I can say something to him about it though, he asks, “What the fuck are you doing?”