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

That we aren’t who we say we are to each other.

He isn’t just my soccer coach or my best friend’s big brother. And I’m not just his student and his little sister’s best friend.

He’s mine.

He’s my thorn and I’m his wallflower.

“I’ve made this decision on my own,” he begins, again as calm as anyone can be, “because you’re not thinking clearly right now. Because you’re too emotional. Even now you’re ready to cry. You’re ready to cry over something that’s not real. That has never been real. You’re too attached. To me. To this whole idea of us… being together. When there’s no us. There never was and it was my fault that I still encouraged this kind of behavior —”

“You didn’t,” I speak over him even though I know that I shouldn’t.

That I should try to look as calm and composed, as unemotional as he does right now, especially when he’s just pointed out that I’m ready to cry.

But how does one hold it together when their world has started to fall apart, brick by brick, wall by wall?

Even so, I take a deep breath and bring my hands down to my lap again, where I twist them, scratch at my own skin as I very calmly state, “I know that there’s no us. I’ve always known that. I know this is not about romance or love or any of those things. I’m not that naive. I knew what I was getting into when it all started. I knew that you loved someone else. That you love someone else and you just want me for now.”

“Exactly,” he says as soon as I finish, as if he was waiting to say it, waiting with a counter argument of his own. “So how does it not bother you? How does it not bother you that I’m using you? That I’ve used you for my own purposes. To curb my own pain, my own loneliness. How does it not bother you that I’ve been selfish with you?” He pauses to drag in a sharp breath. “You need to aim higher than that. You need to aim higher than me. A weak, selfish man. You need to ask more for yourself, Bronwyn. You need to ask for the world from the person you’re with because you goddamn deserve it.”

“But I —”

“Or do you always want to get fucked in a bathroom while your parents are partying outside, oblivious to what’s happening to their daughter?”

I had all the arguments prepared in my head.

I was waiting, waiting for a chance to spill them, to lay them out in front of him so he can forget about this whole ‘it’s over’ thing and we can get back to normal.

Our normal.

But I don’t remember any of them right now.

I don’t remember what I was going to say after what he just said.

“What?” I breathe out, my hands loosening up, my fingers letting go of each other in my lap.

He shakes his head as if disgusted with himself before saying, “Look, the school year’s almost over anyway. You’re going to New York now. You’re going to start a new life. A life away from this fucking school and your fucking parents. A life that’s yours and yours only. You’ll make it as beautiful and colorful as you make everything else. So as I said, it’s time. We had to end it sometime and that time is now. There’s no future here. There never was.”

“What about her?”

“What?”

I lick my dried-out lips as I stare at him through a fog, from a distance almost, stuck at what he said only a short while ago. “Would you have fucked her in a bathroom in the middle of a party like you fucked me?”

His entire body tightens like a trap.

His clasped hands on his desk vibrate with how forcefully he’s holding them together.

“What?” he bites out again, this time with much more fury.

I shake my head, almost talking to myself. “Of course not. Of course you wouldn’t have. Because you love her. You have feelings for her. But I’m… I’m just a girl you’re fucking. I’m just a girl you’re using for your own selfish purposes. And I knew that and I was okay with that. I wanted it, didn’t I? I begged for it. I practically pleaded you to use me. So what does that make me? If I wanted to get fucked in a bathroom while my parents were outside. If I wanted to get on my knees in front of you knowing that the whole world was just outside the door, knowing that you don’t love me and that you’ll never love me. It makes me a slut, doesn’t it? It makes me a whore. I’m a whore and —”

I stop talking when my chair is abruptly turned around and there’s a man, an angry, wildly breathing man, hanging over me, his dark blue eyes nailing me in my place, pinning me down.