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

Clutching the armrests of the chair that I’m sitting in, his features sharper than usual and slashed with anger, he says thickly, very thickly, “If you ever, ever” – he shakes the chair – “use that word in the same context as yourself, I’ll punish you in a way that will make everything that has happened before, everything that I’ve put you through, a very happy and a very distant memory. If you ever put yourself down like that, if you even think about it, Bronwyn, I won’t be held responsible for what I do to you. I won’t be held responsible for what I’ll do to the world.” Another shake of the chair. “Nothing that happened between us, nothing, no matter how filthy or dirty for the narrow-minded world to understand, is remotely wrong. For us. It was fucking beautiful, you understand? It was beautiful and precious and right. It was us. You and me. It was between your thorn and my wallflower and I won’t have you color it anything less than what it was.”

My hands jump up to him then.

They leap up to grab his t-shirt, fist it tightly so he doesn’t go anywhere. “So then why are you doing this? Why are you saying these things?”

Something ripples through his features, some kind of agony that I don’t get but even now, I want to soothe it.

Even now as he’s hurting me, crushing me under his boots, I want to take away his pain.

“Because it’s time,” he repeats yet again. “Because it’s the right thing to do.”

Taking his hands off the armrests, he wraps them around my fists, trying to dislodge my hold on him. But I don’t let go. I can’t as I say, plead, “This is not right. This is…”

Something occurs to me; something that I’ve been obsessing over ever since Saturday, that I was so focused on when I entered his office but that I completely got distracted from because of what followed and so I ask, “She said something to you, didn’t she? She said something. What’d she say?”

He sighs, his grip on my fingers increasing. “Bronwyn, it’s not important. It’s —”

“No, tell me,” I say, keeping my hold on him intact, fighting to keep my hold on him intact. “Tell me what she said. What did she mean when she said she wanted to talk about us?”

“Bronwyn.”

Then, because I can’t stop myself, I ask, “Are you… Are you going to her? Are you going to h-have…”

I can’t even say it.

I can’t even use that word when it comes to him.

But he understands it nonetheless.

He understands where my mind has gone off to and so he replies, “No.”

And I breathe out a sigh of relief.

As much relief as I can feel in this moment when everything is still falling apart.

But I guess I did it too soon. I breathed too soon because he’s not finished.

In the same calm voice with which he told me that we were over, he now says, “Because she’s leaving her husband.”

“She’s…”

All the air, all the breaths that I’ve taken so far today, whoosh out of my body.

All the fight, all the strength.

And he finally manages to break free.

He finally manages to get away from the crushing hold of his wallflower and straighten up.

Looking down at me, he says, “So it wouldn’t be an affair.”

I stare at the chair.

The one she sat in when she was in my office.

Bronwyn Bailey Littleton.

The artist.

My pretty little wallflower.

Well, she’s not mine. She never was and now she’s gone.

She’s been gone from my office for about six hours now. I should leave too. Go back to my empty house, probably go to the gym, pick up dinner, get back to normal life.

Life before her.

The life I’ve had forever.

Before she barged into it and… changed everything.

But for some reason, I can’t move from here.

I can’t get myself to stand up from my own chair and leave.

I can’t get myself to stop staring at it, her chair, either. And the more I stare at it, the more painful my headache becomes. The more painful and vicious the throbbing on the back of my neck becomes.

And I wonder…

I fucking wonder what she must be doing right now. On the other side of the campus. What she must be… feeling?

After what I said to her.

After all the things I said to her. But especially what I said to her at the end.

About Helen.

I didn’t want to but she kept insisting and insisting and I just… I had no other choice. I had to say it. I had to lie and…

A knock sounds at the door, breaking my thoughts, making me realize that I’ve been grabbing the back of my neck in a stranglehold. I open my mouth to tell whoever it is at the door to fucking get lost when it opens and the last person I want to see right now stands there.