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

“I’ve seen the way he looks at you,” Salem said. “That man is in love with you, Wyn. He loves you.”

“Yes,” Poe insisted. “Like every time he comes over at lunch, he’s always staring at you. He can’t take his eyes off you. I mean, it’s a fucking wonder how Callie still doesn’t know. That her morally good brother who would never do such a thing is in love with her best friend.”

“Exactly.” Salem nodded. “And it’s not just lunch. It’s all the time. Every time you’re in the same space, he watches you, Wyn. He looks at you like he can’t believe what he’s seeing. Like he’s so… enchanted or something. And frankly, I fought with Arrow about that when he came to visit last week. I was like, why don’t you look at me like Coach Thorne looks at Wyn? Which totally confused him and he ended up buying me two huge buckets of ice cream but” – she shook her head – “the point is that Wyn, Coach Thorne loves you, okay? You have to talk to him. There must be something going on. You have to —”

“No,” I said, clutching onto my pillow, wiping my tears off. “He doesn’t. He loves her.”

“Oh please, that’s old news. Maybe he loved her before but he loves you now and —”

“He’s going back to her.”

Salem drew back. “What?”

“She’s leaving Seth.”

“What the fuck?”

That was Poe.

I nodded, hiccupping. “He told me.”

“He said he was going back to her,” Salem confirmed. “He said that to you. In those exact words.”

“Y-yes.”

He did tell me.

That was the whole point of that conversation, wasn’t it?

That’s why he ended things.

That’s why he said it was time. Because he was going back to her. Because she’d finally decided to leave her husband for him and so he was breaking up with me — not that we ever had a traditional relationship, but still — to go to her.

So the discussion with my friends was ended.

Or so I thought.

Because since then Poe and Salem have established a system of their own. While I avoid him with a ferocity that I’ve never known before, they both basically stalk him.

And her.

They both keep track of his movements.

Like where he is, what he’s doing. Who he’s talking to. If he talked to Helen all day; if he was staring at Helen; were there any romantic vibes coming off of them, that one time they stood close together outside of the cafeteria.

Moreover, Poe has eyes and ears everywhere.

She has an elaborate network of gossips and spies and she’s constantly monitoring her channels to see if they’ve picked up some teacher/teacher romance happening at St. Mary’s.

“There’s no way,” Poe says one day, pacing back and forth in my room, while Salem sits on the opposite bed. “There is no fucking way something is going on between them. My sources haven’t picked up anything.” She keeps referring to them as sources, but we have no idea who they are; she never tells us. “I haven’t picked up anything. They’re hardly ever seen together. And did you notice how he bit Maisie’s head off today at practice? Like, that girl just missed a pass. A fucking pass, dude. And he made her cry for that. He made her wish that she’d never been born.”

He did make her cry.

Which I felt bad for.

I was playing worse than her and if I was still painting or drawing or creating, I would draw her something pretty. As it is I only gave her a hug after practice before I found myself a quiet corner to cry in. Something I rarely do during the day, but sometimes when I hear his voice, I can’t wait until the middle of the night to cry.

Shaking her head, Salem says, “Well, it wasn’t just a simple pass. We could’ve won if she had taken it. But point taken. I don’t think anything is going on between them at all.”

“Yeah, that man is too angry,” Poe adds in, still pacing. “Too uptight and tightly wound. There is no way he’s getting laid. There is no way —”

I shut my book then. “Okay, guys, time out, all right? I don’t want to hear this.”

“But, Wyn, I’m telling you,” Poe insists, stopping in front of me. “We’re both telling you that there’s nothing going on between them. If she’s left her husband for him, then she’s done it for nothing. Because Coach Thorne ain’t taking her back.”

I open my mouth to reply but Salem speaks over me. “And Wyn, he still watches you, okay? He still fucking watches you. I mean when you’re not avoiding him like the plague and are actually in the same space as him. And he asked about you, remember? I told you about that. That first day when you decided to eat lunch at the library. He asked about you. I still think that he lo —”