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

I can’t squelch this longing inside my chest.

“You lied to me,” I say, my voice wobblier than I’d like it to be. “You lied.”

His features bunch up as he swallows. “Yeah.”

“You tortured me for three weeks.”

“I did.”

“I’m not –”

“I have something for you,” he says roughly, standing at the door.

“What?”

He thrusts his hand down his pocket and fishes something out. A folded paper. Or rather a bunch of folded papers. All crinkled at the edges. All untidy and somehow extremely precious to me, before he even tells me what they are.

Swallowing again, he says, “For days, I made you read those letters you wrote me. In my office. Every day, you’d stand there so bravely and read me your dreams. The things you thought about and I was… I’d be in awe of you. Of your courage. Of the fact that you trusted me with the most intimate parts of yourself.” He pauses to clench his jaw before continuing, “I’m not that brave. I’ve never been. You were right that night. When you called me a coward. Because I’m that. I’m a coward. But…”

He pauses again and this time he looks down at those papers and I swear, I swear to God, I almost go to him.

I almost tell him that he doesn’t have to do this.

He doesn’t have to do something that makes his hands shake.

That makes a tremor go through his body.

Because that’s what’s happening right now.

He’s shaking.

But he speaks before I can do anything. “But I’ve decided to be brave. I’ve decided to have courage. Because I want to tell you a story.”

“What story?” I whisper.

His hands tremble some more as he says, “The story of how I lost my dreams and how I found them.”

Then he glances down and opens those pages.

But apparently, he doesn’t need them. Because when he begins, he looks up.

At me.

Into my eyes.

As if he has all the words of his story memorized.

“Bronwyn,

I’m not very good with words. Neither spoken nor written.

Usually, I just let my gestures talk. My clenched jaw. My eyebrows. My narrowed eyes.

You were right when you said that I stare people down like I want to crush them under my boots. I think I perfected that look back when I was ten or so. Mostly because I had twin brothers who were two at the time and extremely difficult to reason with. So I had to develop a system to get them to listen.

But anyway that’s not the point.

The point is that I’m not good at expressing myself. But I’m going to try.

So I can tell that I’ve always seen myself as a tree.

A sturdy, solid tree with a thick trunk and dependable branches. A tree that stands tall and strong through all seasons and weathers and years. And that stands still as the world goes on around it and that everyone comes to, to take shelter from the harsh sun.

I wish I could say that this imagery is mine but it’s not; it’s something that I saw in a storybook that I used to read to Callie when she was little. And when my mother died and I came back to take care of things, I’d look at that tree every night when everyone went to sleep.

I was trying to not sleep during those days, see.

I was trying to keep my eyes open at all times. Because when I closed them, I’d dream. I’d dream of New York City. I’d dream of the team that I left behind, all the trophies that I’d never win, the girl that I thought I wanted to spend my life with.

I’d dream of all the things that I didn’t get to do, that I wanted to do.

Very, very badly.

So every night, when sleep threatened to put me under, I’d bust out that book, flip to the page where that tree was drawn and stare at it for hours.

I’d stare at it and stare at it.

Until it was burned in my brain.

Until I could sleep and only see that tree behind my closed eyes.

And I saw that tree for fourteen years.

But then I met someone.

A girl.

In the middle of the night, she sat on the side of the road, wearing a yellow ball gown, drawing roses on her thighs. She had rosy skin and big silver eyes. Her hair was long and Rapunzel like. That she initially had up in a very complicated bun before she chose to take it down and reveal it to me.

I thought she was a mermaid, that girl.

But she told me later that she was a flower.

A wallflower.

I guess it makes sense though. She is soft and velvet and sweet.

And colorful.

Anyway, we talked that night. She told me about her dreams, her passion. She reminded me of myself in some ways. She reminded me of my own passion, the fire that I had in me for my own dreams.