My Darling Arrow (St. Mary's Rebels 1)

I’m not sure because of what though.

Is it because our friendship was so short-lived and the pain of it is intense? Or is it because he keeps staring at me in that intimate way of his?

Like he knows me. He knows every bone and every muscle and every cell in my body.

Every secret of my witchy heart.

Just when I think I can’t take it anymore, his intense, dominating scrutiny, he leans forward and puts down the pen, shutting up the clicking, draping the room in complete silence.

Sitting back, both his elbows on the armrests now and his fingers tracing the curve of his lower lip, he asks, “Did anyone give you any trouble?”

“What?”

“After I talked to those girls in the hallway.”

I press myself against his desk even more, trying to stop the trembling of my legs. Trying to stop this running thought that he looks so… mature and big.

Older.

When he’s only about five years older than me.

Even so, I clasp my hands in front of me like a naïve little schoolgirl and shake my head. “No. It was fine.”

Those girls only glared at me through dinner and nothing else. Besides, I was more engrossed in the fact that I had to go see him rather than pay attention to anything or anyone else.

His eyes drop to my clasped hands before nodding. “Good.”

“I –”

“You never told me how you liked the motorcycle ride that night,” he cuts me off in a soft, inquiring voice.

I open and close my mouth several times, unable to come up with anything.

“Did you enjoy it?” he continues with smooth, polished features, like him asking me all of this is completely normal.

And my chest heaves like wanting to answer him and tell him all the things about the ride and everything that happened to me since then is completely normal too.

I grab the edge of the desk and lick my lips. “It was great. Thank you. I-I have your jacket. Uh, that you gave me. I can bring it back to you if –”

“Keep it.”

“But… it’s yours.”

He traces his thumb across his lip while studying me. “You like it, don’t you?”

For some reason, my cheeks feel hot when he asks me that.

Maybe because ever since he gave me his jacket, I’ve been sleeping in it. I’ve been smelling it when I write him my nightly letter or when I really, really miss him.

I nod. “Yes.”

“So it’s yours now.” Before I can argue more, he asks me something else. “It was your first, wasn’t it? The ride, I mean.”

I nod again. “Yes.”

The first and probably the last, too.

Because I don’t think I’ll ever be able to sit on a motorcycle that doesn’t belong to him. I don’t think I’ll even want to.

I don’t…

Suddenly, he unlaces his fingers and pushes his chair back. The screech of the wheels and the squeak of the old chair cause me to part my lips and crane my neck as he comes to his feet.

Without taking his eyes off me, he rounds the desk with prowling steps.

“What are you doing?” I ask as I turn my body to keep him in sight.

Not that it’s hard.

He’s the biggest thing I’ve ever seen. The tallest and the largest.

The most glorious and the most stunning too, and he’s walking toward me with a purpose.

He reaches me a second later and like at the bridge, he puts both his hands on the desk on either side of me, to come down to my level, his eyes all blue and serious.

But unlike at the bridge, he’s doing it all in his well-lit office where I can see every flick of his eyelashes, every twitch of his jaw, every little sun-burnt strand of his hair.

“Arrow,” I whisper, grabbing the desk with such ferocity that my knuckles are throbbing.

He still doesn’t answer me though.

At least, not with words.

Still looking at me, his hand reaches up and pulls at the string of my ribbon.

I look down as the clumsy butterfly knot that I’d made before coming to his office unravels and my curls spill everywhere, mostly on his large fingers, my ribbon, falling and pooling down on the floor.

Goosebumps break out on my skin and looking back at him, I whisper again, “What are you doing?”

His eyes are on my hair. “Untying your ribbon.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t like it.”

My breath stutters. “B-but I thought you hated messy things.”

“I do.” He shifts his eyes away from my thick, scattered hair and focuses on me, my hastily breathing chest. “But strangely not on you. I like you messy.”

I so want to say something, do something. Let go of the edge of the desk and grab his naked shoulders, dig my nails into his honey-colored muscles.

But I refrain.

Although a second later, the choice is taken away from me because he puts his hands on me.

He grabs me by the waist, picks me up and sits me down on his desk, all in a matter of seconds, and I have to put my hands on him because I feel so unmoored in this moment, so in the dark about his intentions that I grab onto him, his flexing biceps, to make sense of the world.