“You know, you’re so very careful about these things. You could’ve easily made that shot,” I said about one of the plays that he deliberately missed.
“You see that?” He pointed to the screen. “That’s a defender. He’s right there. He would’ve stopped it.”
“No, he wouldn’t have. If you just bent your leg a little, got enough momentum in your body to kick the ball harder than you usually do, the ball would’ve flown right past him and hit the net.”
“I knew what I was doing. You don’t take chances like that at a championship game.”
“I would’ve done it.”
“That’s because you’re reckless.”
I stuck my tongue out at him and said in a sing-songy voice, “And you’re boring.”
That did not go over well with him.
Or it did go over well, if you count him fucking me into submission while the game played in the background and he won the trophy.
So I don’t know. I mean, I don’t think I’m good enough to play on a team, you know?
I can kick around a ball with him and talk strategies, but an actual team?
Yikes.
“You’re not good enough,” he murmurs, bringing me back to the moment.
“I, uh, I mean I don’t know. I’m not…”
“Did I say that?” he asks.
“No, Sarah…”
I trail off as soon as I say her name.
My sister’s name.
His ex-girlfriend, the girl who cheated on him, while I’m sitting naked on his stomach, my wetness probably slathered on his skin.
His jaw clenches.
That muscle on his cheek jumps out as well.
I didn’t mean to say that. I didn’t mean to bring her up. And I haven’t.
Ever since that night in our backyard where he told me about Sarah and Ben and how they’ve hurt him, I haven’t said a word about it.
I haven’t tried to talk to him further about what he feels.
I know he wouldn’t talk. I know that.
I mean, he still hasn’t told anyone about the cheating. He’s so ashamed of it. Leah and everyone on his team still don’t know.
So he wouldn’t believe me even if I told him that he isn’t a failure. That Sarah’s mistakes and his breakup don’t mean that he isn’t perfect. That being kicked off the team because of it is only a minor hiccup and that it’s okay to make mistakes and fall down.
It’s okay.
But maybe, just maybe I should try again.
I should try to make him understand and…
Arrow chooses that moment to move away from the pillow and get up in my face. Not only that, his hands on my ass become brutalizing.
So deliciously brutalizing – despite the heaviness of the situation – that I have to arch up my back and hold onto his shoulders to keep myself balanced.
“Sarah,” he bites out, staring so harshly into my eyes that it makes me catch my breath, “doesn’t understand. She doesn’t have the capability to understand how someone not like her can be so fucking magnificent. How someone not like her can fly on legs and flow through spaces and shine through cracks. She doesn’t understand how someone not like her, someone who doesn’t follow the rules, someone who makes her own rules, can bend the direction of a river when all she’s done her entire life is trying to flow with it. And what she doesn’t understand, scares the fuck out of her.”
His fingers dig and dig into my flesh until I have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep my moan inside. Until I feel my eyes welling up.
But that could also be because… he’s said something that I never thought before.
I never thought that about myself before.
I always knew that I wasn’t perfect and I was okay with it, but I never thought that I could… do all those things that he just mentioned.
All those fantastical, magical things and…
God.
“Do you understand that?” he asks, his teeth gritted, the veins on his neck standing out.
I swallow, trying to control all my emotions.
All the raging, burning emotions.
I guess…
I guess I was wrong.
All this time I thought that he needed me. But I needed him too.
To tell me. To say wonderful things to me.
A thick stream of tears still spills out, which makes him go tight.
Tighter than before.
“What the fuck?” he asks, in total disbelief that I’m crying.
He’s watching me with total disbelief too.
In fact, his hands are gone from my ass and have come up to my face, where he’s wiping the tears and going, “What…”
Grabbing his wrists, I shake my head as more tears fall. “N-no. It’s not…” I wave a hand in front of my face and take deep breaths. “I’m not… crying. Like, I’m not sad. I’m happy. These are happy tears.”
He watches me for a beat, his hands still on my cheeks. “You cry when you’re happy.”
“Yeah.” I nod and his expression is so bemused and adorable that I let out a broken laugh. “I also dance at sad songs.”