Hey, Mister Marshall (St. Mary's Rebels 4)

And now it’s even more imperative that it happen over and over and over.

Because I need to fix it.

I need to fix this pain. That I caused.

I need to fix his misery, cure the torture that I put him through due to my reckless, desperate actions.

It’s my duty. It’s my job.

To soothe my guardian.

So I bring both my hands down from his hair where I’ve messed up his curly strands, and cradle his jaw. Looking into his tortured, anguished, molten eyes, I whisper, “I was talking about you.”

Breathing heavily, he frowns. “What?”

“Back in your office,” I explain, reaching up and kissing the bump on his nose, shocking him a little. “When I came in to ask if I could go to the bar with my friends. And I said that I knew how it felt.”

He finally understands, his frown clearing and his body going tight as if preparing for an impending blow, an impending knife to his gut, and God, my heart hurts so badly. My heart twists and turns, thinking about all the times I did put a knife in his gut, all the times I did deal him blows and bruises.

I press my mouth to his and kiss him lightly as I hold onto his tight body and keep whispering, “I said that I knew the pain, the longing of wanting to get close to someone when that someone doesn’t let you. When I said that, I was talking about you, Alaric. I was talking about how I’ve wanted to get close to you these past days and you wouldn’t let me. You’d keep saying no.”

I go to his shoulders and rub the tight globes. I rub my thighs over his rigid sides, his spine, trying to ease him as I keep whispering in a soft, soft voice because I think he needs that. After all the rough and sharp emotions.

“And if you died, with your every no, then I died a little too. I died every time you said no because I thought that I’d never get to touch you. I’d never get to be close to you. I missed you so much, Alaric, this past week. I missed you so much that it was slowly killing me. It was killing me that you’d gone back to the beginning. When we were enemies and you wouldn’t even look at me. You wouldn’t even acknowledge my presence as you walked by. It was killing me that it was so easy for you to do that. So it was you, you see. Not him. I don’t even think about him, Alaric.

“And you told me a secret, right? So here’s mine: the moment you chose to kiss me, I came alive. The moment you put your mouth on me and filled me with your air and taste and gave me my first kiss, I fucking came alive, Alaric. You brought me back to the land of the living. And I don’t wanna die again. I don’t wanna do what we did last week, not talking to each other, not looking at each other like we would do in the beginning. I don’t wanna come to you when I have school troubles or something only my guardian can handle. I wanna come to you because I can’t stay away. Because when we’re not close, everything hurts. Please, Alaric. Don’t make me go back. Keep me here, with you. I’ll be your Poe. I’ll be your cute little whore. I’ll be anything and everything you want me to be. I don’t want new lipstick or a new dress. New nail polish or a tiara. All I want is you. Please.”

I wasn’t sure how he’d take my words.

I knew I had to say them. I knew I had to tell him everything that’s inside of me, but I didn’t know how he’d react. If my confession, my pleas would send him off the deep end. If they’d make him angry or push him away or send him running.

But I’m glad, so fucking glad and ecstatic, that they do the opposite.

They do what I hoped that they would.

No, he doesn’t relax or lose the tightness in his frame or the sharpness in his jaw. But I know — I can feel — that his frustration leaches out. His self-recrimination, his hatred for himself, his helplessness at the situation that made him bargain with me in the first place goes away.

In its place, there’s a new emotion.

A new tightness. A different kind of sharpness.

In its place, there’s determination.

And destiny.

Yeah, that’s what I see on his beautiful, stone-carved face. In his pretty eyes.

I see destiny. I see the stars aligning. I see planets revolving.

And this destiny isn’t made of butterflies or little fluttery things. This destiny is made of fire. It’s made of thunder and rain and landslides and stampedes.