He licks his lips, his fingers fisting in my hair and his body pushing into mine. “I don’t want you to take it off. Ever.”
I suck in my stomach at his rough, commanding tone. “I won’t. So you see? I know that you hurt me, and you made me cry.” I raise my arms up and around his neck and he snakes his hands down to my waist. “And you’ll probably make me cry in the future as well. But it’s okay. Because you’re the guy I’ll cry for. Because you’re also the guy who’ll wipe off all my tears when I do. So we’ll figure it out. Together.”
"Together.”
“Yeah. Together. That’s what I’ve always wanted, you know? I’ve always wanted to be your girl, and when I came here tonight, I was so scared. I was terrified that I wasn’t –”
“You are,” he says fiercely. “You are that girl. My girl.”
“Your girl.”
“Yeah.”
I smile at him and a rush of a breath escapes him then.
A huge gust of a breath.
It sways the loose hair on my forehead and warmth explodes in my chest.
Warmth and fire and flowers.
The whole world of emotions sprouts up just under my skin but then something occurs to me. “Oh my God, wait.”
He goes alert. “What?”
I fist his hair. “I’m going to St. Mary’s tomorrow.”
Arrow slowly relaxes, his fingers resuming their kneading of the flesh on my waist, his nose bumping against mine. “I know. I’m taking you, remember?”
“But Arrow.” I squeeze my thighs around his body because holy shit, how can he be so clueless? “They won’t let me have any privileges, you idiot. After what I did, and I don’t think I can sneak out anymore.”
He throws me a lopsided smile. “So then, I’ll call you every Saturday. We’ll talk for ten whole minutes. And when they have visiting weekends, I’ll be the first one at the gate.”
“You will?”
“Fuck yeah.”
“And when you go back? To LA?”
His jaw clamps shut, stubbornly. “I told you soccer can wait.”
“But you have to go sometime. You have to –”
“I don’t have to do anything.”
“But –”
“Shh. I don’t care about that right now,” he whispers. “You said we’ll figure things out, right?”
I bite my lip. “Yeah.”
“So that’s what we’ll do. We’ll figure it all out.”
I look into his blue eyes.
Determined and burning and blazing.
There was a time when they reminded me of calm summers. But now they remind me of a hot flame.
Of wild, savage fire.
Fire that I love. Fire that made me believe in myself, inspired me to be more.
I know that fire, his fire, can burn down the world, if it comes to that.
So he’s right.
We’ll figure it out, me and him. All of it. All of the things that are uncertain but don’t really matter if we wanna be together.
For now, I’ll just revel in this moment.
I’ll just revel in the fact that my love isn’t doomed.
My love is flourishing. It has a life. It will grow. It will live. It will become something now.
With him.
“You love me, huh?” I whisper, playing with the sun-struck hair at the back of his neck.
Those eyes of his smile. “Yeah.”
“And you stole my letters.”
“I did.”
“So you’re a thief,” I tease.
Slowly, a smirk stretches his lips. “Looks like it.”
“It does.”
“I’m not just a thief though.”
I squeeze my thighs around his hips. “No?”
He shakes his head slowly. “No. I’m also a poet.”
“What?”
He bends over me, curls his sleek, cut body all around me, making himself my world. Flicking his eyes all over my face, he whispers, “Dark curls; Golden eyes.” He rubs our noses together. “Thirteen freckles; Flowers between her thighs.” He skims his lips over mine. “Sweet; So sweet; My heart; My sweetheart.”
My lips part on a shaky breath. “You wrote me a poem.”
His lips part too to inhale the air from my lungs. “Well, you do have a thing for poetry, so.”
“You called me your sweetheart.”
I mean, he’s called me ‘baby’ before, in the heat of the moment. But never this.
Never sweetheart.
“Because you’re my sweetheart, aren’t you?”
“I am.” I nod, feeling like I’ll burst. “And you are my darling.”
“I am.”
I blink, forcing my tears away. “I love it.”
“Yeah?”
“I love you.”
He stares at me for a second before whispering, “I love you too.”
I kiss my darling then.
And my darling kisses his sweetheart.
The baseball cap.
That’s the first thing I see when I finish talking to a girl and turn around, the cap that he’s had for years now, hiding his glorious sun-struck hair.
He’s at the ice cream booth, placing our order.
With a happy smile on my face, I take him in.
I take in his wonderfully muscled shoulders draped in his vintage leather jacket. Not the original jacket that I’ve always loved and now belongs to me because he gave it to me back at St. Mary’s – the one that I’m wearing right now over my usual t-shirt and cargo pants – but a different one. This one we bought together in LA.