“What question?”
I rub my thumb in the hollows of his cheek and kiss him again.
I know he told me to not kiss him. He told me that he’s a nightmare for girls like me. A walking talking heartbreak.
But he doesn’t know that heartbreak is my friend.
That it’s been my friend for years now. Since the day I saw him in the kitchen. That fifteen-year-old boy has grown into this tormented, betrayed, dangerous man and I’m more in doomed love with him now than I was eight years ago.
Arrow doesn’t know that when your love is doomed, you’re not afraid of a little heartbreak. You walk with it. You dance with it. You breathe it in.
So I ignore his rule and gather the courage to place a soft kiss on his gorgeous, exceptionally soft lips. “You asked me if I’d be your rebound girl. So I’m telling you that yes, I will be. I’ll be that girl for you. The girl you come to, to fuck all your frustrations out. The girl who spreads her legs for you the moment she sees you’re jacked up and you need it.”
When I finish, I place one last kiss on his cheekbone.
It’s like kissing the sharp edge of a knife, that cheekbone. That jaw. I always knew it would be though.
I did.
What I didn’t know was what he would do when I did kiss him.
I didn’t know that he’d slowly straighten up. That he’d slowly, with deliberate movements, let go of my hair and that when he does, I’d actually miss his tight grip. I’d miss the leash of his fingers, feeling unbalanced.
“Arrow, what –”
My words cut off when he puts both his hands on my waist and picks me up like he did back in his office.
But tonight, there’s no desk where he can set me down.
Tonight, there’s only his body and he makes me climb it.
My arms go to his working and corded shoulders as he boosts me up and causes me to wind my thighs around his waist before moving.
Without taking his eyes off me, he begins to walk with me in his arms.
He doesn’t tell me where we are going and I don’t ask him about it either.
Mostly because I’m panting and I’m busy adjusting my body in his lap and feeling all his hard and corrugated muscles.
But also because strangely, I know.
I know where he’s taking me. And when my spine hits the wall, I’m proven correct.
We’re standing under my window.
His favorite spot.
“You want to be my rebound girl?” he asks when I’m settled between him and the wall.
“Yes,” I whisper, my hands sliding down from his shoulders to go to his chest and rub circles.
“You want to spread your legs for me when I need it?”
His chest moves, jerks up and down, and I feel it all under my palms, in my own chest even. “Yeah.”
“You want me to use you to fuck all my frustrations out,” he keeps repeating my own words to me and somehow, it ramps up my restlessness.
“Yes. All of them.”
I even arch up against him to tell him that I really mean it.
And it’s not a hardship, see. It’s not hard to tighten my thighs around him and bow my back and rock against his athletic body.
It’s not hard to let him know that I need him.
What is hard and has been hard was to hide it.
My need for him. My love. For eight whole years.
But not anymore.
I won’t stop myself. I won’t even feel embarrassed about my love for him.
Because I’ve realized something.
Something very important about myself.
My sister called me a whore. She said that if I ever made a play for him then I’d be a slut.
But that’s the thing, isn’t it? I’m not making a play for him. I’m not trying to steal him.
For the past eight years, I’ve been living in this fear that one day my love will make me do the unthinkable.
My doomed love will make me so desperate, so dangerous that I will try to get him, grab him, keep him for myself.
But now I know that I never would have done that.
Because in this moment when he’s hurting, I’m hurting. When his pain makes his jaw clench, my insides clench. When anguish burns his eyes, my skin feels it.
In this moment, I can see everything clearly.
I can see that I never ever would’ve made a play for him. I never ever would’ve tried to wreck his relationship so he could be mine.
Even my attempt to kiss him on the bridge wasn’t born out of malice or because I wanted to steal him away. It was born out of pure, overwhelming love.
A love I didn’t want to fall in but I did anyway.
I didn’t do it to hurt anyone. I didn’t fall in love with my Arrow to hurt my sister.