I fell in love with him like dead leaves fall from the branch of a tree and rain falls from a swollen cloud. I fell in love with him like tears fall when you’re sad and like blood oozes out of your skin when you step on broken glass.
It was natural.
So it’s natural for me to heal his pain, or at least put a balm on it. Love him when he can’t love himself and thinks he’s a failure.
And when the time comes for him to leave, to go back to where he belongs, it will be natural for me to let him go.
Because his happiness is my happiness.
Until then, I’ll be a girl in doomed love and I won’t be ashamed of it.
Until then, I’ll stay here and love him.
“And then what?” he bites out, his dark eyes glittering, his hands kneading the flesh on my waist where he’s holding me. “Discard you? Fuck you and forget you? That’s the job of a rebound girl. You know that, don’t you? She’s supposed to be a fuck doll. She’s a girl who gets fucked and forgotten.”
His words are his namesake.
Arrows.
They pierce my heart. The heart that’s not so witchy after all. They make it holey. They make it bleed.
But still, I forge on. “Yes. I know.”
He shakes me, my spine rubbing against the brick wall. “And do you remember what I told you? What I can do to you. What I’m capable of doing to you.”
“I remember.”
I remember every word he said. That he can burn everything down. That he can wreck things.
I know.
He shakes me again. In fact, he pulls me forward before shoving my spine into the wall, almost making me moan with his strength and dominance. “So what the fuck are you talking about?”
“I-I’m talking about being your rebound.” I grab his chain and pull him closer to me. “This isn’t going to be a relationship, is it? You’re not going to be my boyfriend and I’m not going to be your girlfriend. So it doesn’t matter what you said.”
He exhales a sharp breath and I feel it pushing into me, his breath, his chest. His whole body.
We’re in a more secluded spot now, I think. Darker and hotter. I feel sweat beading on my skin, his leather jacket drowning me.
I feel him drowning me too, the way he’s staring at me, keeping me pinned to the wall with his large hands.
“I don’t want your fucking pity,” he snaps.
And I can’t help but swat his chest. “This is not pity, you idiot. If I wanted to pity you, then I would’ve said yes to your stupid proposition days ago. You were pretty miserable back then too.”
“So why?”
Because I love you.
Because you’re my Arrow.
My broken Arrow.
“Because you’re my friend,” I tell him, a version of the truth.
At this, he comes even closer. So close that his hard abdomen moves and presses against that place between my thighs and I gasp.
His eyelids flicker and he notices my parted lips. “You fuck all your friends?”
“No.”
He lifts his eyes then. “So, what, I’m special?”
“Yes. And because I have a right.”
“What right is that?”
I get up in his face, grazing our noses together. “I lived with you for years, didn’t I? Those girls that you pick up at a bar, they don’t know you. You said it yourself. They don’t know who you are. They don’t care about you. But I do. I care about you. I know you. I know who you were and who you are now. So I’m going to be your rebound girl and no one else. Because I have the right. I dare anyone to even try.”
So maybe I sound like a jealous little groupie but whatever.
Those girls don’t love him. I do. They don’t know how to take care of him. But I do.
He’s my Arrow.
So if anyone’s going to ease his pain, it’s going to be me.
Arrow watches me, studies my face. My messy hair, my nose, my lips.
He even goes down to my heaving chest, my bow-shaped body. My thighs that are spread out around him.
It’s both a lazy perusal and over so quickly that I’m left abandoned when he comes back to my face, my skin throbbing and tight.
“No,” he clips.
“What?”
“I’m not going to fuck you.”
“Why not?” I almost whine.
I mean, I’m willing and available and I want to.
It’s my right.
And I’m ready to explain that to him again but I notice something.
A change in him. A change in the air, even.
It becomes heavier, darker. More heated.
Like him.
“Are you pouting at me?” he asks softly, his eyes on my lips.
At his low tone, a hot shiver skitters down my spine and I arch up even more.
I wasn’t aware of it.
I wasn’t aware that I was sticking my lower lip out in disappointment. Maybe because I’ve never done it before.