My Darling Arrow (St. Mary’s Rebels, #1)

by Saffron A. Kent

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.

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.

He’s my Arrow. So if anyone’s going to ease his pain, it’s going to be me.

His fuck doll drowning in vintage leather.

You wanted my fire. My heat. My fury.”

He’s my Arrow. My darling Arrow.

“If you got any more perfect for me than you already are, I’d fucking lose my mind. I’d bend you over and fuck you in front of the whole

school while they watch and gasp and talk about rule-breaking.”

“Will you kiss me when you hurt my pussy?”

That’s when I lose my heart and my soul and I become his fuck doll.

“You’re a pain in my ass, you know that, don’t you?”

I do match him and oh my God, I can’t stop smiling.

Blue for me will always mean warm summer and life. Fire. Blue for me will always mean him. My Arrow.

When he asks for a vanilla cone for himself, I chirp in and tell the guy behind the counter that my guy will take a chocolate cone with all the chips and sprinkles and trappings, just like me. When Arrow gives me a look, I say, “You wanna be boring all your life or do you wanna be awesome like me?”

Her gorgeous villain.

“Guys like that, you don’t love them. You get consumed by them and then you wonder if there was ever a time you didn’t think about them or feel them or hear them. Or see them in your dreams.”

She’s right. You don’t love guys like that. You get eaten up by them and you love every bite they take out of you.

The Blond Arrow has no fucking clue what love is.

But all he does is blink and say, “And if I don’t?”

“Then I’d say…” I open my fists and loosen my body. “Choose me.”

“So now you know what happened. Now you have all the answers, don’t you? Now you know that I’m not only your nightmare, I’m worse than that. I’m worse because she didn’t make me empty, I’ve been empty all along. She didn’t kill my heart, my heart was dead all along. It was dead because I killed it myself. I killed it in my pursuit of perfection. I killed it because I wanted to be motherfucking perfect. I wanted to be the best of the best, to be on top. I wanted to be The Blond fucking Arrow.

Because a heart is the reason why a girl falls in love with a boy when she’s ten and stays in love with him for years even though she knows he can never be hers. Heart is the reason why a girl cries for that boy every night and yet smiles at a single glimpse of him. Heart is the reason why she writes secret love letters to him and why she sneaks out at night to see the boy she writes them for. Heart is the reason why a girl like me falls in doomed love with a clueless fucking guy like you. So no, your heart is not dead, Arrow. You might be The Blond Arrow but even you don’t have the power to kill it.”

I can’t save him if he’s unwilling to save himself. I can only love him.

It’s beating and beating. Pounding, my heart. As if it’s really a crazy little maniac, like she told me. The most alive thing in my body. The most alive thing in the world. The most alive it’s ever been. For the girl who writes me letters.

Well, what else do you expect when you fall in love with a grenade? What else do you expect when you fall in love with the sun? It’s what the sun does. It burns everything. Melts everything. Turns everything into dust.

In the time she was with me, she taught me to want something other than a trophy, a goal or a game. She taught me to crave something more than cold and lonely perfection.

Her. I crave her.

And I’m going to do all of that because she’s the girl I’ll do anything for. She’s the girl I’ll be anything for. Do you understand? She’s my girl and I’m going to her.”

No one can control you. No one can bind you by rules or put you in a box or rein you in. You’re Salem. You’re probably why they name hurricanes and natural catastrophes after girls like you.”

I’m an asshole addicted to your words. To your letters.

“You’re the girl, Salem, who makes me want,”

“I fucking love you, Salem.”

“You are,” he says fiercely. “You are that girl. My girl.”

“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.”