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

by Saffron A. Kent

For every girl who has secretly loved a boy and written him love letters at midnight. And of course, for the not-so-secret love of my life, my husband.

aww

Holy fuck, they’re talking about Arrow. My Arrow.

I really, really wish that I had said something. Because when the moment passed, I never got the chance to tell him. Because in a split second, everything changed. The whole course of my life. And his, too. Because just then my sister walked in, Sarah, and he turned to look at her and he never looked away. He hasn’t looked away from her since that moment.

THIS IS GOING TO BE SO ANGSTY I can already tell

So I don’t know when I fell in love with him. All I know is that when I was falling in love with Arrow, he was falling in love with someone else. With my sister, Sarah. And they are perfect for each other. Perfect.

So where do I fit in? What is my role here, other than being this evil, witchy girl who wants her older sister’s boyfriend? I don’t think I have any role except to be the villain in their love story. The girl who has violated all the codes. The betrayer.

Some girls fall in love and a boy catches them. He waits for them at the bottom of the cliff with open arms. And then there are other girls. Girls like me. We’re the girls in love with the boys who belong to someone else. We’re the girls in doomed love. When girls like us fall, there’s no one to catch us. Least of all that boy for whom we’ve taken the fall. We’re the girls with secrets and witchy hearts. We’re the girls who listen to sad songs. Who slow dance to them with tears streaming down our faces, even as a smile lingers on our lips. Who cry in our pillows at night and who ride our sunshine-yellow bicycle along the empty, desolate, miserable places, where no one goes. We’re the girls who run away in the middle of the night.

THIS WRITING???

Like a voyeur, I’ve been there for every moment of their love story. I’ve watched them fall in love. I’ve watched them be in love for years. I’ve watched them go out on dates, go to the prom together. I’ve watched them hanging out together in the backyard. I’ve heard them whisper and talk out in the hallway, just by my bedroom. I’ve watched them leave for California. I’ve watched them when they’d come to visit over the holidays. I’ve watched it all like the worst sister in the world. I’ve watched him like the worst sister in the world. I’ve watched him, craved him, loved him in secret.

I’m already in love with my sister’s boyfriend. I’m already so corrupt and despicable. I’m already so hopelessly in love. Who’s to say I wouldn’t take it one step further and try to steal him away from her?

My bad behavior and my bad grades were the norm in the Carlisle family. There have been numerous occasions when Leah would lecture me about my lack of ambition, lack of good grades and extra-curricular activities, my lack of following the curfew, at the dinner table in front of the whole family. Everyone knows that I’m not perfect. That I’m the opposite of my sister and Arrow and Leah.

the angst is hitting ☹️

I frown at him and another surprising thing happens. A shocking thing. He smirks at me. At me. After eight years. After eight fucking years, I finally get what I’ve been wishing for. His smirk. And my stupid fucking heart can’t handle it. My stupid fucking heart swells and swells in my chest until it’s aching, and I know it’s a rather drastic reaction to a simple smirk, and people might call me crazy. But they don’t know.

“So sneaking out in the middle of the night to go to a bar for dancing isn’t your only crime. I’m not sure if sending you to a reform school was a good idea. You might be a worse influence on the girls who’re already in trouble for being bad.”

“I don’t understand, Sarah. You love each other,” I whisper, pressing the phone tightly to my ear. “That’s the most important thing, isn’t it? You love him and he loves you and so you guys can work through this. You guys can overcome this. Love has to be bigger than any problems that you guys have. Love has to be bigger than everything else.” Shouldn’t it? Love has to be bigger. It has to be.

she’s so sweet 🥲

Every night I write him a letter. I tell him about my day, about all the things I did, all the mundane details. Every night, I ask him about his day. About what he did, all the places he went, all the people he saw. Every night, I talk to him like a friend. Every night, I call him my darling. My darling Arrow.

Because what I feel for him can only be expressed in certain words, in certain syllables and tones and rhythms. And ‘darling’ hits all the right notes. Darling says he’s adored and loved. But he also makes me hurt. It says that he’s both a delight to my heart and a needle to it.

Loving him is the most wonderful, most awful thing in the world. Loving Arrow is my doom. So he’s not my dear, he’s my darling.

How is it that I was running away from him but somehow, we ended up at the same place? Somehow I’m going to see him every single day now. And somehow I’m going to have to keep him safe from a witch called Salem.

THIS WRITING IS JUST INSANE. It’s so self indulgent but I adore it

I never knew that she shines brighter than any star that I’ve seen on the soccer field.

Just because the one you love is in love with someone else doesn’t mean your love isn’t gorgeous or real. It doesn’t mean that your love should be killed or it should be torn out of your heart and thrown into a river or burnt down like an extinct piece of architecture.

All I can do is think that I’m Icarus. The fool with wings made of wax. They say it’s arrogance that led Icarus to fly too close to the sun. They’re crazy. It wasn’t arrogance. It was love. He loved the sun too much. And that’s why he couldn’t stay away.

“Next time someone gives you trouble, you come to me,” he orders. “What?” “I will take care of it.”

My breath stutters. “B-but I thought you hated messy things.” “I do.” He shifts his eyes away from my thick, scattered hair and focuses on me, my hastily breathing chest. “But strangely not on you. I like you messy.”

“You’re the girl every guy runs away from. You’re every guy’s nightmare, Salem. Because you’re the girl with too much love inside you.”

Like always, he looks at her like no one else exists. His features arrange themselves to be the most stunning they can be. His eyes become the most gorgeous that they can be as well. And I fall in love with him again. I fall in love with Arrow again while he’s staring at my sister.

poor girl

His eyes on me. His brilliant blue eyes, that appear as dark as the night from this far, are glued to my curled-up form. Like he knew I’d be here. I’d be waiting for him. He’s right. No matter the time, the season, the weather, I’ll always wait for him.

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.

holy shit this prose 😩

Sometimes I wonder if my father hadn’t seen that dream with his own eyes, would it have become mine? Sometimes I wonder if… if I could ever have other dreams. My dreams. Or if every son inherits his father’s dreams by default.

It hurts that he’ll fuck anyone, any random girl that he finds at a bar, but me. It hurts that after all these years he finally sees me but still, I won’t hold his attention. He still doesn’t find me attractive enough to fuck me. I’m not asking him to love me, am I? I’m only asking him to use me, use my body, and he won’t even do that. And I’m too hurt and too much in love with him so I’ve lost my mind over it.

girl u deserve so much better ☹️

“Where are you taking me?” I whisper. “Where you belong.” My heart shrivels. “I’m not going back to St. Mary’s.” His eyes flash. “No, you’re not. Because you belong with me.”

I grin and ask him something I’ve always wanted to ask. “Why do you always stare at my nose?” He glances at it for a second before whispering, “Because you’ve got freckles on it. Thirteen, to be exact. And seven under your eyes.”

His sweaty forehead crinkles with a frown and he comes down at me. He gathers me in his arms and licks my tears away. “Shh, it’s okay. It’s okay, baby. It’ll go away, I promise,” he whispers, all gently and tenderly.

It’s wrong what they say. That when you die, your body turns cold and blue. No, blue doesn’t mean winter and death. Blue for me will always mean warm summer and life. Fire. Blue for me will always mean him. My Arrow.

“Because you’re going to put it in your mouth and suck it like your life depends on it. And because I’m going to fuck your pouty lips like I fucked your pouty pussy last night. And when you struggle to take me in, because I’m so big and fat for your innocent schoolgirl mouth, you’ll make me blow. Right on your tongue, and when I do that, you’re going to swallow it all, aren’t you? You’re going to swallow everything I give you like a good girl. So you can call it whatever the fuck you want, baby, because all I care about is sliding into your mouth and riding it to heaven,” he says with clenched teeth and flushed cheeks, all dominating and large like the sun he is.

I can’t tell if I hate this dirty talk or if it’s hot…it’s giving porno but is it hot???

“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.” Yeah. 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.

“Sarah,” he bites out, staring so harshly into my eyes that it makes me catch my breath, “doesn’t understand. She doesn’t have the capability to understand how someone not like her can be so fucking magnificent. How someone not like her can fly on legs and flow through spaces and shine through cracks. She doesn’t understand how someone not like her, someone who doesn’t follow the rules, someone who makes her own rules, can bend the direction of a river when all she’s done her entire life is trying to flow with it. And what she doesn’t understand, scares the fuck out of her.”

“I don’t think I’ve seen her kind of talent in a long time. But she thinks that you don’t appreciate it. You think that she’s wasting her time.” “So?” “So I suggest you watch your mouth when you talk about your sister. Because if you don’t, then I’ll have to give you a lesson on what being an asshole really means. And trust me, I’d love to do that. I’d love to make you understand what’s gotten into me.”

But anyway, my no-dancing-tonight rule breaks when Callie’s bartender friend, who I’ve come to know by sitting close to him for the past hour is a great Lana Del Rey lover like me, asks me to dance while on a break.

Babes that man is not straight…

Arrow and his fuck doll; and Salem and the love of her life. That’s what we are, aren’t we? He fucks me and I love him.

Why does she love me? Why does it hurt that she does? Why does it hurt that I can’t be anything other than what I am?

My tears sit there as I work in the garden with the rest of the girls. When I secretly clip a gardenia and pocket it, one spills out and flows down to my trembling lips. Another spills when I do my trig homework later in the library and get all the questions wrong because he isn’t here to teach me.

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.”

“And I thought it would give you time to make the right decision. But I guess I should know better by now, shouldn’t I? 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.”

“You’re the girl, Salem, who makes me want,” he bites out, the tendons on his neck standing taut. “I want. So many things, you understand? And I don’t know what it means. I don’t fucking know. I don’t understand and it terrifies me. It shakes me right down to my soul but still I want to find out. I want to know. I want to know why it hurts to see you cry. Why it hurts when you’re in pain, when someone upsets you. Why the thought of you in that godforsaken place with barred windows makes me want to break something. Break the world. Why it makes me sick to my goddamn stomach, whenever I think of you walking away from me like you did that night. I want to know what it all means. Because I’ve never felt this way. I’ve never felt this… need. This craving. Not until you. Not until you walked up to me that night at the bar like a vision of some sort. A vision that haunts me. That haunts my body, my soul. My heart. So yeah, you haunt me, Salem.”

“The fact that you write letters to me every night. The fact that you stole and that you hurt when I hurt. The reason that I haunt you is because you haunt me too. You’ve been haunting me for eight years. And it only means one thing.” Finally, he brings his hands away from the desk too and puts them on my face. He cradles my cheeks and tilts my neck up. “Say it.” I blink. I take a deep breath and fist his t-shirt, before I reply, “It means that you love me.”

“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.”

“See? You won’t have to be without me. I’m your girl. Now and forever. Your needy, crazy girlfriend and you’re my perfect, idiot boyfriend.” A slight smile flickers on the side of his mouth. “That you are. Needy. And crazy and perfect. My perfect.” I wind my arms around his neck and stretch up my body. “Say it.” His chest moves with a long breath, a long sweet breath, before he grabs my face and rasps, “My heart. My sweetheart.”