I want to loosenhimup.
Clutching the lapels of his jacket around my neck, I ask, “What happened?”
‘In LA’ is implied, I think.
I’m right when he clenches his jaw and says without looking at me, “You should go.”
I take a step closer. “Arrow, tell me what happened?”
This time, the clench lasts longer. He even flexes his fists around the throttle. “I said you should go.”
The longer he doesn’t look at me, the louder my heartbeats become, and I have to grab the sleeve of his wrinkled suit jacket. “Arrow, please. Tell me. Did you see her? Did you see Sarah?”
I’m not sure if it’s because I’m clutching onto the sleeve of his damp jacket or if it’s the mention of her name, but he snaps his eyes over to me.
His dark, furious eyes.
AndGod, again, I think of the first night at the bar.
When the mention of my sister’s name changed everything.
It changed everything that I believed in. Everything that I thought to be true.
That just makes me even more frantic, more desperate. Desperate enough to pull at his sleeve with not one but both hands.
“Arrow, tell me. Did you see her? What’d she say?”
“Leave,” he says curtly.
But I don’t listen. I can’t listen.
How can I leave when he looks like this? When he looks… so furious and so flushed with anger. So scarlet, like his blood is rushing too close to the surface.
“Not until you tell me.” I shake my head. “Just tell me what happened. Tell me what she said.”
“Salem. Just leave.”
His voice is quiet but it’s dripping with warning. It’s dripping with authority and a heavy threat. I should heed it.
I know that.
But the next question that bursts out of my mouth is so reckless, so fucking thoughtless and yet so urgent and important that I don’t know how else I could have said it, if not in a squeaky, high voice, with my nails digging into his arm, my body trembling with dread.
“D-do you love her? Do you still love my sister?”
I think I screamed it. I think everyone heard it.
Everyone at St. Mary’s heard that I asked the guy I love if he’s still in love with my sister.
Or at least that’s what I feel for a few seconds, because my eardrums are ringing.
My chest is vibrating.
The only thing silent and frigid, frozen over by the snow, is him.
The guy I asked this question to.
If I thought he was tight before, I was wrong. If I thought he was furious and hot before, I was wrong again.
