After Arrow decided that he was going to stay in St. Mary’s awhile, he also started seeing Dr. Lola Bernstein regularly. It took him some time to open up, but slowly, he told her things from his childhood.
He told me things too.
Things that I had no idea about.
Horrifying things. Things that made me cry for the little boy he was, scared and trying to be perfect for a mother who was never happy with anything.
Things that I now call abuse, and rightfully so.
Itwasabuse.
The way Leah would make him work harder than any other kid. The way she always dangled his father’s death as the reason to be the best.
I always knew she could be very strict and exacting. Always expecting the best from Arrow. I also knew – after he came back into my life – that he could be very self-critical and intense about perfection.
But gosh, it’s worse than I thought.
Much worse.
I only moved in with them when he was fifteen. By then, Leah had successfully trained him into a perfect freaking son.
So I hadn’t really known about it – the depths of damage that Leah had caused – until he opened up to me last year about the things he’d gone through when he was just a kid.
His mom was cruel to him. Beyond cruel.
And I don’t think I can ever forgive her. I can be civil to her for Arrow’s sake but my loyalties lie with my deeply damaged and dark sun.
So that’s the second thing that has been hard for us: Leah and how her actions have affected Arrow.
But we said that we’d figure it out and that’s what we have done.
And that’s what we’re doing.
I come back to the moment when he reaches me, tall and handsome, his large fingers curled around the delicate ice cream cones.
“Hi, boyfriend,” I say, before taking one of the cones from his hand. “Thank you.”
I lick the chocolate ice cream with sprinkles while peeking at him through my eyelashes and he grumbles, “You can’t follow a rule to save your life, can you?”
I pout. “Sorry.”
“Are you?”
Biting my lip, I shake my head before leaning up to kiss his cheek with ice cream lips. “No.”
I go to move away but he grabs the back of my neck and keeps me pinned to his hard body as he growls, “Maybe I should make you.”
I raise my eyebrows. “Maybe you should.”
“There was a reason I told you to stay put. You could’ve been lost.”
“I was perfectly safe. I just wanted to say hi to Cleo.”
“Who’s Cleo?”
Seriously?
God, my boyfriend.
