“What?”
“Before we go back to St. Mary’s, will you take me somewhere else first?”
He squeezes my hand to the point that I think he’ll break my skin and crush my bones.
But I don’t care.
He can do whatever he wants with me.
He can stab me with a knife and I’ll be lying on the ground, dying, drawing little hearts in blood.
His eyes stay on my smiling lips for a second before he replies, “Fine.”
Chapter Nine
I’m sitting on Arrow’s motorcycle.
I’m riding with him, my inner thighs hugging his outer, my arms around his waist and my cheek stuck to his sweet-smelling t-shirt as it rests on his shoulder blades.
Before we took off, I told him, “So Friend, this is my first motorcycle ride and I have a feeling that I’ve got a thing for speed. Which means that you should really step on it.”
I’m not even going to deny how much I loved sayingFriend.
How much I’ll always love saying it.
He’s my friend. My Arrow.
Something moved over his features when I said that. A ripple of something that shone under the fat red moon.
He settled the helmet on my head. “Yeah, I’m not surprised.”
“Why not?”
“Because,Friend,” he buckled the helmet under my chin a little sharply, making me bite my lip. “I’m starting to realize that you’ve got athingfor everything that’s dangerous and crazy.”
I shouldn’t have smiled at that. It wasn’t a compliment.
Like it wasn’t a compliment when he said I was worse than bad, but still, it felt like one.
Maybe because when he finished settling the helmet on my head, he stepped back and took off his vintage leather jacket.
I watched his shoulders rolling and his biceps bunching as they did the work of taking it off and then draping it over my shoulders. When I put my hands through the sleeves, he then proceeded to zip it up, right up to my chin like I’m a child or something.
When I saidthank you, his jaw moved.
And then we took off and he did step on it, while I hung onto him.
Now we’re here, at my favorite place ever.
My little darling place.
It’s a bridge in Bardstown over the largest and bluest river that I’ve ever seen. It connects the main highway of the town to… nothing.
Well, okay. So it’s old and rusty, this bridge, with a two-rod metal railing, stretching between an abandoned dirt road that’s broken off the main highway to wild woods.
I’m not sure why they made it.
It’s not really serving a purpose, connecting a dirt path that no one really knows about to savage, unnavigable woods. It simply sits here, taking up space, looking all dark and desolate and empty.
