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It not only reaches me, it wraps itself around me like a pair of arms – his sleek, muscular arms – warming me up, making me realize that I was cold before.
But he’s here and all cold is gone.
I can even see him through my window.
He’s looking around, frantic, running his fingers through his sun-struck hair, his jaw unshaven and messy, the chain around his neck shining like always.
A second later, he finds me.
His eyes land on me and his whole body shudders. It’s a visible spasm that rolls through his muscles. That I can feel in my own stomach.
We stare at each other through the space and I feel like he knows everything.
I feel like he feels what I’m feeling.
All the grief and all the sadness at losing those letters and I just want him to put those strong arms of his around me and hug me.
“Apparently, he didn’t leave,” Callie murmurs from beside me and the moment breaks.
Everything comes rushing back.
He was leaving, wasn’t he?
Yeah, he was.
I don’t know what he’s doing here but my letters are gone and I’m lonelier than ever. And as soon as he starts striding toward me, I look away.
Callie gives me a tremulous smile. “I think I’m gonna go. I’ll go find out what Wyn and Poe are up to.”
I grab her wrist, suddenly feeling afraid.
I haven’t looked but I know he’s up to the threshold now. He’ll enter the room any second and I don’t wanna be alone with him.
Especially when I’m feeling so vulnerable.
“I don’t… I…” I try to tell her but don’t know what to say.
“Everything will be okay. Don’t worry.” She stands up from her seat.
“Are you going to be okay though?” I ask.
“Yeah.” She smiles, grins actually. “I think for a douchebag who doesn’t love you, he looks a little too worried about you.”
I don’t have the time to comment on her observation because he chooses that moment to burst inside the room.
After that I have no choice but to ignore everything else and look at him. At his navy-blue eyes, his heavily breathing chest, and I clutch the sheets of my bed.
Tightly.
“What…” I swallow. “What are you doing here?”
“You fainted,” he says, his lips barely moving they’re pulled so tight.
“Right.” I shake my head. “It’s nothing. I’m okay.”
He clamps his jaw before saying in a rough voice, “They said your sugar level was low. And you were dehydrated.”
I sigh. “Yeah, that. It’s, uh, fine. I’m –”
“No, it’s not,” he snaps.
He does it so loudly and so viciously that I jump.
“What?” I ask, pulling at the sheet and curling my toes inside the blanket.
“It’s not fine, Salem.” He pushes the words out and I think they’re costing him a lot because I swear he’s vibrating. “It’s not fucking fine. It means you weren’t eating.”
Oh God.
Him and his crazy obsession with what I eat.
It isn’t a huge surprise that Arrow eats everything right and healthy. And back when… well, when I’d sneak out to see him, up until a few days ago, he’d make me eat all that weird healthy stuff too.
He’d even make me those disgusting green shakes.
I hated them but I loved how he’d take care of me and made me drink every drop.
Even now, even after everything, my chest overflows with warmth at the sharp concern in his tone.
“I was eating. I was –”
“You’re not going back there.”
I press my spine into the pillows. “What?”
“You’re not going back to St. Mary’s after this,” he declares.
“I’m sorry?”
“I’m taking you home as soon as they discharge you. I –”
I raise my hand. “Hold on a second. What… What are you talking about?”
He flexes his fists, curls and uncurls them, at his sides for a second before growling, “I’m not leaving you in that bullshit place. That place with all those rules and bullies. You don’t belong there. You…” He shoves his fingers into his hair and almost tears out a clump of his sun-struck strands. “You’re there because of me. You got sent there because of me. And all of this, you not eating, you sneaking out, happened because of me too. Because I was being a stubborn fucking asshole. But not anymore. Not –”
“Stop.”
This time, it’s him who flinches because I was so loud.
So abrupt.
But I had to do it. I had to stop him.
Because look at him. He’s… flooded with regret.
His features are pulsing with it. It drips from his body, from his glassy eyes, his agitated movements.
My fingers go limp in the sheets. My toes uncurl. I stop pressing my spine into the pillows as I watch him.
As I watch him doing exactly what I never wanted him to do.
Beat himself up.
He’s beating himself up, isn’t he?
That’s why he’s here.
Because he thinks it’s his fault. Because he thinks it’s an obligation to be here. Not because he wants to be.
