My Darling Arrow Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  My Darling Arrow

  Copyright

  Other Books by Saffron A. Kent

  Blurb

  Dedication

  Reader's Extras

  Author's Note

  St. Mary's Crest

  St.Mary's Lipstick Guide

  Love

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Epilogue

  St. Mary's Rebels

  Extended Epilogue

  Soccer Nation

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Bad Boy Blues

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely

  coincidental.

  My Darling Arrow © 2020 by Saffron A. Kent

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Cover Art by Najla Qamber Designs

  Cover Model: Jon Herrmann

  Editing by Leanne Rabesa

  Proofreading by Virginia Tesi Carey

  September 2020 Edition

  Print ISBN: 9798676779641

  Published in the United States of America

  A War like Ours

  (Dark enemies to lovers romance)

  The Unrequited

  (Sexy student-teacher romance)

  Gods & Monsters

  (Unconventional coming of age romance)

  Medicine Man

  (Doctor-patient forbidden romance)

  Bad Boy Blues

  (Forbidden bully romance)

  Dreams of 18

  (Best friend’s dad; Age-gap romance)

  Darling Arrow,

  I shouldn’t be writing this.

  It’s not as if I’m ever going to send you this letter, and there are a million reasons why.

  First of all, I was sent to this reform school as a punishment for a petty, totally inconsequential crime. Not to ogle the principal’s hot son around the campus.

  Second of all, you’re a giant jerk. You’re arrogant and moody and so cold. Sometimes I think I shouldn’t even like you.

  But strangely your coldness sets me on fire.

  The way your athletic body moves on the soccer field, and the way your powerful thighs sprawl across that motorcycle of yours, make me go inappropriately breathless.

  But that’s not the worst part.

  The worst part is that you, Arrow Carlisle, are not only the principal’s hot son.

  You also happen to be the love of my sister’s life.

  And I really shouldn’t be thinking about my sister’s boyfriend, or rather fiancé (I overheard a conversation about the ring that I shouldn’t have).

  Now if I can only stop writing you these meaningless letters that I’ll never send and you’ll never read…

  Never yours,

  Salem

  NOTE: This book is a standalone and DOES NOT contain cheating.

  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.

  Official Spotify playlist

  Pinterest Boards

  Arrow & Salem

  St. Mary’s School for Troubled Teenagers

  The regular Major League Soccer (MLS) season ends in October. However, for the purpose of this story, this timeline has been tweaked.

  When the one you love doesn’t love you back.

  A type of unrequited love; when the one you love is in love with someone else.

  Some girls are born perfect.

  They have perfect hair, perfect eyes, perfect skin.

  They have perfect grades and high ambitions. They’re popular and admired. They’re adored and revered. And loved.

  I’m not one of them.

  That’s the first thing to know about me: I’m not perfect.

  I have flaws. Many, many flaws.

  I don’t have perfect grades. I don’t have high ambitions.

  I don’t get why the sum of all the angles of a triangle has to be one hundred and eighty or the world will collapse. Or why when we talk about the heart, we reduce it to a muscular organ with four chambers that’s sole purpose is to pump blood through the body.

  I’m far from being popular and I’ve got something called witchy eyes.

  Or at least, I call them that.

  They’re golden in color and they arch up at the corners, making them look sort of catty, witchy. Which is super poetic because I’ve got a witchy name too.

  Salem.

  Salem Salinger, and the second thing to know about me is that along with witchy eyes and a witchy name, I’ve got a witchy heart as well.

  Meaning, my heart has secrets.

  In fact, my heart is swollen with secrets. Many, many secrets like my many, many flaws. And that is why I did what I did.

  The thing that landed me here.

  The little, inconsequential crime that got me sent to St. Mary’s School for Troubled Teenagers – an all-girls reform school.

  Only they don’t call it a reform school anymore.

  It’s not the 50s or the 60s. These days, schools like this are called therapeutic school. Because they believe in therapy. And restoration and reformation. They believe in teaching us to be productive members of society.

  Who’s us?

  We’re the bad and hopeless girls.

  We’re the girls who break rules and love rebellion. We don’t like school or classes. So we keep getting into trouble with our classmates and teachers. Sometimes we get expelled multiple times from multiple schools until our parents or guardians are forced to take drastic actions.

  Some of us break the law too, which technically I did.

  I mean, there were a couple of cops involved. They didn’t handcuff me or anything but I had to ride in their squad car and go to the police station. But there were no charges pressed. Instead, I was sent to St. Mary’s.

  I’ve been here almost a week and I’m already behind. In assignments, I mean.

  God, the assignments and homework.

  They’re very strict about that here.

  So I really shouldn’t be falling asleep in class if I want to catch up.

  But it’s Friday afternoon and it’s trigonometry and it’s not as if I’m magically going to understand everything to do with triangles and tangents by paying attention in the last fifteen minutes of the class anyway.

  Honestly, I don’t think anyone is paying attention even though everyone is quiet and facing the blackboard.

  There are probably fifteen other girls besides me in this small beige-painted concrete and cement classroom where I sit in the back.

  We’re all slumped over
the hard, wooden desks, with our chins in our hands.

  We all have tight braids either flowing down our backs or draped over our shoulders, tied at the end with a mustard-colored ribbon. We all wear a starched white blouse and a mustard-yellow skirt that touches the tops of our knees. Except I have a black chunky sweater on because I’m a sunshine girl and the inside of St. Mary’s feels like winter.

  We pair our uniforms with knee-length white socks and polished black Mary Janes.

  Our notebooks are lying open in front of us and our butts are planted in chairs as hard and wooden as the desks.

  From time to time, we squirm and adjust ourselves in our seats because I’m guessing the wood is digging into our asses.

  At least, it’s digging into mine.

  So it should be really hard to fall asleep, right? Or daydream.

  But I’m doing both until I hear a sound.

  Psst…

  It’s coming from my right. Slowly I turn to find my neighbor, over in the adjacent row, trying to get my attention.

  It’s a girl I’ve seen before.

  Around campus, in the cafeteria and in the dorm building where every student who goes to St. Mary’s stays, but I’ve never talked to her.

  Because no one talks to me here.

  I’ve actually tried very hard to get them to talk to me or even smile at me or just wave their hand at me by waving mine but I haven’t been successful. I can’t even get my roommate, Elanor, to say hi to me.

  So I don’t know what this girl, my neighbor with blonde hair, wants from me. But as soon as our eyes meet, she motions her head toward something.

  Biting my lip, I look at what she’s pointing at.

  It’s a piece of paper.

  It’s sitting at the edge of my desk, folded over twice to make a little square.

  For a second, I can’t comprehend what a piece of paper is doing on my desk. Confused, I look up from it and focus back on the girl. She widens her eyes at me and gestures at it with her chin again.

  What the…

  Oh.

  Oh!

  I finally get it. It’s a note.

  She’s passing me a note and she wants me to open it.

  Got it.

  Immediately, I go to grab it but stop, my hand suspended in midair. I look up and see that the teacher, Mrs. Miller, is busy solving a weird-looking equation on the board. So I’m safe there.

  But why is this girl writing me a note?

  Doesn’t she know that I’m the most hated girl at St. Mary’s right now?

  I’m the principal’s ward.

  Yeah, the principal of St. Mary’s School for Troubled Teenagers, Leah Carlisle, is my guardian. She’s been my guardian for eight years now, ever since I was ten.

  And somehow because of that I’m enemy number one around campus.

  So far in the week that I’ve been here, people have glared at me, tried to trip me in the cafeteria, accidentally-on-purpose bumped into me in the dorm hallways and locked me in the bathroom.

  From what I can gather, the students think I’m a spy, and if they talk to me and reveal their secrets, I might go to Leah and rat them out. And teachers think that since I’m her ward, I’ll be given special treatment.

  So it’s natural for me to debate whether or not I should open the note.

  But then I hear my neighbor’s whispered words. “Open it.”

  I swivel my gaze at her and she says those words again, or rather mouths them, open it, before giving me a big smile.

  A big and brilliant smile.

  It’s the smile that does it.

  Someone is smiling at me.

  A girl at St. Mary’s – my new reform/therapeutic school – is smiling at me and I didn’t even have to do anything to get that smile.

  So fuck it.

  My hand resumes its journey and practically snatches the note off the desk. I bring it down to my lap and open it.

  It’s boring, huh? I get it. Miller is a snooze-fest. But don’t let her catch you falling asleep. She loves to take away student privileges.

  Ah, the infamous privileges.

  This whole reform/therapeutic school system runs on a little thing called student privileges, which you earn by following the rules.

  So here’s the whole concept: when we’re sent to St. Mary’s, they take away everything that we’ve so far taken for granted in our old, corrupt and rebellious lives.

  First of all, there is no personal technology allowed. Meaning no cell phones or laptops or iPads or whatever. Everything that we use has to be school-issued and it is heavily monitored. If you want to use the internet, you go to the computer lab and use the computer there, for an allotted number of hours. If you want to talk to someone on the phone, you do it using the school phone, again only during an allotted time period.

  Second, if you want to go off campus, you need a permission slip from a teacher and you can only go out during an allotted time.

  Now if you’re good – your grades are okay and you’ve been doing your homework and participating in activities – you get the privilege of using the computer longer than everyone else or you can go out twice a week and stay out longer and so on.

  And who keeps track of things like this? The guidance counselor assigned to you that you meet with every week.

  But all of this is useless to me.

  Because I just started here and so I have a four-week ban on any privileges. Meaning I can’t go out no matter what. My computer usage is one hour per day and I can’t make any outgoing calls; I can only receive calls on Saturdays.

  If at the end of the four-week period, my guidance counselor, who just happens to be Mrs. Miller, thinks I’m fit to be rewarded for my rule-following and hard-working ways, I might get to go out or use the computer for more than an hour.

  So I write a little note of my own:

  Thanks for the heads up. But since I’m on the four-week grace period, I basically have no privileges.

  I hand over the note to the girl and she grabs it like I’m handing her a lifeline. I guess she’s as bored as me.

  Quickly, she opens it and dives into writing a reply on a freshly torn piece of paper, which she hands me back a few minutes later:

  Oh right! Sorry! I completely forgot that you’re a newb. But Miller has been known to deduct privileges in advance. She’s a biatch. Pardon my language.

  I’m Calliope, by the way. But everyone calls me Callie. I’m sorry about all the stuff some of the girls are putting you through. I do gotta ask though: Is Principal Carlisle really your guardian? And are you really not a spy?

  I have to smile at her note.

  There’s no malice there. Not after the way I feel her looking at me with so much eagerness.

  So I reply, Gotcha. No sleeping in Miller’s class. She’s actually my assigned guidance counselor too. So not looking forward to that meeting next week.

  Yes, Principal Carlisle is really my guardian. My mom and her were childhood friends. She died when I was ten so me and my older sister were sent to live with her. And no, I’m really not a spy. I’m just like the rest of you guys.

  Also, you’re the first person to smile at me in this place. So thanks again.

  I pass the note back to her and like before, she jumps at it and devours it quickly. As soon as she’s done, she writes back.

  You’re welcome! I would’ve said hi sooner but I had to be a little careful since I so don’t wanna get on the bad side of Principal Carlisle.

  Yeah, I don’t blame her. Leah can be a little intimidating with all her rules and punishments and lectures and ambitions. I mean, what else do you expect from the principal of a reform school?

  I, myself, am totally afraid of her and I lived with her for eight years.

  But I guess she’s only intimidating to girls like us, who break the rules and are perpetually bad.

  I write down my reply, feeling light for the first time in almost seven
days.

  It’s okay. Principal Carlisle scares me too.

  A second later, her reply comes.

  Right?! She is scary. Like, she never smiles. By the way, if you sit with us in the cafeteria, we’ll make sure no one will bother you.

  I’m about to ask who ‘us’ is, when the bell rings and the day ends thankfully. Everyone dives down for their backpacks like they’re diving in to save their lives, which could very well be true because God, this class was killing me.

  I turn to Callie, the first girl to talk to me at St. Mary’s, and say, “Thanks for having my back.”

  She smiles brightly. “Of course. I’ve been there. Miller is so fucking boring.”

  “Did I hear someone dissing Miller?”

  This comes from a girl with black hair and glasses. She’s got a husky voice and a mischievous face, and she’s wiggling her eyebrows at us.

  Callie rolls her eyes. “Poe here has a great aversion to Miller.”

  “Duh.” Poe zips up her backpack and skips over to us. “She’s evil. And my guidance counselor. So I’m super lucky.” She turns to me then, curious. “I’m Poe, by the way, as Callie said. Poe Austen Blyton. My mom was an Austen fan. And a Poe fan. And that.” She points to a third girl. “Is Bronwyn. Bronwyn Littleton. Isn’t that the greatest name ever?”

  The girl she’s pointing at has the longest hair that I’ve ever seen. Like Rapunzel. Her light brown braid goes down to her ass but when she looks at Poe and shakes her head in a very indulgent and patient manner, I completely forget about the length of her hair and marvel over her eyes.

  Because her eyes are silver and so ethereal looking.

  She slings her backpack over her shoulder and looks at me. “But people call me Wyn. Because I hate Bronwyn, which Poe already knows.” She swings her gaze to Poe. “Doesn’t she?”

  Poe sticks her tongue out at her.

  “It’s okay,” I say, chuckling at their antics. “I hate my name too. Salem. It sounds witchy.”

  Wyn smiles at me gently. “I like it.”

  Second smile of the day. I can’t believe it.

  This is turning out to be the best day ever.