18. Briggs
Chapter 18
Briggs
“A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a quip and worried to death by a frown on the right man's brow.” ― Ovid
T hroughout dinner, Rose’s eyes kept trailing to every little detail that she could see of my estate from where we sat in the dining room. I never wanted her here—not this place. But now that she was here, I didn’t want her to leave. Not me, anyway. I’d asked her to stay with me tonight, knowing there was no possible way my father was going to show up. For once, it would be safe for her here, possibly more so knowing what August had put her through.
Who was to say he wouldn’t try to go to her house later after making himself more piss-drunk than he already was? If she wasn’t there to harass, he’d get the hint. And if he didn’t, I’d beat it into him.
She’s fucking mine.
Her eyes narrowed on a singular spot on the wall, her fork dropping to her plate.
I grinned and set my fork down, too. “You can look if you want.” I probably shouldn’t have let her in on as much as she was taking in, but it was euphoric watching her light up, like getting to know me was special to her.
She stood immediately and walked over to the framed photo. Beck and I were young kids, six years old, and missing a few teeth. We were standing with our parents in front of one of our lake-front vacation properties that my father hadn’t touched since that day, yet I still visited every year. Our bedrooms at the property were still boyish in furnishings—like a relic from our childhood that I wasn’t ready to erase. But I had recent plans to update the rest of the home, knowing Father would never set foot there again.
“You look cute here.” Beck and I were identical, yet she managed to point to the correct brother. I nodded and smiled at her. I was doing that a lot lately—smiling. It felt foreign at first, like trying to ride a bike after not touching one for years. I was starting to get the hang of it now, though .
“How’d you know that was me?”
“Your dimple. You have the same one here. And Beck doesn’t seem to have one at all.” I liked that she didn’t shy away from using his name. She knew grief but also knew what it was like to move past it. Her file did outline years of therapy, but I hadn’t been that lucky. It still hurts to say his name sometimes, as if razor blades were clawing through my throat.
I met her by the photo and wrapped my arms around her from behind. “You noticed my dimple?” It strained against my cheek as I pressed my lips into her neck. Her skin was so soft it was setting me on fire from the inside out. I promised to sleep on the floor earlier, but I didn’t know how firm she’d be on that. I hoped not at all. I wanted to keep her as close as possible, to feel her against me at all times.
“Mhm. It’s adorable.”
“Not many people have seen that dimple, you know. You may be the only one in years to bring it out.” She spun in my arms and brushed her fingers against my cheek.
“You kind of look like your mother.” I stiffened under her touch, and her brow furrowed. “Did I hurt you?” she asked as she looked down at my ribs.
I shook my head. “No, Rose. You didn’t hurt me.” I pulled her closer to me, staring back at the young boy I once was. “I always thought I saw more of my dad in me than her.”
“I don’t think so. She has the same dimple, and the way you smile is the exact same.”
I smoothed my palm down her back. “Is that so? ”
She pushed me back to evaluate. “Yes. Just like her. Is she with your father in Amsterdam right now?”
I exhaled the breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding for some time now. “No. She um…she left. Not too long after that photo was taken, actually.” Her eyes softened, looking somewhat glassy.
Instead of a slew of apologies or adding her own similar stories to mine, like most people did when they heard that, she just said, “We should finish eating. I don’t want Rhonda to think I’m rude and don’t like her food. And then, I want to go snoop around more.”
I chuckled, the weight of my past lifting from my shoulders more than it had in years. “Snoop away, babe.”
“Have you really read all of these?”
“Is that really so hard to believe?” I leaned back against my headboard, feeling more relaxed than I ever had in my bed, even with the bruise along my side that burned as I settled into the mattress.
“Kind of. Between the tattoos and the muscles, I didn’t exactly peg you for a romantic. Half of these books are about love, but the other half makes more sense.”
I arched a brow, challenging her. “Oh yeah? Which book would you say most closely suits me, then?”
Her fingers dipped in and out of uneven spines before she pulled one out. “This. This one seems most like you. ”
I swiped my tongue over my bottom lip and crossed my arms over my chest. “That is possibly my least favorite on the shelf, Rose. Come on, try again.” Her forehead wrinkled, and then she turned and started searching for something opposite the George Orwell one she pulled. I may have excelled in business topics, which usually went hand-in-hand with politics, but I absolutely hated politics. If I wasn’t so good at business, I’d hate it, too. That particular book she pulled was a gift from Dean, ironically, as a gag gift. I remember chucking it right at his head one Christmas when I was maybe ten or so, probably pissed it wasn’t a journal for the hobby I did have an interest in.
“This.” She pulled out the one of Ovid again, the one she first gravitated toward earlier.
“ Now you see me.” I winked, and her cheeks blushed over.
“So, you’re a romantic, then?”
“I’ve never had anyone to be romantic with.” I paused, looking her over. The way her hair fell over her shoulder begged to be wrapped around my fist, but I also wanted to see it on my pillowcase or draped over my chest. Romantic wasn’t exactly how I was feeling at that moment. Feral was probably closer. “I guess we’ll find out?”
Her head cocked to the side. “Will we? We haven’t really talked about what we are yet. What if I don’t want to be with you?”
I groaned. “Don’t make me get up, I finally got comfortable.” My fists curled in, thinking back to how great it felt to punch August and watch the color drain from his face. How much I’d do it all over again if anyone ever touched her or tried to, let alone call her anything other than her real goddamn name .
“I’m serious.” She moved to the edge of the bed across from me and sat.
“If you think you are anything other than mine, then maybe I should be second-guessing your sanity, Rose.” Her lips rolled in as she glanced at the tattoos covering my arms. I knew which one she was so fixated on, but decided to wait for her to ask me about it when that time came.
“So, if I tried to go on a date…” Her voice aimed to taunt me, and it was fucking working.
My eyes flared at the thought, and my knuckles grew tight. “Try to date them, babe. See what happens to them the next day. The only man you’ll be seeing is me. Let me make that clear to you now. I want you, and I know you want me. I am yours just as much as you are mine. I believe that makes you my girlfriend or whatever else you want to call it, does it not?”
“Girlfriend. Mmm.”
“ Rose. ”
She pouted. “You weren’t even going to ask?”
I wrapped my arm around her waist and pulled her back to me, letting us fall together until we were lying on the bed. Her hair rested on my chest without an ounce of resistance from her as she cuddled against me. I usually wasn’t in a position to have to ask for things, I just took it. Getting her permission was going to be the sweetest gift I’d ever received.
“Rose, will you be my girlfriend?” She angled her head along my chest, her vibrant, blue eyes locking onto mine .
And then she flipped, propping her body up by her elbows. “I don’t know, I’ll have to think about it.”
I groaned again. “Rose, don’t play games with me. Not about us.”
“I thought you liked games.” Her smile grew wicked.
My finger dipped beneath her chin. “I absolutely do not enjoy the games you are thinking about.”
Rose shrugged a shoulder. “Maybe you don’t know the games I’m thinking about.” She bit down on her lip, and my cock jumped in my sweatpants. She wriggled further up, her face becoming level with mine. I slid my fingers through her dark hair until my hand cupped the back of her head in my palm.
Her lips brushed my jawline as she whispered my name, a deep growl coming from my chest as she moved her hand down toward my waistband. She was so soft, every curve of her body against mine—so fucking perfect. I wanted her to be mine in all forms of the word, but something that had been absent from her file was what Jim stated through the phone in the words of August Coleman. He had gone to her house to pop her cherry . The most vulgar terminology for what he’d intended to do to my Rose.
If anyone was going to touch her, to put their cock in her, it was going to be me. I’d fill her so full, she’d never want for another man. I’d be her first and her last, and I’d mark every single inch of her body, claiming her piece by piece until she knew she was only mine, too. As much as I wanted to pump her so fucking full of my cum that it would be dripping down her shaking thighs for days on end, I couldn’t bring myself to do it—to take her on a day August planned for her to lose her virginity to him .
Rose seemed to notice my inner turmoil. “If you weren’t in pain, with that—” Her fingers skirted away from my sweatpants, splaying just above my ribs.
I pressed my head back against the headboard and stared up at the ceiling before rolling my head to the side to look at her again. “Rose, I would love nothing more than to take you up against every surface known to man. And make no mistake, I will do that. Very soon. But that isn’t going to start today.” I shifted on the bed to show her I could move—I wasn’t that fragile. Not even the injury on my side would hinder the things I’d do to her—the ways I’d claim her. And there were plenty of ways I’d been imagining doing exactly that over the last couple of weeks. Possibly even longer than that.
Her fingers tapped lightly along the bruise, and her adorable face scrunched up. “Did Jasmine tell you?” Her mind seemed to go elsewhere—to find other excuses for why I refused to strip her bare and pound into her right then and there.
It startled me from my thoughts. “What?”
“Did she tell you I was a virgin, or did you hear it from someone else? Maybe at the party”—Her nose crinkled—“August’s friends said something, didn’t they? I can tell by the way you’re looking at me right now. It’s like you pity me.” She acted like it was something that was casually spoken about, and she’d been privy to those discussions. The way her brain went straight to August’s friends being the culprits behind me knowing about the status of her body brought me right back to that parking lot. I should’ve bashed all of their heads in while I had the chance. Or possibly before then, at August’s house when he acted as if she were a common prize he could so easily take if only he wanted to.
I should have drowned the fucker at his party the second he opened his disgusting mouth.
I leaned into her and kissed her forehead, then pulled her gaze up higher, gripping her jaw, making sure she’d hear every word and see the look on my face when I told her. “I don’t pity you, Rose. The look you’re seeing is me trying to tell my dick to chill the hell out. Trust me, I want you, babe. I want you so bad it fucking hurts. But I refuse to do all the depraved things I want to do to you here, in this house, tonight.” I reached over to tuck her hair behind her ear, not missing the pout she was giving me. My girl wanted me, and while I wouldn’t fuck her tonight or in this hellhole, there were plenty of other things I had on my mind that I’d be able to live with doing to her. “You deserve better for your first time.”
She glanced down at the noticeable bulge in my pants, and I moved my hand to push it down, not that it stayed. She smirked back up at me, taking my word for everything it was at that moment—the truth.
“So, it was Jasmine who told you then?” I just nodded, knowing the alternative was telling her about August and the way I beat him bloody minutes before meeting her here. A white lie now was no different than not telling her about the way I’d been following her for years. The way I knew more about her than I should, and the way our history together dated back more than just that one high school class .
As much as I believed I knew everything about her, I was discovering quite the opposite was true. For instance, on Thanksgiving night, she’d snuck out of her house and walked down the road, in the snow, carrying leftovers for a neighbor who I later found out was a squatter. I went back the next day and offered the neighbor a job at one of our firms just out of town, gave them a paid-for bus pass to get there and back, and once I left, I called the bank and bought the property. That neighbor was about to receive a truckload of furniture and a team of contractors that were going to put the place back together for her—fix the roof, the broken doors, all of it. Once I realized Rose had been taking care of her poor neighbor for almost a year—feeding and clothing her when she’d fallen on hard times after her abusive ex-husband left her there to rot—I knew I had to step in.
That burden didn’t need to fall on Rose’s shoulders. And I made sure it wouldn’t anymore.
“Briggs, did you hear me?”
“Hmm?” My fingers were playing with the ends of her hair against my pillow. All that was left to see was her hair wrapped around my fist like I’d envisioned earlier, but that would have to wait.
“You don’t have a TV in here, so can you read to me?”
“You want me to read to you?” It was dark out, and her body was starting to curl in on the mattress against me even more. She yawned, and her cheeks pinked over in sleepiness. It was too fucking cute.
“Yeah, read to me. Please.”
I leaned over and placed a soft kiss on the top of her head, and she squirmed against my chest. “Anything for you, Rose.”