My Rose

32. Rose

Chapter 32

Rose

“One word frees us of all the weight and pain in life, that word is Love.” ― Sophocles

I f it weren’t for the insane desire I had for Briggs every time he so much as looked or breathed in my direction, I’d think him insufferable. I’d tried to tell him I loved him several times now, but each time, he silenced me before I could get another word out. Or, really, any words out. Maybe he knew what I was going to say, and he either didn’t feel the same way—which I doubted based on the blossoming rose he tattooed on his chest, right over his heart, for me—or it was worse than that. Maybe he silenced me repeatedly because he knew and didn’t believe me. He saw that I was so into someone else and knew that had gone on for a while before I got to know him.

Perhaps he thought I was just caught up in the moment, losing my virginity and falling in love because I romanticized things and thought I was supposed to love the man I slept with for the first time.

I guess we were both wrong, then.

I thought one thing had always been certain in my life. I’d believed, with every fiber of my being, that August Coleman was my first love. My only love. The idealized version of him had been the love of my life for so many years in my head that I believed we could have a future, that we could be happy and so ineffably in love, almost like a fairy tale. But I’d never been more wrong in my life, and I knew that now because of what I felt for Briggs Andrews. The way his voice melted me from the inside out, the way his touch grounded me yet also sent me overboard, and the way a look from him was never simply that—it was always so much more.

He meant so much more.

I was in love. Real love. The kind you only think you’re going to find but never actually do. The kind that takes control of all your senses and drives you crazy, yet also makes you feel whole, complete in ways nothing and no one else could ever make you feel again .

I loved Briggs Andrews, and whether he wanted to know it or not I’d never been more terrified while also wholly exhilarated in all my life.

Briggs’ fingers brushed my shoulder as we sat on the couch, covered only from the waist down by the throw blanket we now shared. My body was beginning to feel sticky, if not from the amount of times I’d been covered in bodily fluids, then definitely by the strawberry topping he spread all over me. I felt less-than-pretty, but he still couldn’t stop touching at least some part of me.

“Where are we?” I finally asked, setting my empty plate and fork down on the coffee table and turning to face him. If I was not only going to be with him but be in love with him and possibly have a life-long future with him, then there were a lot of things we had to air out. And since he didn’t want to hear me tell him that I loved him, he’d have to indulge whatever else came from my mouth.

“Remember that picture you saw with me and Beck and my parents?”

“Yeah, the one with your dimple.” The one he decided to pop at my remark. It should be illegal to look as good as he did after a night of hardly any sleep—no bags under his eyes, no creases from how he slept up against me plastered to his face or toned arms, and hell, even the still-growing five o’clock shadow looked incredible on him.

“That’s the one. This is that house—the vacation home. Only, I had it renovated recently.”

“Oh, was something broken?”

He shuffled forward and put his half-empty plate down on the table. “I guess you could say that. ”

“Briggs.” I rubbed my palms over my face, trying not to start with I love you as a lead into what I was going to say. He wouldn’t want to hear it anyway. “Can you just tell me why without making me want to ask more questions? You’re doing the vague thing again.”

He smirked. “Alright. Only if you promise not to run out the door.”

I glanced at the stained-black wooden door, and when I moved my gaze back to Briggs, his brow arched. “Now you’re scaring me.”

“Come. I’ll show you what I mean.” He stood from the couch, slipping on his sweatpants before holding out his hand for me to go with him. I wasn’t sure where my clothes were—probably still in the car—so I walked hand-in-hand with him while my other hand held the blanket around my chest. The house was large, but not anywhere close to the size of his estate back in Shuster, which I was assuming we weren’t in judging by the size of the lake you could see through any room along the back of the house—each room exposed to the lake with floor-to-ceiling windows. We passed an open sitting area with bookcases covering three walls stuffed full of books, the remaining wall with the same floor-to-ceiling windows complete with French doors in the middle that led out to a balcony.

“I didn’t renovate every room. I figured you’d like that one as it was.” He grabbed my elbow and pulled me to a room across from the sitting area as I blinked back at the bookshelves, wondering why it would matter if I liked it or not, but the fact that I could picture Briggs in the chair by the door, reading Ovid, made my heart start to flutter in my chest .

When I turned back around, I had to blink several times to understand what I was seeing. “This…this was your room?”

“Yeah.” He turned on the lights, though the two windows beside both twin beds let in enough light from the front of the house, the morning sun pooling along the warm, wooden floors. “Mine and Beck’s.”

Briggs leaned against the doorframe, crossing a leg casually over the other as I walked around the room. It was smaller than his bedroom at the estate and looked like young boys still occupied it on their vacations—one half of the room covered with airplane memorabilia and the other full of worn books and plain navy colors, complete with a small writing desk beside the bed.

I reached for one of the broken-in journals on his desk. “Yours?”

He nodded, remaining still as I flipped through the words of a young boy leading into his teen years, all poetic in nature. “These words are beautiful, Briggs.”

“I had a lot to let out,” he said simply like anyone could write as well as him.

The inspiration from Ovid wasn’t as clear as I would have thought. “When did you start writing?”

His eyes grew heavy as they glazed over the journals on the desk. “Ever since I could. Probably five or so?”

The one I’d picked up must’ve been from a later time. His penmanship was spectacular, and the words flowed almost harmonically. “Would you let me sing one of these for you one day? You can say no if you—”

“No.” He shook his head, and I frowned until he continued, “Of course, I’d really like that. Truly, Rose.”

I set the journal back down and glanced around the room. “You two were so…different.”

“In more ways than you’d think.”

I walked up to the airplane figurine resting on what was once Beck’s nightstand, picturing the line of differences between the two. I wondered if he also believed he was a monster or if he liked the life he would have had. “He really did love planes, didn’t he?”

Briggs chuckled. “Yeah. Too much. You can touch whatever you want in here, by the way, if that wasn’t already obvious. The whole house, really. All yours.”

I blushed and hesitantly picked up the metal plane. Underneath was the name Beck ett carved into the paint, making it chip as I rubbed my thumb gently over it. “I’m sorry, I should know better.” I set it down, seeing Briggs tense up, but he wasn’t watching what I was doing. “Are you okay?” I whispered, following where his attention fell with light steps.

In the corner of the room, beside the bed that must’ve once been Briggs’ as a young boy, sat a small picture frame. I squinted and got closer, feeling the room turn icy as I bent down and picked it up.

“This…” I was speechless. My thumb rubbed along the glass of the frame as I clutched the blanket around me tighter, then glanced over my shoulder to find Briggs right at my side, taking the frame from me with gentle fingers .

"When…how…" My mind went blank, yet spun like a merry-go-round all at once, searching for a reason. Photoshop, maybe? “Was this fabricated?”

The insinuation took Briggs aback, his forehead scrunching with concern as he looked me over and put the frame back in my still-open hand.

“No, Rose. I wish I could tell you differently, but this is real.”

“I…I don’t understand.” My thumb touched the edge of where a little girl stood, with bright blue eyes and dark brown hair, a wide smile plastered on for the photo. Right behind that girl stood a boy with light blond hair and vibrant green eyes that still danced the same way while his focus fell on the girl in front of him, that familiar dimple resting in the same spot as he smiled anyway for a picture he didn’t care to look at the photographer for. At least ten other children stood around the two, but all I saw was them.

Because they were us.

“I don’t remember this,” I finally got out, my breathing turning in a way that made Briggs wrap his arm around me, steadying me as he looked down at the photo with me.

“I know,” he admitted. My jaw slackened as he continued, “The first therapist you had after the fire said you didn’t seem to remember much from that year besides the fire. He said you clung to every detail of it like a lifeline and could write all about it but couldn’t recall your teacher’s name, what school you went to, what your classroom looked like, or…”

“You? ”

He nodded. “Not just me, but yeah. I guess I was part of the unlucky batch your trauma took from you.”

He made it sound like I had no choice, and for that, I was grateful. I didn’t feel the need to apologize like I normally would have. Instead, I only felt like crying from the unfairness of it all, from the amount of questions I now had bubbling to the surface from a blacked-out memory. Or several memories—who knew how much I’d forgotten and never been told? I couldn’t fault him for not telling me before, either. He looked somber enough, his fingers wrapping around my shoulder and pulling me closer to his side.

“How did you know what my therapist said?” I knew the answer somehow before he could confirm it. He’d told me he’d been following me for longer than he should have, and with his bank account, I’m sure he could afford to buy doctor’s notes, even though that was illegal and a breach of doctor-patient confidentiality.

His hold on me tightened. “I think you know exactly how.”

I rolled my watery eyes. “Was it you who personally followed me, or did you hire people?”

He smiled grimly back at me, one that didn’t reach his eyes. “I used to outsource it, but—”

“Used to?” I tried to keep my voice from shaking as I continued. “What, ever since you were a young kid, you’ve been paying people to watch me?”

“No. That didn’t start until we were in high school. You were homeschooled after the”—his jaw worked as he struggled to find his next words—“after the fire until you started back up again in middle school, but we didn’t go to the same one. I found you in high school and you looked right past me like you didn’t remember me at all. So, I looked into it.”

“And then, what? You decided you weren’t going to stop?”

He shook his head and took a seat along the edge of the navy blue bed. “You might want to sit down for—”

“I don’t want to sit!” I bit out. “I want you to tell me everything you know because right now, I feel like I’ve been lied to for a lot longer than I thought possible, and that isn’t fair. I get that you maybe didn’t want to trigger a trauma response or something, but that doesn’t help when you lo—”

He held up his hand, and my slightly misguided anger at the cruelty of the accident that took more than I knew from me turned to rage fully centered on him as he silenced me. “Please, don’t tell me that. Wait and see how you feel until after I’m done. Just, please don’t run away. Don’t run from this, no matter how you feel after.”

I took a few deep breaths and closed my eyes, stilling the swirling, uneasy sensation in my gut and head. My speech therapist always told me that words had power, but something else I learned was that sometimes you needed to be silenced to truly hear. To listen. That first year or so that I struggled to regain my voice had proven the worth, the value, of your ears. “Okay.”

“Okay?” He didn’t sound convinced, even glancing at the door, probably thinking he should lock me in here with him. But he’d never do that. He may do illegal things and get away with it, but he’d never harm me.

I nodded slowly. “I’m ready. ”

His chest and the rose that lay there expanded on a deep inhale. I fixated on it as he began, “You and I shared that classroom. The teacher, Ms. Hudson, used to lightly joke about how we’d end up together one day because I never took my eyes off you. Even as a young kid, you were my everything, just in the ways a young boy could see the world—you were the entire thing to me. She paired us up on reading days, and we sat next to each other in class and ate lunch together. And then, one day, the class had all our parents come in to talk about their careers, not that mine showed. Your mother came in and talked about her career, and right before she left, you dragged me over to her and introduced me to her as your future husband, which made Ms. Hudson laugh, along with your mother and half the class that could hear you. But I didn’t laugh. I took it for what it was—the truth. Your face turned all red, and you got so mad, you punched me in the arm and ran back to your seat, but your mother leaned into my ear and told me that must mean you love me a whole bunch.” He grinned up at me, even though his face was beginning to pale over. My heart sank to my stomach as he gave me a minute to think before he continued, rubbing his knuckles along his stubbled jaw. “It’s kind of funny how even I forgot that part until just now. You’ve always been such a little viper with your tongue.”

I narrowed my eyes on him. “You’re not done. Keep going.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose, squeezing his eyes shut. “Okay.” His eyes popped open as he resettled himself along the bed, sitting up straighter. “That night, I went home and told my mom all about career day and, well, you. And then my father came home. We sat and ate dinner in mostly silence, like usual, until my father asked what we were talking about before he entered the kitchen. Even back then, I didn’t share things with him. Not like Beck did. I knew he couldn’t ever be trusted, but as an eight-year-old kid, you can’t always conceal things that well. Sometimes, you slip. As my mother told him, she omitted your name and just said some girl in his class , like that’s all you were to me, and I corrected her without realizing what she was doing. But I realized why she did that, eventually.” His fingers pressed to his temple, his eyes now unable to meet mine while my palms grew cold with a sweat I couldn’t control. “My father ended dinner soon after and told me to get in the car. He asked me questions, like what your name was because all he’d heard was Fields , what you looked like, and what I liked about you so much, all the while I pointed him in the direction of your house, knowing you lived right next to the school we went to. I used to watch you walk home every day while I sat waiting for my mother in the car line. I’ve always been watching you, Rose. There’s not a single fucking day of my existence where I wasn’t concerned with where you were and how you were. You’ve always been on my mind.”

My legs grew weak, and I finally moved to sit beside him on the bed, piecing together the things that he was saying—his age, the time frame, and the time of day he went to my house while the image of a black SUV hung like a delicate thread in my memories, along with the sounds of gunshots and then…then the fire that still marked my skin. The mark Briggs made a point to kiss or touch any time he could as if validating he loved all parts of me.

Or felt guilty.

“Please keep going,” I whispered. “I need to know. ”

He nodded, glancing at the door once more before staring down at his lap. “I thought we were going to have a simple talk with your mom. I thought he was going to make light jokes as he introduced himself like other parents did when they heard their kids were infatuated. You know, small town, friendly things. But, when we pulled up to your house, he told me to stay in the car.” His hands twisted in his lap, his knuckles turning white with the force. “Minutes later, I heard gunshots, and then your house burst into flames all along the back. My father came running out no more than a minute later and sped away without saying a word. I remember trying to leave the car, trying to roll the window down to jump out, all while he threatened me and told me if I ever spoke a word of what we did, he’d kill me like he did you and your family.”

A lump formed in my throat, tears streaking my cheeks as that night flashed through my mind. The grandfather clock, the flames tearing into my side, waking up in the hospital, unable to speak, feeling blank and listless.

“I remember sobbing so much that my father slapped me and locked me in my room, forcing my brother to sleep in a guest room for a few nights until I could calm down.” His chest expanded on a ragged breath as his hands slid down his face. “I didn’t calm down until I knew you were alive. Until I knew you’d made it out somehow. When I got older, I hired people to follow you because I wanted to make sure you were safe. My father never knew you made it out of there alive, and if he did, then he must’ve lost interest in finding you and killing you. That’s why I told him you were nothing to me when he came into my room that day. That’s why I got mad at the party when Clarissa asked for your name, and you gave it to her, not knowing how big Clarissa’s mouth was and the fact that she’d use anything to leverage getting me back. I realized then how careless it had been to get close to you, but I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t stay away from you. And then I fell in love with you.” My heart seized, my ribs caging it from exploding into a million pieces. “I fell in love with you, and now I can’t picture my life, any life, without you.”

I wasn’t sure what to do as my chest caved with the weight of his guilt, so I let my body do the talking. I moved to straddle him, allowing the blanket to fall and drape around us. His brows furrowed in confusion, mirroring my own, but one thing I knew for certain was that none of what he just admitted changed the fact that I fell in love with him just like he did me. “That rose on your chest”—my fingers moved to his forearms, tracing the thorny vines that wove in and out of the rest of his tattoos—“isn’t the only tattoo you got for me, is it?”

“No.” His hand took mine, our fingers tracing the vine together. He sucked in a sharp breath through his teeth as they reached higher, disappearing under another tattoo before reappearing around the clock on the back of his bicep.

He raised his arm, letting me look closer as we continued to trace together. “They…they twist around the clock?” I whispered my question as I tried to piece that part together. The framing of the clock appeared to be melting, but there were pieces where lines twisted together, thorns no longer on the vine but reappearing once more as they snaked up along his shoulder and his back, then finally, ended where a beautiful rose now bloomed, full of life and color. “Is it melting because of the fire?”

“Yes, Rose.”

“And the thorns—they aren’t there because that was a time before your guilt was too much? This is us up until the day it wasn’t anymore, right?” He gave a single nod. His poetry didn’t stop with his journals. Briggs’ skin was covered in it—beautiful images portraying his life as he lived it. The pain, the torture, the love, the loss—all there for anyone to see, but no one cared to notice.

“You were once my pain, my agony, the greatest thorn to pierce my flesh. But now, you are my soul, my reason, the most devastating love I could ever imagine. You have been my life’s greatest obsession and my heart’s greatest weakness, and I wanted you visibly carved into me just as badly as you have invisibly woven your way beneath my skin.”

“Oh, Briggs.” I held his face in my palms and kissed the tip of his nose, then pressed my forehead to his. “It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t do the things he did. You were a young boy who got stuck in a bad situation and was threatened to keep it all a secret. But the secrets have to end. I won’t run from you because I fell in love with you, too. Your secrets are safe with me, and I won’t turn my back on you because, as much as I probably shouldn’t, none of it changes how much I love you and still want you.”

His mother may have left his father and abandoned them in the process, probably because she discovered all the shady crap his father did and how vile he really was, and at some point, Briggs’ admission of who killed my parents would sink in further and eat at my subconscious until something was done. But for now, all I felt was the guilt that must’ve weighed on Briggs’ shoulders like his Atlas tattoo suggested, trying to survive in a world he wanted no part in. He consumed himself in guilt and tragedy by putting himself in the same boat as the man who murdered my parents. But Briggs wasn’t his father.

“There’s one more thing I have to tell you.”

I smoothed his stubble with my thumbs. “Tell me.”

“This house—it’s ours. Well, yours, really, but I was hoping you’d let me stay.”

I pulled back from him as his hands smoothed over my parted thighs. “I’m not understanding.”

“You remember that house you and your grandfather went to go look at—the one you were going to rent?”

“The one I am renting, you mean. I’m supposed to move in after Christmas.” I studied him as a smile grew on his face. “You followed me there, too?”

“No. Didn’t have to. I own that house. But those papers you signed were an agreement to let me sign this house over to you.” His hands trailed up to my hips, then my waist. “You asked if something was broken in this house, and I couldn’t deny that because it had felt broken without you in it. So, the day I took you to the lake, I made a few phone calls. My father thinks I got rid of this house a long time ago, but I never could let it go. Instead, I turned it into our future.”

“You were banking on me falling in love with you, weren’t you? ”

“When you don’t have much going for your future and spend years dreading it, then find the one thing that turns that all around…yeah. I was definitely banking on it.”

I looked around the room left untouched. “What did you do to it?”

“Renovated the living spaces and our bedroom, the exterior has been stripped and redone—or, mostly—and added things to make it function completely off-grid. We have no neighbors close by, and also now have a better security system than the White House.”

“The White House has personnel guarding the perimeter and the inside,” I pointed out, then leaned back to look through the window, seeing nothing beyond the trees and driveway.

“Sure does,” he agreed, grinning back at me. “There’s at least a dozen security personnel scattered throughout the land. For now, at least.”

“Briggs…I don’t know if I can live with people watching me every day, all day long. How am I supposed to finish school?”

“Your school is about an hour from here, but I can drive you there when you have classes, or you can take whatever car you want from the garage, and someone will drive behind you to make sure you’re safe. And when you’re ready to get a job at a museum—if you still want to work, of course, you don’t really need to—”

I lightly punched his arm right over one of his Latin quotes. “I’m working.”

He shrugged. “Doesn’t surprise me, my little viper.” He kissed my jaw, brushing some of my hair away from my face. “I’ve already talked to the director at The Met. He’s very interested in you and your passion for Greek and Roman artifacts. They were actually looking for a specialist when I called.”

I froze as his thumb trailed over my bottom lip. “You can’t be serious.”

He reached back down and gripped my ass, making me gasp. “Deadly serious, Rose.”

“I can’t believe you called the director. How do you even have their number?”

He smirked. “We’ve hosted a few Christmas parties there for VanAndrews.”

“Right…you’re not making any of this up, are you? This isn’t some joke?”

“Not a joke. All true. I take care of and protect what’s mine, and you said you love me, so I’m going to assume you agree to be mine.”

“I did say that, huh?” I let my fingers trace the lines of the rose on his chest. “What about you? You’re mine, too. Are people going to start following you around?”

Briggs reached for my breasts, cupping them in his hands, his thumb making my nipples pebble under his touch. “No, baby, I think I can handle myself. It’s you who needs protection.”

“Apparently, I’ll need a lot more of it with how often you want to be inside me.” I gritted my teeth together, ignoring the way my body practically hummed in his hands as his lips grazed mine.

“A fight for another time.”

I rolled my eyes, a heady mix of annoyance cloaked by pleasure as my stomach began to clench under his artful hands. “You can’t expect me to hide from your father for…however long this lasts. ”

He arched a brow, then leaned in and took my nipple into his mouth, biting it roughly between sweeps of his tongue and lips. By the time he stopped, I was nothing more than putty in his hands. “No, I don’t. I’m going to work something out. Because this”—He kissed my forehead—“this is forever, Rose baby. You and me—we’re forever.”