42. Rose
Chapter 42
Rose
“Live as brave men; and if fortune is adverse, front its blows with brave hearts.” ― Horace
T he amount of blinking one could do while staring at the same person, wondering when they were going to shift into someone else, was apparently limitless. Seconds passed like minutes as my mind failed to connect who was undoubtedly in front of me, who had brought her here, and mostly why she thought she could just walk into our home and start a conversation with me like it was all okay.
Something on my face must’ve twisted because she cleared her throat and angled her head, a look that reminded me of her son, the one I was madly in love with. The son she abandoned.
“You left him.” Those were the words I settled on. A heaviness settled in my chest as I thought about Briggs as a young boy, waking up one day to find his mother gone. Realizing days later, maybe even weeks later, that she was never coming back.
Yet, here she was.
Her brows pinched together. “Yes,” she answered with such a finite tone it caused my fist to clench under the table.
“You. Left. Him,” I repeated, like maybe she didn’t understand what I was saying. Her eyes darted toward the lake, a finger lacking any jewelry wiping beneath her eyelid. “Why are you here?”
The edge of her lip twitched. “I want to help.”
I picked my mug back up and glared at her. “We don’t need you.” I wasn’t even sure if that was true or not. All that mattered was the white-hot anger that boiled inside me at the audacity she had to just show back up in his life. Our lives.
“Dean told me you might.”
I rolled my eyes over the black rim of my mug. “Oh, right. Sure. So because you think you’re needed now, you magically feel justified to show up. What about when your son died? Where were you then?” She winced, the soft pink paint on her lips cracking with her frown. “You can’t just walk out of his life and come back in it like nothing happened. Like some kind of fucking hero.” My words came out clipped, my breaths between each word fewer and far between as I stared her down. “He was eight years old! How could you just—”
“I never wanted to leave,” she whispered, wiping more tears before they could fall to her thin cheeks. “He made me leave. He said if I didn’t, he would burn our house down with me and the b-boys in it. And when Beckett—” She sniffled and began taking deep breaths until she was recomposed. “When Beckett died, I came back. I came back, and Ben found me before I could go to his funeral. He warned me to stay away and said if I didn’t, he’d kill Briggs. I didn’t know he was going—”
“You did know. You told your friend that much.”
She shook her head as her lips trembled, then seemed to surrender as she nodded faintly. “Alright. You’re right. I did. But if you were in my shoes, you would have done what you could to protect your children. Wouldn’t you?”
I set my coffee down and wrapped the blanket around me a little more. “I would have taken my children with me.”
“And what if you were found?”
My eyes narrowed. “Briggs wouldn’t hunt me down and threaten to kill me or our kids.”
“Good.” Something seemed to shift in her eyes, most likely because she didn’t know what her own son was like.
I softened a fraction. “He’s a good man. He’s not like him. But if he were—if I’d been in your shoes as you asked—I would have taken my kids and run for as long as I could with them. I would have loved them and let them know I was never going to leave them, no matter what. ”
Her smile returned. “You’re better than me.” I wanted to retort that it wasn’t hard to do better than what she did. What she did was unforgivable. “Dean said my son loves you.”
“His name is Briggs, and I don’t think you get to call him your anything until he forgives you for what you did. If he ever does.” I leaned back in my chair. “Unless you aren’t waiting for him to get back.” I raised my brow with the question.
“I’m staying. For good. If you let me.”
“That isn’t up to me.”
“Isn’t it?” Her head cocked. So much like Briggs .
The awkward stare-down ended right as the door opened again, this time, the love of my life stepping out from…wherever he’d gone. All I knew was he didn’t look the least bit surprised to see his mother sitting there across from me.
“Rose.” He leaned down and kissed my forehead, the heady scent of citrus easing a modicum of my worry. Taking a seat beside me, he spread his legs wide and leaned back, one arm stretched over the back of my chair. He tilted his chin down in a half-nod to his mother. “Mom.” Pride spread over his mother’s face as she glanced at his protective posture. My fist tightened around my blanket. “I see you two have been…talking.”
“We have,” Victoria replied. “I like her. She reminds me of Margot. It’s almost serendipitous when your friend’s kid falls for yours. She would have been so happy to see you two like this, making a life of your own.” A pang of hurt crept through my rushing emotions.
His arm wrapped possessively around me, tugging and lifting me onto his lap like he sensed I needed him while ignoring most of what his mother said. “We stopped looking for you years ago. Imagine our surprise when you just showed up at the estate.” I angled myself on his leg, turning to wrap my arms around his neck where the ends of his hair were damp. I looked him over as he glared at Victoria, noting the gym clothes, the pushed-up sleeves of his jacket, and the traces of red on his fingers. Blood? Was he bleeding somewhere?
“Imagine my surprise when that estate was nothing but embers,” his mother countered. I tried not to show any shock, but what the actual hell?
“Weren’t you worried your ex-husband would see you there?” I asked, skipping right over why the estate was burned down. She ran from him, from her children, then just showed up and went straight back to her old home?
“I knew something was off by the way the iron gates were rammed into and the smoke billowing up into the sky—so, no.” She pursed her lips. “Ben isn’t the type to stick around when shit happens.”
“But he was.” I paused, glancing between the two of them. “He raised Briggs in the same house you abandoned him at.”
Another tear fell to her cheek, and she promptly wiped it away. She crossed her denim-covered legs as she shuffled in her seat. “I believe that was more so that I knew where to stay away from.”
I pressed two fingers to my temple and pinched my eyes closed against the mounting headache. “So, let me get this straight. Dean found you at the house that Briggs had just burned down and then I’m assuming Dean got permission to bring you here.” I eyed Briggs, and he responded by shrugging. “And you didn’t want to tell me what was happening? Were you trying to get yourself killed by going back there?” I tried to hold back on shrieking at him but failed.
He tucked a few strands of hair behind my ear, kissing my neck softly. “No, baby. Dean went ahead and cleared out the staff before he let me throw the match. We already knew Ben wasn’t there. Rhonda assured us of that.” I tried to reel back my anger, knowing he could have been shot at again, and I’d be left here without him. Left here to put together pieces of a puzzle that would have lost all meaning. “I’m sorry, baby. I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said low against the shell of my ear. I rolled my lips in and nuzzled into his hold on me, letting the warmth of his body spread through mine. He was hiding something, but there’d be time to argue about it later. Now wasn’t that time.
He jerked his chin toward his mother. “What made you come out of hiding? Why now?”
She looked between us both. “I was notified that my name was no longer on this house and was instead signed over and registered to a Rose Andrews.” She glanced at my empty ring finger. “I don’t think I missed a wedding, though.” Briggs’ jaw worked as he glared back at her.
“What?” I kept my voice low, but with how close his mother was as she sat across from us, I knew there was no way she hadn’t heard.
All anger was erased from his face as he stroked my cheek with his knuckles. “Sounds good, doesn’t it?” Briggs grinned, then redirected his full attention to his mother while my mouth hung open. “So because I signed it over to my future wife, you decided to come back?” As much as I wanted to strangle him for the awkward-as-hell interaction and more secrets he had yet to tell me, I loved hearing his last name with my first. It did sound good.
“I figured I would stop trying to hide and start trying to reconnect with my last living son, fear or no.”
If I thought he was angry at her before, I was wrong. “How exactly does a mother not attend her own son’s funeral yet come back thinking she can know about a wedding?”
My fingers slid into his hair, trying to ease the pain I knew was consuming him. “I-I thought he would kill you if I came.” Just like the first time she said it, it all came out so raw. It was hard not to sympathize with her—at being so torn over how to protect the children she left.
“Why. Now.”
“I want to correct my mistakes. I want to be involved in your life and in the one you’re making for yourself with Rose. I know I don’t deserve it—”
“No, you don’t,” I replied sternly, and Briggs gently squeezed my hip in recognition. I’d stand up for him any day.
“Right. Well. Let me at least try to help you take him down.”
Briggs rubbed the stubble along his jaw with his knuckles. “And how do you plan on doing that?
She leaned in on the table. “The same way I was going to try to all those years ago with her mother. Only this time, we won’t wait for a court date.”