Red Flag, Green Light (Red Flags and Rogue Brothers #1)

Prologue

Some people say I’m insane. I respectfully ignore their opinion.

Mars

Coercion is wrong.

I know this. You know this. Everyone knows this.

Blackmail is illegal. No one is a fan of extortion. Or threats. Or infringements upon their free will.

This is common sense, I fear. It is abundant. It is obvious. It is agreed upon unanimously in the minds of nearly every half-sane person—and even, on occasion, it is agreed upon in the minds of every less-than-half-sane person, too.

Like me, of course.

But, well.

As with most things in this world—i.e. grammar, math…nepotism—there are exceptions to the rules.

And for this? There is one itty-bitty, teeny-weeny, tiny-whiny exception…

Allow me to explain the grand, grand wonder that is…?Book Girlies.?

Ahh, book girlies.

Shuffling a deck of cards, I watch the live footage spread out across my triple monitors, grin, and sigh.

I adore book girlies.

Book girlies—all kinds, not just the dark romance angels who support my and my dear brother’s livelihood—are nuts .

Once upon a time, I had the honor of talking to a sweet young woman fond of historical fiction, high fantasy, and documentaries.

Heavy stuff. Realistic heavy stuff, no less.

I don’t know how she ended up in my inbox, or why she felt the need to tell me all about her current read in extreme detail, but I have one particular line she sent me immortalized on my computer—as a motivational poster I made in Canva.

Slapped across a sunset photo in charming, swirling font, it reads: I’m not really sure if it’s incest or not, but I am sure it’ll be fine.

Graciously, it was fine. I know this, because I emailed her back, asking that she keep me abreast on the status of whether or not the main characters—who did not know they were related—had a Princess Leia and Luke Skywalker moment.

Every so often these days, I’ll email her to ask about what she’s reading. Once, I simply sent her a link to “Sweet Home Alabama” and said I hoped the song wouldn’t end up on her current-read’s playlist.

But, anyway, I’m about to lose the plot.

Let’s see…where was I…oh yes .

Book Girlies.

Book girlies are the carrot cake of the world.

They see coercion and say, “Yes.” They go feral for things that people should maybe not go feral for. Like. I don’t know. The utter disregard of boundaries.

For true book girlies, it doesn’t even need to be unhinged or dark . It just needs to be an implication of love that supersedes sense.

Did that male lead who couldn’t get over his ex—even after she’d moved on—crash her wedding in a grand, public, embarrassing gesture (which confused her endlessly and emotionally manipulated her into choosing him over her groom)? You bet. Are the book girlies eating it up? Oh, one million percent.

He just loved her sooo much, they say. Or, wildly, they’ll declare: I wish someone cared that much about me!

Crazy how we all want someone to care about us to the point of emotional manipulation. Just… love me until I lose the ability to access my common sense. Everyone wants it. And I get it. It is ever so, so, so, very exhausting to think .

Don’t tell me you don’t agree. You’ll only be lying to yourself.

And me. Which is rude. If you chase after entertainment, like television, as a means to relax and refresh, you are chasing after the spare few moments you can get to shut your frontal lobe down.

Thinking is tiring. And with overthinking on the rise, it’s no wonder we’re all so desperate.

Everyone, everywhere, is searching for the peace that comes when there’s silence upstairs. When someone else can be trusted to take care of everything because they care that much about us…to such an extent they are willing to do anything for us.

No one wants a stalker…but everyone wants their lover to remember their favorite foods and keep track of their schedule and show up right when they need them most. So, perhaps, it’s safe to say no one wants a stalker…without consent.

Now, let me make myself immaculately clear: I am half the body of the dark romance author known as Rouge .

Rouge is the amalgamation of my brother, Jupiter Caelum Rogue, and me, Mars Cygnus Rogue.

Rouge is what happens when you see that your brother has a gift with words…

and you see that you do not aspire to put pants on every day.

The process we’ve perfected is painfully simple: I developmentally edit the stories that Jove drafts.

Jovey-wovey writes the plot. I add the spice. And finish the chapters he didn’t know how to. And fix a few hundred of his misplaced breakdowns…

I also manage the face of our business, the accounts, the marketing, the readers, and our editor. Just to make sure I’m pulling my weight. Certainly not because I behave poorly whenever I get bored and the time between editing projects is prime for boredom.

We are in the business of stalkers, and age gaps, and kidnappers, and morally gray leads who show love via stab wounds.

I am a biased party on the “pro” side of “no boundaries.”

I am also kind of mental, even on my best days.

But I?

I am not alone.

Because my darling book girlies understand.

The more book girlies I meet through emails and fanmail, the more I wonder if we’re less an exception and more the rule.

With a satisfied sigh, I spin a single playing card between my fingers and watch my security camera footage, which is pointed at my next-door neighbor’s house.

I only have a few cameras, all of them directed at key locations where it concerns my neighbor.

One focuses on her kitchen, which she rarely uses.

Another on her sliding glass living room door, where she works and reads.

The rest keep track of her backyard and porch, where the majority of her plant horde thrives.

Here, in small town Bandera, West Virginia, we are the only two houses tucked away on this corner of the street, and, for reasons unknown, whoever made that decision also made the decision to give Ceres’s house sliding glass doors that are perfectly visible from the vantage point of camera number four.

To clarify what I mean when I say I only have a few cameras , I have eight.

Because eight is a great number.

It’s one less than nine, which is my big brother Jovey’s favorite number. It is also the number of stacks on the tableau in FreeCell Solitaire, AKA my favorite Solitaire. FreeCell has a ninety-nine percent chance of solvable probability. And what can I say? I prefer to play games I know I can win.

Now, if you’re not a book girlie, first of all, why are you here? And second of all, I know what you’re thinking.

Mars, it is undeniably illegal to monitor your pretty neighbor like this, regardless of your opinion on boundaries and your assumed statistics concerning how many people share your opinion. Not only is it illegal, it is disturbing. What is wrong with you?

Well, well, well, allow me to present my case to you, the minority, the real exception, the non- book girlie who is here for thoroughly confounding reasons. Probably to leave me a bad review. Even though I do swear I was immaculately clear regarding expectations…

Ahem. Anyway… What was the question?

Oh. Right. Yes.

What is wrong with me?

Loads. So many things are wrong with me that if I were to list them, it would take an entire novel, and I do not write books.

I edit them. That’s it. Comma here. Scene-you-skipped-because-you-didn’t-know-what-to-put there.

A touch of did you write this while you were drunk, my dear Jovey-wovey?

A splash of darling, that is not how a participle works…

I am a collage of broken pieces and mentally-unstable character traits.

So, in order to both maintain composure and quiet the ever-present voices in my head, I. have. hobbies .

Observe, hobby numero uno: cards. Card tricks. Card flourishes. Card games. Card collections. Cards .

My bedroom is wallpapered in the jokers from the decks I collect and stack on a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf behind my desk.

Hobby two! Carrot cake .

I bake it. Frequently. There is no food more perfect.

I grow the carrots fresh in a modest garden out back beside my trampoline spring through fall.

I do not add raisins. Adding raisins is truly illegal.

Wake up, sheeple. You think home security is illegal?

Don’t be ridiculous. It’s raisins . Always has been. Always will be. Get over it.

Hobby three…Ceres.

Ceres Dew Drop. Twenty-six years of age, soon to be twenty-seven. Birthday: March 22nd. Lover of words and staying indoors.

My angel of a neighbor with brilliant red waves.

The precious, mild-mannered, cottagecore creature moved in next door but a few years ago, and I’ve been hooked on her ever since my eyes met hers.

Insanity knows insanity.

It has a scent.

The first time that woman saw me and pushed back the flower-scattered waterfall of her hair, she smiled . She smiled, and I lost whatever remained of my mind as the saccharine aroma clogged my senses.

You see, me being cracked off my rocker isn’t new .

I have always been wildly unstable, messed up, wrong .

My eyes have always been an electric green that sparks when I get a terrible idea.

They’ve always been a little too wide, just like my smile, and it helps no one that my canines are ever so slightly fanged.

When I smile , the points show, and people shudder.

Wild dark hair, wilder eyes. I’ve been called an animal and a hazard just about as long as I can remember. Based on my appearance and general aura alone, I’ve been avoided and outcast my entire life.

I am not the sort of person pretty women in flowing garments smile oh-so-casually at.

Even without the rumors of my checkered past poisoning the mind of a new resident in town, I am a walking Rouge flag at first glance.

I know this for a fact.

Add in how I was practicing throwing cards into an apple upon my brother’s head that day. And…well…Ceres knew. Ceres knew not to explicitly lock eyes with me and smile as warmly and sweetly as she did.

Was she asking to become my impaired brain’s favorite hobby?

Let’s not go that far.

It is, after all, easier to assume statistically-charged opinions in large-scale pools where data is more readily available as averages and not rules .

I can easily make educated guesses concerning how a group will veer based on past demographic data.

I don’t get access to the same information for individuals, so making suppositions concerning their behavior trends is something that takes far more time and observation.

Hence the observation.

And after three years of careful observation, this is some of what I’ve learned:

Ceres Dew Drop, my enchanting flower, my enrapturing orchid, the darling of my bleeding heart, my beloved little goddess and delicate rose…

does not do much. She gardens. She reads.

She works online. Until recently, I didn’t know her job since her computer screen is irritatingly directed away from my cameras…

but I did know that she doesn’t have a career in town.

Because she does not go into town more than once a month. For groceries.

She stocks up, like a squirrel in winter, and leaves her house a thrilling maximum of fifteen times a year. In direct contrast, she appears to order new books every three days. Once, I charted a stint where she had new books coming to her front door every day for seventeen days straight.

I almost went over at around day fourteen to ask if everything was all right. But. Well.

It’s easier to love someone from afar when you’ve yet to calculate the chance of heart-breaking rejection, isn’t it?

I might be a maniac, but I really am just like other boys.

Wait, no. I’m pretty sure that, actually, the unknown frightens everyone, not just other boys .

And maybe, just maybe…that’s why Ceres also prefers to stay inside.

Coercion is wrong.

Blackmail is illegal.

Setting my card down, I put my attention on my third monitor and drop the tab with the camera footage showing Ceres’s plant-filled yard to bring up the chat with Rouge’s proofreader, Sara Pond.

Three messages. That’s all it took to change my life forever.

Rouge : Hey. What’s you’re address?

Sara : *your

Sara : 90 Sterling Rd, Bandera, WV XXXXX

Right. Next. Door.

Sara and Rouge have been working together for half a decade.

In honor of that, I planned to send her a little gift.

So I asked where she lived, assuming I’d have to explain myself.

As it stands, Sara has always been private concerning personal information.

All I knew until just last week was that she’s professional and experienced and thorough…

But also nuts.

Which, of course, were the qualifications I required when I sought to offload the final typo scan on someone else way back toward the beginning of Rouge’s career.

I burned through several proofreaders before finding Sara and upgrading her from proofreader to please find all the bad parts I stupidly missed and make the story five thousand times more marketable, thanks .

Sara’s chaos matches mine and my brother’s.

She understands us. Her reader comments on our books reflect my internal thoughts more often than not.

Her editor comments present angles I could never imagine.

The girlie is unhinged, and dear, and seemingly unwilling to pair her editing career with her real name.

Which means I have stumbled upon unintentional ammo.

So.

Again.

Blackmail. Wrong.

Coercion. Bad.

And neither are great options where it concerns getting someone to genuinely fall in love with you. But, still. I do like having the options available. Just in case.

As I drop the browser with our chat down into the taskbar, my attention flicks to the corner of my screen, where I have a virtual post-it note listing my very important goals for the year. Very important in that they simply must be completed as soon as possible, lest I die of anguish and/or agony.

Problem.

Goal number one is: Marry Ceres .

And in the realm of good, healthy real-world relationships—which is what I’d like us to have and what she absolutely deserves—that seems to be skipping a few steps.

…

Thank goodness for exceptions to the rules.