Page 106 of My Rose

I cleared the damp hair from my forehead and turned along the hospital bed, careful not to move Briggs’ arm and the wires attached to him. Dean was sitting with his head propped up on his hands, his forehead wrinkling as he watched me readjust myself. I was still in the dress from the night before, only now, it had red splotches coating my chest and abdomen.

“Here.” He passed me a cup, and as I sniffed it, he chuckled. “It’s just water.”

“Was hoping it was something stronger.” I took a sip, then set the cup down on the table beside the bed. “Thanks.”

“No problem.” His thumbs twiddled together. “I didn’t know…fuck.” He scraped his hands down his face, then spread his arms along the back of the couch as he leaned back. “I didn’t know you were the girl. I never got names or faces, just a story.” I watched him for a bit longer as he peered out the window where the morning sun was rising. “He gets them too, you know.”

“What?”

Dean jutted his chin at me as he turned back around. “The nightmares. Kind of hard not to hear you shouting about a fire when I’m sitting right here.”

I threaded my fingers through Briggs’. “He told me he was there.” I assumed, at this point, that Dean knew exactly what I was talking about. He knew what Briggs had gone through, so surely he knew what his business partner had done. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure. Anything.”

I started tracing the vines along Briggs’ arm, focusing on them more than my question that I already knew the answer to. “What was Briggs’ mother’s name?”

“Victoria,” Dean replied.

I sighed. “She went by Vi, right?”

Dean blinked. “Yeah. How’d you—”

“Rose,” Briggs murmured, moving his hand to splay across my stomach as he tried to pull me to his front.

My chest swelled, and I turned to face him, being less careful about the wires this time. I stared up at him like I thought I’d neverhear his voice again—because that’s what I thought the moment the gun went off. The moment he turned to take the bullet that had been meant to kill me.

“Baby,” he whispered, cupping my cheek with his hand and brushing away the tears with his thumb. “I’m okay.”

“You’re not okay. You were shot,” I replied. He chuckled, then coughed, which made him shudder in pain. “You need to rest more and don’t move an inch. The doctor said—”

“I don’t care what the doctor said.” He moved to shuffle down lower, then grasped my chin and pressed his lips to mine. “I’ll move if I want to.”

Dean cleared his throat. “Maybe not too much, yeah? Unless you want to rip open all those sutures they put in you.”

Briggs held my gaze and smiled at me. “Rose could have done a better job.”

I rolled my eyes. “Please. I was freaking out watching you being rolled away from me. My hands would have been too shaky to do anything.”

“I heard you performed CPR until they arrived.” His thumb brushed my bottom lip. “I think you would have done a great job.”

I looked at the gauzy white bandage that covered an almost fatal shot. “It should have been me with the battle scar, not you.”

His eyes darkened. “No, it should have been him.” His eyes snapped to Dean. “Where is he?” Briggs started to lift from the bed, grunting in pain but still moving until he was two beats away from standing.

“You have to stay still and rest,” Dean urged.

“I can rest when he’s dead,” Briggs growled. “Where the fuck is he?”

I put a hand on the part of his chest that wasn’t injured, drawing his attention back to me. “He ran after I grabbed your gun and tried to shoot him.”

His brows shot up. “You did what?”

“I thought he killed you, and I was so mad and hurt that I grabbed your gun from the floor and tried to shoot him. Turns out I have terrible aim.” I laughed, whereas Briggs did not.

“That’s reckless, Rose. You could have been hurt. He could have shot you.”

I shrugged. “He already tried to shoot me, remember? And you blocked him, you big idiot. Why the hell would you take a bullet for me?”

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