Page 19 of My Rose

She just sighed, seemingly exhausted by the thought of August. “No. He was busy.” She sounded unconvinced, just as I was. He was probably fucking Clarissa right at this very moment. Good fucking riddance to both of them. “For the next week, actually.” She let out a forced laugh.

“Right. Busy,” I repeated, staring at the way her hair rolled down her back while biting my tongue.

Rose turned her head over her shoulder. “What happened to your brother?” There was no malice. She was curious. She didn’t seem as informed about my family as the rest of the town, or really the world, was, and something about that was more relieving than it was frustrating.

“Plane crash.”

“I-I’m sorry. I didn’t…”

“Don’t apologize, Rose.” I cleared my throat, our eyes locking. “You had nothing to do with the plane, or his desire to fly them.” I normally grimaced just thinking about planes. Taking off. Landing.All of it sucked. But looking right into her eyes, which were almost the same shade as a clear day’s skies, I felt grounded.

“He flew planes?” Those eyes I was still staring at lit up almost like Beck’s did each time before he flew.

I glanced up at the clear sky, losing that grounding. “Yeah. He was obsessed with flying. Being in the air. Said the sky offered him a freedom that he couldn’t find on the ground.” Now that I filled his shoes, I understood the latter part, at least.

She nodded, following my gaze up before I snapped my attention back down. “I was young when I flew in a plane, so I don’t remember much about it. But you sound like you don’t like them that much.” She looked down at her shoes when I didn’t reply right away. I was too shocked to.

“You’re right. I don’t like them at all. Never have.” I didn’t need to glance at the dates on the stones to know it was almost the anniversary of her parent’s deaths, and herfriendcouldn’t make it. I wasn’t an expert on friendships, but if Dean needed me to go with him to his parent’s gravesite, I wouldn’t hesitate.

“I’m scared of guns,” she blurted and I shuffled against my jacket, feeling the metal along my hip. But she wasn’t looking there. She had no idea how unterrified of guns I was. “I just hate how loud they are. The feeling of them.” She seemed to shiver. “Really—”

“All of it?” I guessed, and she nodded.

We fell silent. She stared off at the graves, the grass, her shoes.

And I stared at her.

Rose’s head tilted toward Beck’s grave. “So um…howold…”

“How old was he?” My lips quirked up, the image of my brother on our last birthday together coming to life. “Fifteen.”

“Young.” I nodded. He was young. Too young to leave. In a way, I envied him for it. He never got the brutal end of our father’s wrath, had never been forced to do the things I knew he would be more capable of doing than me had he lived.

“I was seven when my parents…when they died.” Her fingers dug into my jacket again. Suddenly, her cheeks flushed, and she started apologizing while taking the jacket off. “I shouldn’t be wearing this.”

“It’s yours. I gave it to you,” I said, shaking my head and pushing my hands deeper into my pockets.

“But, we aren’t friends.” Her voice cracked on the words.

Some part of me wanted to nod, to turn away and let her go on believing that. But that part was overtaken by another part of me. A larger, more terrifying part that said, “I didn’t mean that.”

“No?” Her eyebrow quirked up, and she wiped at her cheeks where the tears had long since dried. She hadn’t shed another tear since I walked up that hill, and knowing that was almost more disturbing than thinking about my brother’s plane crashing to the ground all those years ago.

I shook my head. “No, I uh…I’m…”

“Sorry?” She stifled a giggle with her palm, then let it roll through her, merging into full-blown laughter. “I’m…”

“Also sorry?” The joke wasn’t lost on me. I’d told her to stop apologizing, and here I was, fucking apologizing. But it was her laugh that had me grinning like a dumb fool.

She held her hand out, only the tips of her fingers were visible beneath the long sleeves. I bit back the groan that threatened to escape as I took in the sight like I hadn’t been doing that the entire time. I couldn’t get over how good she looked in my jacket.

“Friends?” The word reeled my mind back from the gutter it was roiling in. The slight gap between her two upper teeth flashed before being covered by her full lips as she pressed them together. I wanted to pull that bottom lip down. Instead, I extended my arm and shook her hand, which was oddly becoming our new thing—light handshakes that left me feeling cold the moment they ended.

If she needed a friend—because August would damn sure never be that for—I’d be it. I justified it would be easier to make sure she was safe if I could get closer to her, and that was all I was doing. Ensuring my guilt wouldn’t eat me alive, I then offered her a ride home.

My passenger seat did look a lot better with her in it, after all.

After dropping her off, I couldn’t get her out of my head. It seemed like every time I tried, Rose came in and invaded every corner and crevice she could work her way into. My thoughts weren’t exactly the purest thing, either. As it turns out, venting to your dead brother can only get you so far.

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