Page 41 of My Rose

“You reached out to Dean to get my address?” I could hear the grin in his voice, and when he laughed, all of the tension in my shoulders relaxed.That laugh.

And then my body came back to planet Earth. “I need to know why you stood me up, Briggs. That’s why I came here.”

“I would never—”

“Nope. You did. I was there, and you weren’t. I waited all night”—I could hear his car picking up speed, the engine roaring in the background—“I dressed up and everything to go out with you, and you just never showed.” The weakness in my voice alone was going to make me cry.

“I didn’t stand you up. I…fuck.” I could almost picture his jaw grinding. “I promise you, Rose. You have no idea how badly I wanted to be there. Did—” He paused, his engine filling the silence in the background. I shuffled my shoes in the sludgy snow, waiting. “Did you not get my message?”

“What message, exactly?” I was starting to feel crazier.There’s a message? I pulled my phone away from my face, searching our messages. But there was nothing. “I don’t have anything recent from you besides the slew you sent today.”

“Oh, so you got those then, huh?” he quipped.

“Mhm. I…got—” The sounds of his engine grew louder and I slid the phone down my cheek as his car came into view, then screeched to a halt a few feet away from me. He was out of the car in seconds, the gull wing door flapping up like it would fly into the air.

My heart rate spiked as Briggs made his way to me, striding with a purpose I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen before in a man. Not while looking at me, anyway. His fingers were fast to cup my chin, guiding me to look at him. Those eyes—they were like the darkest of trees and the brightest of emeralds, all rolled into one. A beautiful kind of mystery about them I couldn’t stop thinking about.

Just like he was.

“Rose, you really shouldn’t have come here,” he said with that tone that used to come off metallic and authoritative, but now it just made the rest of my body numb like my mind had the second he stepped out of his car.

I straightened, trying to bring my thoughts back from where they had drifted off. “How else was I supposed to get your attention after you stood me up? I thought a text wouldn’t drive it home for you.”

“Did you really not get my message? I had to fly out of town with”—He glanced over to the wrought-iron fence behind me—“with my father.”

I pushed my phone into his stomach. He flinched but took the phone and then looked at me. “Go ahead. There’s no code, just go into my messages and check for yourself,” I bit out. And he did. His eyebrow cocked up, a mark that I hadn’t noticed before becoming clear as day—a thin, white scar right at the edge of where his browtapered off. He read through what were probably several texts from him that I hadn’t replied to and then reached his arm around me and tucked the phone into my back pocket. “I’m not a liar, Briggs. Unlike some people.” I wanted to believe him. But I was so worked up over it that I almost wanted him to get on his knees again. No, I definitely wanted him on his knees again. It was as if my mind was chanting, ‘on your knees, on your knees’—relentlessly on replay in my mind at all hours of the day.

Briggs stayed towering over me, his warm breath brushing my skin as his hand slid up my back. I arched into the soft touch. “Rose, I’m sorry. I must not have hit send. I was rushing.” The corners of his eyes crinkled like he was trying to think through what had happened.

“Rushing?” I jerked back in his hold unsuccessfully. ‘Rushing’ sounded like an excuse I’d heard before. “You didn’t notice that your message never went through?” My eyes narrowed on him.

His hand stopped making those circles along the small of my spine. “My phone broke. Had to get a new one.”

I rolled my eyes, his citrusy scent enveloping me, making it harder for me to be angry at him. After being fed excuses for so long, it was easier not to believe any of them anymore. I pulled my head back and held onto his forearms.Damn.Even the feeling of his skin on mine, the way he was holding me, made it hard to be angry at him. And now that I was staring right into his eyes? I swallowed thickly. “So, let me get this straight. You not only didn’t send your text to me, but your phone also magically broke that same night, and now you have a newphone—”

He pushed his phone into me, smirking as he said, “Check it. Code is 112053.”

I cocked my brow in disbelief, but when I took his phone and entered the code, it was very…blank. Empty, save for messages to me and then a few from Dean that I hesitated clicking on. I decided against invading his privacy and pressed his phone to his chest.

Briggs smiled down at me, seemingly pleased with my silence. “Can you forgive me? Again?”

I put on the most steely, hard face I could manage, darting my gaze from him to hold it. “Mmm.”

“Are you not happy with that?” My eyes snapped back to him as his thumb rubbed down my spine. “Let me guess, I should be on my knees again?”Mind reader.I looked down to the space between us and then nodded. Amusement lit his features.

The drop to his knee was staggered, his hand shooting up and splaying over his ribs briefly before he pushed his forearm onto his knee for support. His movements had always been so meticulous and perfect before. Now that he was beneath me, I could see a slight shadow under his eyes that wasn’t there the last time I saw him. And that scar—I fixated on it, wondering when and how it got there.

He broke my thoughts as he asked, “Better?” The spot between my eyes crinkled, but I nodded anyway, watching intently as he rose with the same broken movements, leaning to the side and his knee to steady himself.

I suddenly felt ashamed for asking him to get on his knees when he clearly wasn’t fine. “Areyou—”

“Uh-uh, Rose. You get to answer my question now.” He righted himself completely as if he hadn’t just wobbled on his legs to stand back up. Briggs took a step closer, right back to towering above me. “Is there something going on between you and August?” I snorted uncontrollably, the question so out of the blue it threw me off. He frowned. “I’m serious, Rose. I don’t think being a mistress suites me, and I sure as fuck don’t like to share.”

A shiver rolled down my spine as heat coursed through my legs. I cleared my throat. “What do, uhm…what do you mean?”

His eyes darkened. “It’s a simple yes or no. Is everything between you two done?”

I dug the tip of my sneaker deeper into the snow, wondering where I should start or how much I should tell him. “We never started. And I don’t ever want to see him again. So yeah, I’d say whatever we were is pretty done.”

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