Page 52 of My Rose

Her drying hair swayed with the shake of her head. “No, I want to. If I can’t be open with my boyfriend, then what kind of a girlfriend would I be?” I smiled back at her but stayed silent because I didn’tknow the answer to that. The one time I had a girlfriend, it was forced upon me, and she reacted by cheating on me. This was all as new to me as it was to her. The fact that I put a fucking label on us was astounding in itself, but that was more for her benefit than mine. To her, I was her boyfriend, but to me, she was simply mine.

Rose continued, “Anyway, they took me on a trip to Nashville, you know,Music City. Thought maybe if I couldn’t talk, I would sing.” A soft giggle left her. “But the second day we were there, we went to see the Parthenon. Have you seen it?” I nodded, my thumb rubbing my bottom lip as I watched her light up. Not just her eyes, either. Her entire body gave off an entirely new energy. I wanted to strip her bare all over again just to see her shine. “It’s amazing, isn’t it? The statues, the artwork. I mean, I know it’s all replicas, but we must have stayed there all day because I refused to leave. I remember sitting in front of the huge Athena statue until my grandfather had to pull me from the ground because they were closing.” She laughed at the memory and didn’t try to cover her lips when her real smile came out.

It was beautiful.

Shewas beautiful.

“Ever since that day, I’ve been obsessed with Greek and Roman artwork. Hopefully, when I get my degree, I can work in a museum, studying them more until I get my graduate degree which will allow me to become an archivist.” She turned and started looking through a stack of sweatpants, then threw a pair to me.

“What, no shirt?” I asked, giving her a grin that suggested I didn’t want one at all.

Her eyes roamed my chest, stalling on the red marks from the animal she became in my arms. “Nope. If I don’t get pants, then you don’t get a shirt.”

“Underwear?” I taunted.

She grinned back at me. “Don’t need those, either,” she repeated. She turned her back to me as I got dressed and fought the urge to make her turn back around and watch me as I dropped the towel to the floor. “So, what about you? Why is Ovid your go-to? Are you an art history buff like me?”

My face fell before she turned back around. “That book was the only thing my mother left behind. Besides, well—”

“You and Beck,” she finished, her face matching mine. It sent a jolt through my chest—the way she could say things yet also feel just as deeply as the person the words were about. Her empathy was unmatched, or maybe I’d been deprived of it for so long the slightest bit was enough for recognition.

“Yes.” She waited for me to continue. I swallowed and glanced at the clothes behind her briefly, unable to meet her eyes. “I’ve read that book more times than I can count. I ended up reading and collecting more by him and then got into Virgil, and then Catullus—”

“The funnier, much dirtier one.” She giggled. “So youdolike to laugh.”

I fixed my focus back on her and cocked a brow. “Of course, I like to laugh.” She laughed again, and I could swear on my entire existence I’d never heard a laugh I liked better than hers. The therapist who brought her voice back was going to be thanked profusely one day.

She walked up to me, and my back straightened. There was a question in her eyes as she lifted her hand to my arm. I dipped my chin, allowing her to trace her fingers over the tattoos. “This one here”—She found the back of my bicep and tapped—“isn’t Roman or Greek, though, is it?”

I shook my head. “No, Rose. It isn’t.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” I tried to pull my eyes from her baby blue’s, but I couldn’t.

Raising my arm, I tapped on a set of hands. “This is the month and day my mother left us.”Us.That was the first time I’d referenced it as anustype of thing in a long time. I could almost feel Beck’s presence as I continued, “And this—” I pointed to another set of hands, and tears started to form in her eyes.

She lifted her hand to cover her mouth but whispered through it, “The day your brother died?”

I nodded, dropping my arm and using that hand to wipe under her eyes. My other hand joined until I was cupping her jaw. “Don’t be sad for me, Rose.” My brother died the summer before my second year in high school, and Dean suggested a tattoo to remember him by—something that would numb the pain of his loss briefly but leave a lasting mark. The numbing feeling of the needle and ink quickly became an addiction. As the years went on, I filled the scars along my body with exquisite pieces of artwork, covering the monster I’d grown to be, giving me a false sense of beauty to the rest of the world. But something told me that beauty, that thing that seemed to drive other women mad, went deeper with Rose. She saw beneath them—looked through me in ways I couldn’tfathom.

“I used to look at that tattoo, wondering what it meant. I should have noticed the date your brother died from that article and put the two together, but—”

“Shh, babe.” I pulled her to my chest. My hands threaded in her hair as I breathed out a soft laugh.

She whipped her head back to look at me, her brows furrowing. “What’s so funny?”

I grinned down at her. “You were watching me in high school?”

Rose slapped my arm lightly. “That’s what you chose to focus on? I thought something was seriously wrong with you for a minute there.”

“Oh, Rose.” There was a lot wrong with me, but not because of my mental state. Somehow, that was pretty intact. “No. I think it’s funny because I was watching you, too.”

“You were?” She smiled brightly up at me.

“Yeah.”I’ve always been watching you.

She lifted onto her toes, and I met her halfway, brushing my lips over hers. “So, now that you have me here, what are we going to do?” she whispered before I gave in and kissed her deeply, loving the way she moaned with just my lips on hers. I couldn’t wait to hear her screams when I fucked her the way I wanted to—the way Ineededto.

“Eat.” I scooped her up in my arms and carried her to the bedroom while she giggled and wrapped her legs around my waist. Her brow quirked up when I placed her on the edge of the bed.My dirty, good girl.“Breakfast, Rose.”

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