Page 75 of My Rose

“Where are you taking me this time, then?”

“Somewhere safe.” He sighed as I turned my attention to the window, though I wasn’t looking beyond it. Truthfully, I didn’t care where he was taking me. An odd sort of adrenaline was pumping through me. I’d been so close to becoming a victim, but now I was safe. In his car. Yet again.

But I couldn’t just let it all go. Those words had swirled in my brain for far too many hours to let it all slip under the rug. Thinking about it was making the angry beast within me rise uncontrollably again. And it was too hard, too conflicting, being angry at him with his hand on me.

I moved my leg, crossing it over the other to get his hand away from me. When he still didn’t let go, I grabbed his hand and pushed it back towards him. He quickly captured my hand and twined our fingers over the shifter, his covering mine from the back of my hand.

“Why do you have to be so infuriating!” I shouted, flexing my fingers against his, trying to wriggle out from his hold. He didn’t budge. “What makes you think I can just get over everything that happened?”

“Rose, you can’t understand everything in my life right now, and I don’t expect you to. You have every right to be mad at me. Look, I know you didn’t deserve to hear about any of that from my father—the things about the club and…everything.” He took a deepbreath, and on his exhale, he continued, “But you aren’t nothing. You have never beennothingto me. And knowing that you probably believed I thought you were exactly that has been tearing me apart.”

His admission was making my insides twist. It was hard to deny that Briggs’ actions hadn’t proven that to me already. He made me feel seen, appreciated, and valued in ways I’d never experienced before. And although he was so obviously violent, I wasn’t scared of him.

My lips rolled in as my eyes drifted to the back of his seat like I could still see the gun that was concealed behind him. Those thoughts, the undeniable way I cared about him, made a new fear rise within me—Briggs could have been the one in danger. He could have gone to prison for trying to protect me with a weapon I’d had a fear of for most of my life. Seeing him in control of one wasn’t terrifying. It was the thought of what could have been if he decided to use it.

Something was seriously wrong with me thatthatfear surpassed the fear I had for August when the gun was pointed at his head.

I rubbed my palm down my jeans. “I thought you were going to shoot him,” I finally let out.

His eyes didn’t leave the road this time. “What would you have done if I did?” My hand loosened beneath his as I considered. August was ready to do things to me. He was going to hurt me. There was no light at the end of that long, dark tunnel. If Briggs didn’t show up and threaten him, I would be at August’s mercy right now. And he didn’t look like he had anymercyin him to give.

“I don’t know,” I answered truthfully. “I thought you hadn’t…I thought whatever you did for your father didn’t go anywhere close to that. I didn’t even know you had a gun, Briggs.”

I’ve never killed anyone.

His throat bobbed. “I didn’t lie to you.”

I’ve hurt people, Rose. I won’t try to lie to you and tell you I haven’t.

“But, you looked like you were going to kill him. I saw him jump back, but I-I didn’t hear anything. You just…left him.”

“Do you still trust me?”

“Yes,” I said without hesitation, shocking myself at the ease of my admission. He sighed and released my hand, then reached into his waistband, pulling out a matte black pistol. The sight of a gun usually made tiny pinpricks of fear spread through my skin, but in his hands, I felt nothing.

“I’m going to set this down on your lap. Is that okay?” I nodded, uncrossing my legs and pressing them together before he slid it into my lap. My breathing picked up as I stared down at it. “It’s not loaded.” He reached into his pocket, pulling out a long, black rectangle. It was heavy as he slid it into my lap beside the gun. “But I was ready to kill him if he didn’t let you go.” The way he said it sent a shiver down my spine.

“So…you weren’t going to actually do anything as reckless as that?” I wasn’t focused on my words as much as I was on the feeling of having a gun on my lap. I was terrified of them and had told him it was one of my biggest fears—that and fires. Being trapped by both of those things had been a recurring nightmare of mine ever since the day my parents died.

“No, Rose. You aren’t listening.” He was right—I wasn’t. It was hard to listen—to process what I was hearing. He came to a stop in front of a large warehouse that looked rather abandoned, a gun and bullets in my lap, with what was potentially a more lethal weapon to my left in the driver’s seat.

Still, somehow, I wasn’t afraid of him. I trusted him entirely.

He reached over and unbuckled my seatbelt before picking up the gun and cartridge of bullets and pocketing them once more. “Let me make this very clear, Rose.” His fingers found my chin, dragging my full attention to the sharp lines of his jaw and the hardness of his eyes. “Iwillkill him if he tries anything like that again. If anyone ever thinks of hurting you, of putting their hands on you, I will make them beg for a swift death that they won’t receive and don’t fucking deserve. It is only because you were right there, watching me, that I chose against ending his life.”

My eyes roamed his face, trying to find the lie in his words, but there was none. “You’ll go to prison if you torture or murder someone,” I said robotically like this was all some normal conversation to have with your…whatever he was to me.

“Oh, Rose baby.” The hint of a false smile passed his lips, then faded as he shook his head. “No, I don’t think I would.” My forehead crinkled as he continued, “I’ve done bad things, Rose. I may not have killed before, but the things I’ve done aren’t exactly legal, either. Money gives power to the wrong kind of people—monsters—like me.”

“You aren’t the wrong kind of people, Briggs.” Without having to think twice about it, I knew he wasgood. It may have been hiddenunder dozens of layers he had built up around himself over the past several years or possibly his entire life. But I knew Briggs Andrews was good. Even with everything his dad said, everything Briggs did and didn’t say that day, I still believed that to my core. Which possibly made me an idiot because he just said he’d murder someone for me, but I didn’t care. “Good people can do bad things sometimes, even when they don’t want to. I think you feel the weight of the bad more than you let on.” My face turned into his hand, all of my anger towards him evaporating. “You’ve never been a monster.”

“What makes you so sure I’m not?”

“Because I see you, Briggs.”

He reached up to tuck some of my hair behind my ear, cradling my cheek in his palm. “I’ll end up apologizing to you a thousand times for the things I say and do, but none of my sorries will ever amount to me truly deserving you, Rose Fields.” His knuckles brushed under my jaw, and I inhaled sharply at how such callused and damaged hands could feel so gentle and soothing.

For a moment, we stayed there, trapped in the space between words left unspoken. I knew I felt something I never had for anyone else when it came to Briggs, but I didn’t expect it to hit me like a freight train as his forest green eyes held mine.

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