Page 97 of My Rose

He wiped his eyes, his face tinged a deep red from laughing so hard. “It’s okay, baby. I haven’t had this much fun in years.” He reached up to tuck my hair behind my ear. “I love your skin.”

My grandparents fell silent, watching us as they leaned in closer together. The rest of the night went by in a blur. My grandfather and Briggs talked in the living room while my grandmother helped me fill up a suitcase and some bags of all the things I wanted to bring. I didn’t want to tell her Briggs already bought me new clothes and filled up the bathroom with things I already had, so I didn’t really need much of anything. Instead, I tried to focus on being with her, knowing I wouldn’t be waking up in their house anymore.

“Your parents would be so happy to see you like this. I don’t think I’ve ever seen your grandfather like someone so fast, not even your father.”

I couldn’t hide my smile at that. “They met in college, right?”

She nodded. “Law school. I still have a box of things from when this was her room before she moved out if you want to take a look.”

I sat down on the edge of my bed, looking around at the walls that had long since been painted over, trying to picture this as her room. My grandparents rarely talked about her. Not in front of me, at least. “I didn’t know she left anything here.”

My grandmother nodded. “She did. Not much, mostly some old photos and jewelry I guess she grew past needing.”

I moved to my nightstand and got to work on filling a grocery bag with the few things I kept there. “How old was she when she moved out?”

“A little younger than you. She moved in with a friend she met in college at first, then met your father shortly after, and they jumped right into it like you are now.” She laughed, and before I could ask if she was bothered by that, I saw a tear roll down her cheek.

“Grandma, don’t be sad. I’ll be fine.”

She wiped her tears, smiling back at me. “I know that, sweetie. Time seems to move by so fast when you’re my age. One day, you’re raising your baby. The next, you’re raising their baby and watching them move out just like their mom did.”

“She’d be happy with the way you raised me,” I replied, forcing a grin to spread along my face to keep her from crying more.

A knot formed in my stomach, and I realized the sentimentality happening on my end wasn’t simply because I was moving out. Briggs’ story about what his father had done to my parents and what he’d planned to do to me when I was a child made me see how fleeting life really can be. I could be dead right now. I should be running from Briggs, running from this town and everyone I knew, and making a new life for myself, far away from potential threats. But I couldn’t bring myself to want any of that.

I felt safe with Briggs, more so than I realized I needed to feel. I loved him more than my heart could handle—leaving wasn’t an option. Moving in with the man I loved should have had a lot to do with staying safe in our situation. But it really wasn’t. Living with Briggs—waking up every morning to him, making love slowly or roughly and passionately, then going to sleep at night in his arms as he read to me—it was all I wanted now. Even eating burnt pancakes sounded great.

I looked out the darkened, snowy window, knowing I was riding on the edge of a broken and patchy seat into a life I wasn’t sure I was ready for, but had no desire to feel any other way. I could only hope Briggs would find a way to make his father pay for the things he’d done that’d made our lives so traumatic without it weighing down our future.

Chapter 35

Briggs

“By yielding you may obtain victory.” ? Ovid

The past week since Rose had moved into the house I signed over to her had been the best week of my entire life. The only thing that’d made me stop marking her skin was the desire to see her in the dress I picked for her to wear to the annual VanAndrews party. If it weren’t for the revealing dip down her chest, I’d have her covered with bites and bruises that she oddly enough seemed to love.I never would have thought my sweet, good girl would love getting fucking filthy for me—but she did.

And I absolutely loved it.

Even when I didn’t have my cock buried deep inside Rose, things between us were perfect. Had I known that my crush as a child would turn into this, I’d have done something sooner. Maybe I would have pursued her that first night we happened to be at the same place at the same time, or fucked her there in my car during that bonfire, or even taken her back to what we now called home after the first party instead of dropping her off. If I’d known my father would remain just as distant and not even notice that I’d moved out, I’d have done it all from day one.

Who knows where we’d be had we done this sooner? The one thing I was sure of—I’d have her pills replaced with placebos, something I was unwilling to do now that my love and devotion for her ultimately made me see that it should be her choice when that happened. I, however, was ready to see her swollen, her breasts heavy and tender. Those babies her grandparents mentioned hadn’t left my mind since that night, and if I was being honest with myself, the amount of times I almost trashed her pills was making me think I’d gone crazy in the process of falling for her. For now, pumping her so full of my cum every day, knowing some part of me was always in her, was going to have to do.

The day she started winter break, I picked her up from her last final and took her out for lunch to celebrate. She was oddly quiet, and when we got home, she started rummaging through a box I’d seen her go through several times in the past week, her head occasionallycocking at me like I was part of whatever puzzle she couldn’t quite piece together.

“Rose,” I groaned, laying beside her while she continued holding up pictures and then looking over at me.

“Mhm?”

I slipped my fingers beneath her shirt, my thumb smoothing over her ribs just under her burn mark. “Are you going to tell me what’s been so interesting in that box? I know you want to be an archivist, but baby, I have other things you can study. Preferably naked.”

She looked at me through the corner of her eye, then huffed and flopped down beside me, a picture still in her hands. “I know, I’m sorry. I just didn’t know a lot about my mom other than her as a mom, so this stuff”—her hand that held the picture pointed back at the box between her legs—“to see her as someone my age, it’s all just so…weird? No, that’s not the right word.”

“New,” I suggested, taking the picture from her hands and holding it up.

“Yeah. That.” Her finger landed on the woman I was going to guess was her mom amongst a few other women, but even my memory of her from that day was spotty. “This one is her. Was her, I mean.”

“You look like her.” Rose and her mother could have been sisters. They had the same blue eyes and dark hair, but Rose must’ve had her father’s genes when it came to her light skin tone and rounded cheekbones. Her mother appeared more hollow, in a sense. Less lively. Maybe that was because I knew she was already dead and gone.

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