me, so close I can smell her. Vanilla and fucking petals. Why couldn’t Daisy have asked me to give a guy a job for a while? Not a tall, blonde with shapely legs I can finally see all the way to the top of in the pair of skintight leggings and short hoodie she’s wearing. A blonde with a smart mouth and a smart mind.
Her hair is piled on top of her head today with strands falling around her face. And she’s not wearing any makeup. The urge to wrap her up and protect her hits me like a sledgehammer. She shouldn’t be here. She doesn’t belong anywhere near the shadows I exist alongside. The world I inhabit would be like black tar on white silk for her. Sticky, insipid, ruining the hint of purity and innocence her eyes still hold. Even though she tries to hide it, I see it. Rose Jacobs has a pure heart with pure intentions. Something that doesn’t mix with my world.
She’s chewing on her bottom lip, humming gently as she watches me flick through the TV settings with the remote. I tense my jaw to stop myself from telling her to stop.
To stop fucking torturing me.
I alter the TV’s automatic shutoff timer back to ‘off,’ so it won’t keep turning off, and then scroll through to the movies.
“What were you trying to put on?”
“Oh.” Her brows shoot up. “That one.”
She points to a horror movie I’ve seen. One where a woman is made to watch as each of her friends are ended in front of her, and then told to run as the killer counts down, giving her a brief head start in the deserted snowy town they’re in.
“Really? Not a rom-com girl, then?”
“Did I ever give that impression?” She huffs, crossing her arms and making her hoodie ride up, exposing a flash of smooth stomach.
“With that smart mouth? No.” I avert my gaze and set the movie up so all she needs to do is click play.
“What? Horror movies are more realistic.”
“You think you’re more likely to be chopped up by a psycho with an axe than fall in love?”
She turns to face me head-on; her arms still firmly crossed over her chest like a shield.
“Movie love doesn’t exist. Fairytales don’t exist. But murderers and psychos are real,” she says, as though that explains everything.
“I guess hanging around deserted country lanes at night alone increase your chances of meeting one,” I mutter, placing the remote on the sofa.
She ignores my dig about last night. I still can’t believe she would be so careless with her own safety. If anything had happened to her…
“Attraction is just dopamine.” She sniffs, tightening her arms around herself. “Cause and effect, nothing more. A perceived high in our body from a chemical change. That’s what love is. Just a chemical.”
“Chemical, sure.” I allow myself the brief indulgence of staring into her light blue eyes. “Whatever you say.”
She follows behind me as I walk to the door.
“You don’t agree?”
I turn, leaning back on the closed door, crossing my arms over my chest, mirroring her pose as I sigh. Like usual, she isn’t going to leave this.
“Look, it’s not for me to tell you what love is. That’s for you to decide. You want to not believe in it? Fine. You want to think it’s a load of shit? Fine. You want to marry the first guy who tells you he loves you? Fine. You want to live alone with a load of cats and have a house that reeks of piss? Fine. It’s your life, Rose.”
Anything is fine with me.
I’m lying out of my ass. The idea of her having anything less than what she deserves and what will make her happy is like a gut-punch.
She’s better than all of it.
Her mouth drops open, her forehead wrinkling before she snaps it shut and glares at me.
“I like cats.”
“Okay,” I say slowly. Not the reaction I was expecting.
“And I would have married him if he’d asked.”
Hang on, what?
“Who?” I grit, hating the fucker already. If there’s a guy who Rose could have seen herself marrying, then why is she here arguing with me on the other side of the Atlantic? Why did she need time away? Daisy never mentioned an ex. Just family issues since losing her dad.
“It doesn’t matter.” Her shoulders drop as she looks away. “He wasn’t who I thought he was after everything.”
I maintain my position, leaning back against her door with my arms crossed, studying her. From the outside, I probably look calm. But inside, I’m burning up with rage from the way her body and voice have crumpled. I hate to see women upset. Maybe it’s the big brother in me.
“And who was that?” I ask, not sure I want to know the answer.
Rose brings her shining eyes back to mine and shrugs her shoulders. She’s trying to play it down. Whatever happened with this guy obviously hurt her. This is the most rattled I’ve seen her.
“My ex, Gareth. We were together since I was eighteen. I thought we were going to have it all together, you know? Marriage, kids, house in the suburbs.” She looks at the floor, pushing at a piece of fluff on the carpet with her toe. “Then one day, he said he was taking a promotion in Washington. Alone.” Her brows quirk as she continues fussing with the carpet. “We’d only moved in together the month before, and we had… we’d…” She sighs with a humorless laugh. “Never mind. That’s too much info. Let’s just say he knew… He knew a while before he told me. And he let me believe differently. I made choices based on what I thought we had. When it was all a lie… I was stupid.”
“No, you weren’t. He was a prick.”
Her eyes widen as they pop up to meet mine.
“He was,” I state again, because she needs to hear it. What kind of guy takes a new job and moves states without talking to his long-term girlfriend first?
A prick, like I said.
“I…” She studies me, uncrossing her arms. “Maybe he was. But I still made mistakes I can’t take back now.”
“So move forward. You can’t change the past, but you can carve your future.”
She stares at me again like I’m talking another language she doesn’t understand.
“You have no idea about the mistakes I’ve made, Dax. And I don’t just mean letting Gareth…” She screws her face up, squeezing her eyes shut as her voice cracks. “Letting him trick me like that. I’ve made a lot. I’ve fucked up and hurt people. Sometimes I think I don’t deserve to—”
The waver in her voice as she pauses before those next words has me closing the gap between us in one lightning step. And I grasp the back of her neck with one hand, pressing my lips to her forehead with the other.
“Don’t finish that sentence. Don’t you fucking dare.”
She freezes in my grasp.
“Breathe,” I whisper against her skin, my lips still against her forehead.
She relaxes enough for her body to sink a little closer to mine.
I keep my hand on the back of her neck, my thumb curled round to monitor her pulse.
It’s racing.
“Breathe,” I repeat.
I hold her as she uncurls her arms between us and rests her hands on my chest. She takes in shaky breaths as I slide my other hand around her waist and flatten my palm against her lower back.
And I hold her like that, in the silence of the cottage, the two of us, both broken in our own ways, until her heart rate slows and her breathing calms.
I let my eyes fall closed as I drink in her scent. Commit it to memory for later. For when I’m alone and can let my imagination run wild.
“You are so much more than that. You’re not the mistakes you’ve made. You’re not responsible for the mistakes he made, either. Don’t let anyone ever tell you otherwise.”
I press a kiss to her forehead. It’s a habit. I’ve always done it to Jasmin if she’s ever upset.
Only, this is Rose.
“They don’t,” she says, her voice faint. “They don’t. It’s me who tells me. It’s why my family wanted me to come here. They say it’s all me. That I need to forgive myself.” Her voice drops again, and if I weren’t so close with my body pressed to hers, then I would miss the words. “Some days I can’t even look at myself in the mirror. I just see the cause of so much pain.”
I slide my lips from her skin, dipping my head so our foreheads almost touch.
“Look at me.”
She presses her lips together, keeping her eyes down.
“Look at me,” I urge softly.
Slowly she lifts her gaze to mine, looking up at me through dark lashes. Her eyes are dry, but they’re glassy, and fuck if my heart doesn’t die right here. The heart I wonder if I have. Only, I must. Because the pain in my chest at the hopelessness in her eyes is like a dagger slicing through it.
“You are beautiful. Exactly as you are. We all make mistakes. I’ve made a fuck ton.”
She gives me a small smile, and I shake my head gently.
“But they’re gone. They’re done. Don’t waste breath trying to change something you can’t. Use it to do things differently from now on.”
I return her small smile as she sniffs and nods at me. “Yeah. I guess.”
“I want you to look in the mirror and see what your family see. What I see.”
“What’s that?” Her breath mixes with mine as our lips hover inches apart.
“Someone worth saving.”
I squeeze the back of her neck gently and kiss her forehead again before letting her go and turning to open the door before I do something else. Something my body is screaming for, but my mind is holding me back from.
She isn’t mine to touch. She isn’t mine to kiss. She isn’t mine to taint and ruin with my life and all its ugliness.
And it needs to stay that way.
I turn my back on her and stride through the door.
Rose Jacobs doesn’t belong near me with her virgin skin any more than I belong near her with my stained hands. Those two worlds don’t mix. They couldn’t be farther apart if they tried. Like truth and lies. Justice and Revenge. Love and hate. Hard, cold, silver, and soft, sweet, flowers.
Nothing about us belongs near the other.
“Call Jasmin if you need anything again, okay?” I say over my shoulder.
“Dax?”
I turn and look straight into her clear blue eyes.
Fuck, why have I no willpower? I should be in the car driving away.
Her brow furrows as she stares at me. Seconds ago, she was in my arms. She feels the turn in atmosphere—the sudden change in me as my head takes over, damage limitation—that much is clear by the way her mouth is parted in a perfect O.
I’m sorry, Sunbeam. Don’t look at me like that.
I give her a tight smile, then climb into the Range Rover and drive away.
