Page 32 of Black Roses

“You don’t know anything about me,” I growl at him, giving him a biting stare.

His face falls into a frown and I can tell he regrets his comment just as much as I regret mine. “You’re right, I don’t. But I would like to. I hope you’ll give me the chance to get to know you better. Now, eat your sandwich or you’ll waste away. I’m willing to bet you ran more than you should have today. Am I right? What did you do, five, six?”

I shrug. “Seven.”

He laughs. “See, I know a lot about you already. I knew you would never stick to the marathon recovery guidelines.”

We talk about running for the remainder of the meal. It’s a safe subject. I tell him about the marathons I ran in Amsterdam and Berlin last year. I tell him how Charlie got me into running back in high school. I even show him some pictures on my phone.

“This must be Charlie,” he says.

“That was taken in Austria the day after she broke her leg. We were supposed to go mountain climbing the next week, but obviously, we couldn’t.”

“There aren’t any men in these pictures,” he says, taking the liberty of paging through more of my photos. “Does that mean I don’t have any competition from guys with really cool accents?”

I shake my head. “I don’t date, remember?”

He laughs. “Me neither. Until tonight. In fact, this is the first date I’ve been on since Hailey was born.”

My jaw slackens with disbelief. “You haven’t been on a date in almost two years?”

His eyes scrunch together like he’s working something out in his head. “Technically, a little over two years. Not since Cassidy showed up pregnant.”

“How is that even possible? I don’t know any guy who can go that long without . . . um . . .dating.” I feel a wave of heat cross my face and wonder if there’s ever been another time in my life when I’ve blushed so many times over the course of one evening. I know there’s not.

I take a drink of water from my bottle to cool me down.

“I told you, Piper, I’m not like most guys. I’m one-hundred-percent dedicated to my daughter.” He raises his hand and examines it. “And apparently, my left hand.”

In a very unladylike manner, water spews from my mouth in a fit of laughter. Mason chuckles as he wipes droplets off my phone. He looks at the picture again before handing it back to me. “Charlie is the spitting image of her mother,” he says, eyeing the picture of Charlie with her blue cast and me supporting her on her crutches as we pose in front of the ski slope she broke her leg on. Charlie is a redhead. Her long, wavy hair a carbon-copy of the once-famous actress I grew to despise.

“I used to see her mom in movies when I was a child,” he says. “Stole her mother’s looks is right. She’s stunning.”

I’ve never once before been jealous of Charlie. Yes, she’s always been the beautiful one. The one men fawn over. The tall, mysterious redhead they take home while her awkward roommate sleeps alone. But right now, despite how I’ve always been relieved that she gets all the attention, my eyes fall to the table as a foreign feeling courses through me. It feels a little like defeat. “Yeah. She is, isn’t she?”

“Yes, of course she is.” He leans over the table, reaching his hand up to my mouth. I tense when his fingers meet my lips. My pulse races and my breathing stops at the feel of his gentle touch. He swipes his thumb across my bottom lip, retracting his hand to reveal the barbeque sauce he’d wiped off. He puts his thumb into his mouth and sucks the sauce off. I almost fall out of my chair. I think that must be the single most sexy thing I’ve ever seen a man do. Then again, I’ve never regarded men as sexy. Until now. Until Mason. “But she doesn’t hold a candle to you, Piper. You’re gorgeous, don’t you know that?”

Before I can disagree with him, or even have the time to blush, the Maître D comes over with a bottle of champagne and a plate of Tiramisu with a lit candle in it. He wishes me a boisterous happy birthday and several tables around us applaud as he pops the cork, pouring us each a glass of what looks to be an expensive Brut.

I feel I might be sick right here in front of Mason at this fancy restaurant that serves barbeque on request. I pull my water bottle out of my bag and take a long drink. “I uh . . .” I fumble with the bottle and look around nervously to make sure people are no longer watching. I push the fancy confection away from me. “I don’t celebrate my birthday, Mason. How did you even know?”

“Who doesn’t celebrate their birthday? At least until they hit fifty and want to live in denial.” He laughs.

“Idon’t,” I say, with the conviction of a serial killer.

I watch the crinkle form between his eyebrows. “How come?”

There’s a pregnant pause and I feel he can sense me scrambling for an answer. The wheels turn in my head so I can quickly give him one. I blow out a long breath to bide some time. “I just don’t think we need to celebrate the fact that we’re dying. You do know that from the minute we’re born, we start dying, right? We are literally born to die. There is no other certainty in life. And every birthday we celebrate is just one more reminder of how much closer we are to death.”

He studies me while I speak and I wonder if he can perceive how my words tell a much different story than my eyes do. Does he believe all that crap I just spewed out? “So you’re a glass-half-empty kind of girl?”

“No, I’m a realist,” I quip. “So tell me, which one of my sisters do I have to kill?”

“Neither. It’s my fault.” He nods his head at my phone. “While you were in the bathroom, you got a text. I know it was wrong for me to look, but when I glanced down and saw Charlie wishing you a happy birthday, I couldn’t let the night go by without recognizing it. I didn’t go through your phone, Piper. I swear I just saw the text flash across the screen. I’m really sorry.”

His eyes fill with regret and beg me to forgive him. I try to see it from his point of view. I get that most people celebrate their birthdays and he probably just thought I didn’t want to put the pressure on him for our date. Mark it down as one more noble thing he’s tried to do for me.

He has no idea. No idea that for the last four years, I’ve gotten so drunk I almost ended up in the hospital. Not because I was celebrating, but because I was trying to forget. Forget the worst day of my life. Forget the unimaginable pain of losing that part of me I could never get back. Forget the day I stopped living.

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