Page 75 of Black Roses

Pain lines his face, causing me more than a little concern. I sit up and grab the hem of his shirt. I look at him for permission and he nods, rising up to sit on his haunches. I slowly peel it up his body, expecting to see him battered and bruised from football.

Instead, what I see brings more tears to my eyes. Now that the dam has burst, I question ever being able to stop it. And right now, I’m helpless to stop the raging flow.

There, etched on his angry, red, tender skin, is one word in script.

Roxane.

chapter twenty-eight

mason

“What? How?” she asks, a finger carefully tracing the red edges of the tattoo.

I give her a casual shrug. “I had a lot of time to kill while I waited for a flight over. I would have gotten your real name, but I know you like to remain anonymous.”

Her tear-rimmed eyes shoot up to mine. “You spelled it right.”

“Of course I did.” I smile. “How could I not after hearing you go on and on about the travesty of the misspelling from the play to the movie.” I wink at her and her face softens into an easy grin. It’s the first sign of hope she’s given me. Aside from trusting me with her story.

She’s come this far, I wonder what will happen if I push her a little more. I sweep her hair back, revealing her rose tattoo. “Will you tell me about yours?” I ask. “And this?” I touch her bracelet.

She looks down at the dark rosebud entwined in leather on her wrist and I can almost see the memories flashing behind her eyes. “Charlie gave it to me the day my daughter was born. She was the only one, other than my parents, who knew where I was. Everyone else, including my sisters, thought I’d taken the spring semester of my junior year abroad. But in reality, I went to a place my parents found in upstate New York. A farm where an older couple took in people like me—pregnant teens who wanted to hide from the world. I helped them with farm chores and cooking and they let me stay for the duration. There were two other girls there when I arrived. One left within a few weeks, the other shortly before I did. We didn’t exchange addresses or phone numbers.” She stretches her head to one side, her hand coming up to grab the back of her neck as tension visibly rolls off her body in waves. “Nobody wanted to remember.”

I push a lock of stray hair behind her ear and ease my fingers around her neck to replace hers, hoping I can help knead the stress away as she tells her painful tale.

“I got to hold her for an hour before they took her away.”

I can tell another sob burns deep in her throat, but she’s trying hard not to let it out. She closes her eyes, suffocating grief settling in and grabbing hold of her. “That was the best and worst hour of my entire life.” She swallows hard, wiping balls of tears away with the pads of her thumbs. “She was beautiful. She had a full head of dark-blonde hair and beautiful blue eyes. I know all babies have blue eyes, so I don’t know what color she ended up with. But it didn’t matter to me. She was perfect in every way.”

Heartache stings me as thoughts of losing my parents blur my vision. “You never saw her after that?”

She shakes her head. “It was a closed adoption. I knew it would be better that way. Especially after seeing her. I couldn’t imagine getting updates and pictures but not being a part of her life. What if something terrible happened to her? I don’t think I would survive knowing that. So I spent the whole hour studying her flawless face, explaining why I couldn’t be her mom. I cried a river that day, after they took her from me. When the nurse came in and picked her up out of my arms, she took my entire life with her. But I knew it was for the best. I knew she deserved more than a teenage mom who could barely get out of bed most mornings.

“I don’t know a lot about what happened to her. But what I do know is that she went to a heart surgeon whose wife was a nurse who planned on staying at home with the baby. They were in their thirties and had tried for ten years to have a child before adopting.” She nods her head. “It was a good place for her.”

I finger her bracelet. “And this?”

“Right,” she says, watching me twist the charm as if she’d forgotten it. “Charlie drove up with my parents that day. I cried in her arms for hours, giving myself that one day to grieve. And then I promised never to cry over it again. That’s when she gave me the bracelet. She knew there would be no pictures. No reminders of my daughter. I was confused as to why she got me the charm of a black rose. To me, it represented death—mydeath. But she told me it wasn’t a black rose at all, it was simply a pewter rosebud—a perfectly formed rosebud that had yet to bloom. She said every time I looked at it, I would think of the baby and how she will flourish and grow and blossom into a brilliant young woman with a life full of endless possibilities because of the sacrifice I made.”

I thread our fingers together and squeeze her hand in mine. “I knew I liked Charlie. She’s bright, that one.”

Piper quietly laughs. “So she’s always telling me.”

She looks down at our entwined hands like she just realized we were touching. “That was the day we decided to go to Europe. We planned to go the next year after graduation. It was the perfect solution. I didn’t want to risk running into my daughter. Because I swear, Mason, her face is etched into my brain for all of eternity and I think I would recognize her anywhere. Also, I didn’t want to have a run-in with any of the boys who attacked me. And Charlie—well you knowherreasons for leaving.”

I can feel her relax, tension leaving her body with every word she speaks. This is therapeutic for her. And with each part of her story that she reveals, I see pieces coming back together to make her a whole person.

I brush her hair aside, exposing her neck. “What about your tattoo, sweetheart?”

Her hand comes up to rub it like I’ve seen her do so many times before. “I got it on my eighteenth birthday. A budding rose, a reminder of what I hope would become of her; but a black rose for the death of the relationship we would never have.”

She becomes quiet. After talking and crying for almost an hour straight, the room becomes strangely silent. Strange but wonderful. And I realize for the first time, thatshe’sholdingmyhand instead of me holding hers. Her small fingers rub over my knuckles, sending erotic, and totally-inappropriate-for-the-situation, sensations straight to my groin.

“So that’s it. You know everything about me. Except maybe that I had a dog namedMuttwhen I was little. He ran away when I was seven.”

“Mutt, huh?”

She nods, still rubbing her fingers over mine.

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