Page 58 of The Blue Rose
“When?” is all I can manage to say.
She looks away biting her lip, subconsciously grabbing the necklace, shocking me with her next words. “The night we met.”
The truth in her words makes me sit up and look out into the room. The night we met she knew.She knewwhat I denied for so long. She knew we had a connection, one that made us both do crazy things. She bought a necklace when she called me by the name only my mother used. Fox. Seeing past the mask I wear, wanting to remove it to see the truth of what lays behind it. The truth of who I am.
“Aster?” she asks quietly, tapping my shoulder. I turn to face her, and stare, not saying anything, knowing a thousand thoughts are racing in her mind, just as they are mine.
“Why? You’d only just met me. Astranger, who could have intended to kill you, who ghosted you, even after all of that you kept this.” I say pointing down at the little fox around her neck with trembling hands.
She grips both my hands in hers, calming the erratic beating of my heart. Taking a deep breath, her spine straightens and my eyes meet her determined ones.
“I trust you, I don’t know why, but the night we met I knew you could never hurt me.” Her hands tighten. “And as for you killing me? Don’t make me laugh, if you wanted to kill me, you would have already done so, not fuck me, tell me your secrets, and take me to your home.”
She’s right. Her truth is what I refused to believe.
I broke rule one by killing the bartender.
I broke rule two by fucking her.
I showed her one of my closest guarded secrets, what the world is desperate to know, with who owns Graves Haunted Houses.
I broke rule three by bringing her here.
My eyes trace her face, my mind finally accepting the truth she always knew.
I interlace our fingers, and say, “You were mine, Serena, from the moment we met in that bar to right now. You were my greatest fear realized. I never expected that a guy like me could be more than what he was bred to be. More than what his parents made him to be.” Her eyes glisten from the tears threatening to fall, silently allowing me to continue with a gentle squeeze of her hands. “I’m sorry it took so long for me to realize, you were never my little lamb.” Her brows pinch together, and her shoulders drop, a single tear falling. I swipe it away with mythumb, my hands never leaving hers. “You knew you were never one of my little lambs, and now I know you, Serena, are in every way my equal. My twin flame.My vixen. My fear, my disbelief, kept me in the dark. Now you’re here with me, and everything has aligned as it was supposed to.”
She jumps into my arms, pushing me onto my back, and straddling me. Without hesitation she kisses me with so much force, so much passion, I’m breathless. Her kiss tells me her walls are crumbling and the secrets I know she hides will reveal themselves.
Our kiss is broken, a loud smoke alarm blaring through the house. Both of us still, our eyes locking, the moment broken.
“Shit! the lasagna.”
She giggles and pulls back, “We can always order a pizza and pass the time waiting doing other things. It’d truly be a shame if we had to leave the comfort of your bed.”
“I like the way you think, little vixen,” I say with a smirk, lifting her off of me. “I’ll go turn off that alarm and throw away the lasagna. Can you order a pizza? Then I’ll come back for my dessert.”
She gets out her phone, and I hand her my card before I leave the room.
“Oh!” she gasps. “What kind of pizza do you like?”
“Hawiian,” I holler from the hall.
“Me too,” she giggles, which makes me smile as I continue to the kitchen.
TWENTY
SERENA
Does that confession he just made mean he loves me? He didn’t exactly say the words, but the words he did say meant something.If not love, then what?I lay across the tangled sheets, my heart racing in my chest while my body relaxes into Aster's arms.
Do I love him?
Of course I do. I loved him the moment he crushed Tyler's hand and stole me away. The pleasure I felt when Aster caused Tyler pain, the euphoria he later took me to in the back of my car sealed the deal for me, and is a memory I won’t soon forget. I was grateful I didn’t throw away the fox necklace I got after that night at Boozy Books. I didn’t feel like wearing it until tonight. A little voice in the back of my mind kept telling me it wasn’t time yet. To wait. Up until tonight that’s what it told me every time I laid it across my neck. When I tried it on tonight, the little voice said it is time, and I clasped the necklace into place. Nervous and excited to see Aster’s reaction.
I could have worn it the night he took me to Graves and revealed who he was, but that little voice screamed no. Later, I was grateful I trusted that voice since he left me on read, but after his apology later that day at the market, I did trulyforgive him. I know it’s childish reacting that way to being left on read, but after being rejected by him once, my father all but abandoning me after my mother died, and having no one but Jessica, I started to crack. My abandonment issues caused my insecurities to come full force to the surface. I have worked too hard to let any man make me go into a spiral, but I’m a vindictive bitch, and he needed to learn his lesson. He needed to prove to me his words matched his actions.
He proved it to me when he texted saying he wanted to have dinner. Then I saw him at his door, waiting for me with a drink in hand, and I knew I wanted to play a game. I’ve always read in my books the scene where the girl runs and the guy catches and fucks her, and my slutty self wanted to recreate that with my man and his constant talks of punishment.
