“Fine, but it can only be every other day. I still have classes to teach and I work Tuesdays and Thursdays, plus every Saturday.” She stood with her back straight, barely glancing at me or my growing smirk.
“Excellent,” I said unable to keep from looking happy and far too pleased with myself.
Aly didn’t bother waving goodbye or saying anything more than an “I’ll call tomorrow” as she left the studio.
“You really are a brat sometimes, you know that, right?” Leann said as picked up her bag and turned the lights off in the studio.
“Why?” I pulled my cousin toward me with an arm over her shoulder. “Because I got a sitter for Koa?”
“No,” she stopped, elbowing me so I kept the door opened for her. “Because you used that thing to get it.”
“What thing? Charm? Cunning?”
“I believe Keira always referred to it as Hale Demon Magic.”
“Well, shit Leann, I can’t deny that one.”
Robert Burns compared his love to a red, red rose. The meaning behind the giving of those flowers was universal. Florists made a killing off the sentiment of their meaning, and poets have talked about their symbolism for centuries.
For me, roses reminded me of loss. They are the calling card of misery, the steady reminder of how badly I had fucked up. I know that’s what they are. I know I can expect them on Emily’s birthday and again on the day that I destroyed everything.
Today was one of those days.
It hadn’t registered that my door was ajar when I returned from practice. My head was still too consumed by the opposing thoughts of sin and satisfaction, of who I wanted, why I wanted her, and what it meant that my body was firing on its own engines, making me forget that I could never get hard. Well, except for that dancer. And for that one dance Leann had forced upon me.
With Aly.
The drills practice that day had been brutal. My father made me make up for the distraction that was still so stupidly and obviously filling up my head. He made me run longer, pushed me further than any of my teammates because he knew I expected it. Because he knew I needed it.
When I shuffled up the stairs and kicked open my door, I didn’t noticed the petals at first. Not until I crashed onto my bed with my kit and my backpack and my worn body all falling like a mass of drained weight. It was only until I exhaled, drew in another exhausted breath and inhaled their scent, then felt the petals on my bed, the sharp stems of the roses prickling against my bare arms, that I realized what this sick gift meant.
Our anniversary, she mocked. There was more bitterness, that angry contempt for me, for what I’d done, around the edges of her tone.
I didn’t bother answering her. It wasn’t our anniversary I insisted to myself. Not the one I chose to remember. The one that marked the night that I’d somehow convinced that beautiful girl to keep from letting Eddie Parker take her to his father’s camp out on False River.
I’d followed her for two weeks straight outside the downtown library like a creeper. It had been months since her father had forbidden her from speaking to me. Since the stupid naked text messages we thought would be a good idea to send one another.
But I’d grown tired of waiting. I’d missed her. Only a few months had passed since she’d followed her cousin to the lake house to meet me and already I’d been consumed by her.
We’d gotten hot and heavy real quick like, hormones taking over, curiosity egging us toward the stupid and then, those damn naked texts. Her father had stomped his foot down and ended anything I’d wanted with her.
Or so he’d thought.
And Parker had moved in fast, banking on my exit from New Orleans when the world caught wind of Kona and Keira tying the knot. I’d left for Hawaii for my parents’ wedding, but came back to New Orleans determined to win the trust of Emily’s old man.
The bastard wouldn’t let me past the front door, waved a nine millimeter handgun at me when I approached his porch, and Emily, being the obedient Catholic girl that she was, wouldn’t risk her father’s wrath to see me. And while I had been gone, Eddie Parker had made himself comfortable on the golf course with her old man while he courted her with flowers–I’d seen it myself when I got back–twice in one week.
Slick fucker.
Still, none of that was going to stop me. I stalked Emily in the library, slinking into the stack’s shadows, watching her work her way through her reading list, but that day she’d had enough of my attention.
“I know you’re there, Ransom,” she’d whispered, leaning back in her chair with her arms across that small chest.
Just the way she’d said my name—that slight roll of her tongue, the “M” sound on the end that was accented heavy with an Uptown hilt—did things to me that I’d never felt before. That twang had me willing to do just about anything for her. She knew it. I knew it.
“You gonna hide in the stacks or are you gonna come sit with me?”
I didn’t wait for another invitation and when Emily tilted her head, that beautiful ginger eyebrow arching up like she’d give me a minute when I knew I wanted five (or a lifetime), for a second I forgot I wasn’t supposed to just sit there gawking at her. “Well?”
“Eddie Parker is an asshole,” I blurted out.
Zero pride, zero tact. I had way too much of my father in me. My mom always said as much, but that day sort of proved it.
“Eddie is nice, Ransom.” She’d sounded like she was talking about a priest, not some guy who wanted into her panties.
“Eddie is a kiss-ass and you’d be bored an hour into your first date.” I didn’t buy it when she’d rolled her eyes as though she thought I was being as stupid as I sounded.
“What do you know about it?”
“I know you haven’t kissed him.”
“Oh? So sure of yourself.”
“Yeah. I am.” I’d taken her hand then, pulling her closer to me and she didn’t fight it. “I know the first time I kissed you, you kept your eyes closed way longer than I did.”
“And?” Her tone had been soft, but the timber was off, seemed too quick and I knew she was battling herself for not telling me to piss off.
“And,” I’d said, moving from the chair across from her to kneel in front of her. “And…when you kiss someone, Em, you do it with everything inside you. You feel it all over and you wear that same smile for days after.”
“That’s not…Ransom, don’t.” But she really hadn’t been trying to push me off her. She hadn’t made great efforts to stop me when I stood up and pulled her down a row of books, Philosophy to Phonetics. No one was there.
“That’s not what? You think I’m full of shit?”
“I think you’re trouble.”
“Yeah, Em. That’s me.” And then I’d showed Emily what messing around with trouble meant. I’d showed her with my tongue against her bottom lip, my hands gripping her until there wasn’t any space between us. Until she’d given up the ghost and kissed me right back.
“You tell Eddie Parker you can’t go anywhere with him. Not the movies, not to dinner and not to his daddy’s damn bonfire on the river.” When she shook her head, looked like there might be another excuse, some bullshit reason to tell me no, I kissed her again. Hale Demon Magic always worked like a charm. “What will you tell him?” I’d asked when I needed to breathe again.
“I’ll tell him no, Ransom.”
That smile had reappeared on her face, the one she claimed she never wore. “And you’ll tell him no because…”
“Because…because I’m your girl.”