I wish I had the words to make this better, something to take away the grief and replace it with an everlasting happiness. But I don’t, and though I haven’t really lost anyone—not the way she has, at least—I know that’s not how grief works.
So instead, I wind an arm around her waist, bringing her body into the groove of mine, where I can keep her safe, and I press a kiss to her temple.
She swipes at a single tear the moment it escapes. “I don’t really talk about it often. It’s not that I can’t, but that I’m constantly trying to move forward, you know? I lost my family, but I’m building a new one with Connor. We’re making the memories I can’t make with my parents anymore.”
“Tell me about them. The memories. You’ve told me about the nickname, that your dad called you trouble too. What about the peonies?”
She looks up at me, her dimpled chin on my chest, bright eyes and an even brighter smile. “Mom always wanted this huge, colorful garden, like the one she had at her house growing up. We went to this beautiful garden store at the end of September when I was eight.” Her grin widens, blooming as the memory coasts through her mind. “I was enthralled. We were there forever, just walking around, taking it all in. Mom wanted something that would come back each spring. She said there was something about something as delicate as a flower that would bloom all over again after the harshest winter. I found this luscious peony bush. They were so pretty, the pink flowers. Not overwhelmingly bright, but this soft, beautiful rose hue that just captivated me.”
She touches the warm pink ends of her hair. “That’s why the pink. It reminds me of my mom, but my mom always said the color reminded her of me. That I was like the freshest bloom each spring, captivating.” The color dotting her cheeks runs rampant, right up to the tips of her ears as she drops her gaze. “I guess I wanted to feel that way again, like I was…captivating. For someone, at least.”
Captivating? But she’s so much more than that. She’s…fascinating. Dazzling. Fucking hypnotizing. Doesn’t she know that?
She doesn’t knock the air from my lungs when she walks into a room; she breathes the life back into me. If she’s the flower blooming after the harshest winter, I’m the spring. I’m everything new and fresh, full of life and color and sunshine and hope, after it was all stolen from me the way the first bitter frost of winter steals the beauty of autumn.
Rosie gives that all to me, and she has the nerve to sit here beside me and think she’s anything less than enchanting?
That just won’t work.
“So you got the pink ones?” I ask, trailing my finger along the curve of her thigh, watching as she mirrors the movement on my own, tracing the black lines of my tattoo peeking out of my swim trunks.
“And the purple ones. The blue ones too.” She giggles. “Then the next fall, we got the orange ones, and yellow the next. We planted a new bush each fall, and I waited by the window each spring to watch them bloom. Our front yard was a rainbow. Everybody stopped to look at it when they walked by.”
“Like you, then.”
She looks up at me, a noticeable swallow in her throat as she catches the intensity behind my gaze. “Like me?”
“The burst of color and life everyone stops to look at.”
Her nose scrunches, a ruby flush painting her freckled cheekbones at my words. She keeps her eyes trained on her hand as it moves over my thigh, toying with the hem of my shorts. Her lips purse to the side, and she peeks up at me from beneath thick, sandy blonde lashes. “Can I?”
“Mhmm.”
Something tight and thick settles in my throat at the gentle sweep of her fingers, something hot low in my belly as she drags my shorts up, exposing inch after inch of inked skin covering my thigh. The tip of her fingernail brushes over the mane of the lion painted there in black, the weathered lines of his face, the wisdom in his eyes, like he’s seen it all.
“Pretty,” Rosie murmurs, a slow, heated swipe of her hand that has muscles jumping that shouldn’t be. “Why a lion?”
“A symbol, I guess.”
“Of?”
Of everything Courtney tried to take from me, or maybe succeeded in taking from me. Of every piece of me I nearly lose with each hopeful date before it inevitably turns meaningless.
“Of strength,” is what comes out of my mouth. “Wisdom from lessons learned. A reminder to do better. That I’m in charge of my destiny, not anyone else.”
“I want to be in charge of my destiny,” Rosie murmurs. “It feels like, no matter how much control I try to exercise, I can’t control my future.”
“Your future and your destiny aren’t the same thing. Your future is anything that’s going to happen, the things we can’t pick. But your destiny…it’s everything that’s meant for you. The things we work hard for every day, because we want them. Maybe part of your destiny is a future where you aren’t afraid to wade through the deeper parts of the creek in the mountain, to swim with your son without fear, to be able to say good-bye to him every morning without that fear that it might be permanent. But those things don’t come easily, do they?”
The way she looks up at me, a tiny crease between her brows as she hangs on every word, mulls it over in her head, it’s a heady, addictive feeling, like she’s not anywhere else but right here with me.
“It’s something you want, and you’re putting the work in to get there, because you know it’s your destiny, a life you’re bound to live for however long you’re going to live it, and you won’t accept anything less. Your future is a life with your son. Your destiny is a life with him where your strength and courage make it the best life possible.”
A beat of silence stretches between us as she watches her hand move over my thigh, her touch firmer, slower, more purposeful as it travels in a dangerous direction. A shudder of breath escapes her, and she gazes up at me with wonder. “I want that.”
“Then take it,” I tell her, capturing her wrist. If her hand keeps moving the way it is, something inside me is bound to snap, and I’m supposed to be in control.
There’s a heat that comes over her, like it lights her from the inside out, but it doesn’t touch the furthest corners of her. Not the edges of her gaze, tainted with frost, a faint uncertainty that lingers, like she’s desperate to shake it. I’m not sure what it is, until I shift closer, tugging at the towel still covering her haphazardly.
She lets the plush material fall, slender fingers fluttering over the adorable daisies on her high-waisted bikini bottoms, hands coming to rest over her belly. Her gaze bounces to my thigh, the way the muscles flex as I shift closer still, then to my arms, my chest, and down farther, settling on my stomach. She swallows, fingers spreading wider, covering more of herself, and something inside me dies.
“Does it bother you that I don’t look like you?”
What bothers me is the hidden meaning behind her words, so I start with humor to try to ease her tension. “That you’re short? It’s a little inconvenient, sure. My neck’s gonna hurt once we get to all that kissing.”
She rolls her eyes and swats my shoulder. “I’m not short! You’re just massive!”