Twelve of Roses: A Dark Standalone Read online

  “You don’t, but there aren’t too many other options.”

  He was right. If I burst into a police station and blurted this story out, I would be handcuffed or detained. Con would no doubt slip away.

  “How far out are you? I’m going to leave now.” I stood up, sending the desk chair rolling into the wall.

  “There’s a diner—”

  “I know where it is,” I interrupted him, flying out of the room.

  “Be careful, okay? Con doesn’t look like himself these days.” I didn’t ask him to elaborate, because I already knew what he meant. The front door swung open just as I reached the top of the stairs, and Max walked in, looking straight at me.

  “Rose?” he asked, pretending to feign confusion. Did he think I was still going to fall for this shit? He knew me better than that. Furthermore, did he think I somehow overlooked his creepy room with my pictures all over it?

  “He’s here,” I mumbled into the phone, before slowly lowering it from my ear.

  “Let me see you,” I ordered, not moving from my place at the top of the steps.

  He sighed but obliged, starting with his left eye. He pulled the lower lid down and used his index finger to slide the first contact lens out, before doing the right.

  When he was finished, he blinked a few times and rolled his neck, before looking back up at me. Even though I knew it was coming, I still blanched and took a step back, sucking in a small breath and openly staring at him.

  “Rosie.” He completely ditched the accent and stared at me with bold blue eyes instead of dark ones.

  They disintegrated my heart and made it race all at once. And his face…

  “What did you do to yourself? Why would you do this to me?” I glared at him, feeling my chest tighten.

  “What did I do to myself?” He raised his brows like he couldn’t believe I’d just asked him that. “I spent a shit load of money to change everything about me so we could start over. You know? Try and be a good guy for a little while. But then, you let Maxwell fuck you in the parking lot, and I knew you wanted the real me back.”

  I scoffed, shaking my head.

  “It would never have worked. You lied to me about everything. You’re fucking insane!” I screamed at him.

  Pot meet kettle.

  “You’re the sole reason for my insanity. You’re my one and only madness. It’s you, Rosie. It always comes back to you,” he preached.

  “You’re not even you!” Raising my palms in a defensive gesture, I warded him off as he began walking up the stairs.

  “I’m the same Constantine I’ve always been,” he objected.

  No, he wasn’t my Con. His face wasn’t right, the hair was wrong, his body was bigger. His eyes, though…there was no denying those anywhere. It didn’t make sense to me why he would go through all of this when he could have just taken me whenever he wanted.

  And Molly?

  I didn’t even know where to begin with that.

  “Rosie,” he drawled in his fake accent.

  “Stop it,” I rasped, backing away.

  I felt like a giant fucking idiot to dare believe a guy like Max could be real—and that he would want someone as screwed up as me.

  “I need you to come with me.”

  “Why would I do that, Con?”

  “Because I know where Lauren is,” he pointed out.

  Shit, how had I forgotten her so quickly? I couldn’t just abandon her to his judgement. I looked at him and weighed my options, coming to the only feasible conclusion. There was only one way to end this, and it started with me complying and agreeing to accompany him wherever he wanted.

  “Take me to her,” I stated, wondering if she would still be alive when I saw her again.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Present

  It was time to make peace with my ghost.

  Con had tossed everything he needed in a brown box and then followed me back across the street so I could do the same under his supervision. We’d been on the road for a little over an hour since, and the silence between us was deafening.

  “When did you figure it out?” he asked me, breaking the first block of ice.

  “I’ve had my suspicions for a while…certain things about you are unforgettable.”

  It didn’t matter what he changed on the outside— what I felt for him went far beyond the physical.

  “Then why didn’t you say anything?” He pondered the million-dollar question.

  I wasn’t sure the answer would make sense to anyone other than me. Max and Con were the same person, but Max was the better side of him. The sweet, romantic, charming side. And I thought that’s what I wanted.

  And then, I wanted to save that side of him from me. He was so good, and I wanted everything that was opposite of that. I wanted the dirty, the bad, the ugly. I wanted Constantine. I told him all of this, staring out the window so he couldn’t see my face.

  “You hate me, but you love me too. It’s the same way I feel about you,” he stated, processing all I’d just told him out loud.

  “Why did you do change the way you look?” I finally asked him.

  “Because you wouldn’t have accepted me as I was.” He shrugged.

  “Whose house was that?” I changed the subject. He had no fucking idea how wrong he was. I think he was starting to get the picture now, though.

  “They’re both mine. I had Molly suggest Black Pine to you and set it all up,” he admitted.

  I nodded my head, gnawing on my bottom lip. True friends really stabbed you in the front. I went through hell for that girl, and none of it was necessary. I angrily blinked tears from my eyes, looking out the window so Con couldn’t see them.

  “Your sister?” I checked, curling my lip.

  “Half-sister,” he corrected.

  “Why didn’t anyone talk about that?” Everyone knew who the Burrows were, and a redheaded child was never mentioned.

  “Molly’s different. It was better for no one to know. It would have made things harder for her in school.”

  “This is unbelievable,” I droned with a humorless laugh, closing my eyes and willing this whole thing to be over.

  It was a farm.

  A meticulously well-maintained one at that. The large house was lit up, a welcoming sight after spending hours in a suffocating truck.

  “Who lives here?” I asked him, stretching my aching limbs.

  “We do,” he grunted, opening his door, and then coming around to open mine. I looked away from his new face that held a pair of beautiful familiar eyes, refusing to let my idiotic heart lead me back into his dark paradise.

  “I was going to play it all out like a movie,” he started to explain. “You were supposed to fall in love with the good guy and remarry me in a pretty white dress. A real wedding like you always wanted. Guess we both fucked that all up,” he mused. “Come on. Lauren’s inside.” He took my hand and led me towards the front of the house, giving me a sidelong look when I didn’t pull away.

  I kept my eyes trained ahead of us. The second he really looked in them, he would see I was up to something. It was damn laughable that he thought he could convince me he was someone else when we knew one another inside out.

  You can do this, Rose.

  “Where are we?” I asked as a distraction.

  “Ponty-Poole.”

  “Ponty-Poole,” I repeated.

  “I think it should end where it all began,” he divulged, leading me up the porch stairs.

  Before we even walked through the screen door, I heard the high-pitched laughter and knew I wasn’t going to find anything I was expecting. But I still wasn’t prepared to come across Lauren sitting on Justin’s lap.

  The laughing immediately ceased.

  Molly, who was supposed to have been away for a work opportunity, was sitting Indian style in a La-Z-Boy. Justin and Lauren were cuddled together on a sofa.

  “Rose—” Lauren started.

  “So, this is your Joshua? I mean, I have to give
you credit, because that’s pretty fucking unoriginal and I fell for it,” I interrupted, not wanting to hear anything this girl had to say. Did she care about him so much that she let her own mom be used as a cadaver? Or did she hate her mother enough not to care?

  Did the answer even fucking matter?

  They were all bat-shit crazy.

  All these people decided to turn my life into their personal puppet show. They each toyed with me in their own way and got kicks out of it. They stripped me of privacy and freedom.

  I glanced at the digital cable box and saw it was only seven-fifteen. I had no idea how long I needed to wait before I could do anything, but sitting around and acting like the best of friends with these people wasn’t on my agenda.

  “Rose, we—”

  “Can I lie down somewhere?” I cut Molly off, looking to Con. He eyed me for a minute before nodding his head slightly.

  “Come on. I’ll show you to our room.” He turned and headed for the large white staircase, and I followed him.

  I took in the house as we went, feeling a resonating ache make its way through my soul. This could have been my home. It was exactly as I pictured it. He even added the rustic accents I used to lie in bed and describe to him. He did everything right, and at the same time did so much that was unforgivably wrong.

  He tried so hard to make us normal. While he had been busy trying to find ways to fix us, I was busy dragging us further into hell.

  I stopped walking, staring at his back as he kept going. Losing him the first time was hard; losing him again would shred me. I lived and breathed him from the time I was seventeen years old.

  He was all I knew, even after I tried to erase his memory with painkillers and liquor. The fire was supposed to have freed both of us from whatever this dance was that we kept doing.

  “Con,” I choked out around the lump in my throat.

  “Rosie?” He turned around and looked at me, his lips pressing into a thin white line. “What is it?”

  I didn’t answer him. I couldn’t, and I didn’t want to waste any more of our time together.

  Not when this was the last time it would happen. I could tell he was catching on that something wasn’t right, but fuck if I cared anymore. I walked up to him and wrapped my arms around his neck, pulling his mouth down to mine.

  Chapter Twenty

  It’s ironic.

  We seek comfort from those who hurt us the most. The one who inflicted my pain was the only one who could take it away.

  I wasn’t a man afraid to admit that I was in love. The wound she tore open in my chest was far from closed, but I couldn’t let her go. I pushed her against the wall and took everything she had to offer. Our teeth clashed, I dug my fingers into her hips, and she threaded hers in my hair.

  She ground herself against me, softly moaning into my mouth, dropping her hands to my pants and frenziedly undoing the button on my jeans and pulling down my zipper. I pushed her sweats down, taking her underwear with them.

  There was no foreplay, whispered words of love or apologies. It was two people fucking. I hooked her left leg over my hip and shoved my dick inside her pussy as hard as I could. She loudly hissed and moaned from the harsh intrusion, digging into my shoulders with cat-like claws.

  I didn’t attempt trying to hush her. I wanted her to scream for me. Her little pink tongue swiped across my sweaty chest, her perfect mouth forming an O with every thrust.

  It was a goodbye fuck.

  The kind where you used your body to say everything you couldn’t. What was a little more destruction when all we did was wreck one another anyway?

  She was saying bye to me.

  I was saying bye to her.

  Each of us had our own version of how it was all going to end.

  I pulled out and grabbed her by hair, dragging her through the door right beside us, ignoring her cries of pain. Backing up until the backs of my knees hit the bed, I sat down and guided her over my cock. She didn’t need any instruction.

  She straddled me, sank her tight pussy down, and started to ride. I gripped her fleshy ass, pushing up and pulling her down. Harder. Deeper. She was getting wetter.

  Her hot little breaths and quick gasps made my balls want to burst. I sucked her nipple into my mouth and bit. I let her ride me until she came, stroking the sensitive nub between her legs.

  Before she could even come down, I had her on her back, halfway off the bed and feet planted on my chest, pounding into her so hard my balls began to suffer from smacking against her ass.

  We fucked and fondled until exhaustion forced her into slumber.

  As she lay breathing on what was supposed to be our marital bed, I memorized every inch of her body. I wanted to smother her and steal the air from her lungs, pull it all into mine so we would be together even in death.

  I laid with her, letting the rest of the house settle. When the timing was right, I kissed her cheek gently and then slowly made my way out of the room.

  Molly was first.

  I crept into her room and watched her sleep for a few minutes. She must have sensed someone standing over her because she woke up.

  Her eyes went wide when she saw the knife, but she never got the chance to scream. I drove the blade straight down into the center of her forehead, making impact with her frontal lobe. Pulling the blade out, I brought it back down, this time going for her neck, jerking from left to right to sever her head.

  Blood soaked the white sheets, splattered on the wall, and stained my clothes. I could hear it trying to form suction around my blade, hear her bones crack and turn to mush.

  I didn’t need her anymore, and she’d ultimately failed me, anyway. She’d do nothing but get in the way now. Sure, I could have simply strangled the life from her body, but this somehow seemed more effective. There would be no resuscitation.

  I needed her to die.

  I oddly felt like my father in this moment.

  I wondered if these were his emotions when he felt he had no options left, choosing to blow a hole in Rose-Mary’s head and then in his own. They were kind enough to leave me detailed instructions that said to watch out for sickly Molly and find my Roses.

  They should be proud of me, in my opinion. I’d just sent Molly to be with them and accomplished what I was meant to, apart from starting my own family. That wasn’t an option, though—not without Roselynn by my side.

  Walking into the room where Justin and Lauren were, I stood over them and released a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. My brother sat up and eyed the blood on my clothes and the knife in my hand with a blank expression.

  “It’s time to go,” I announced.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Something was wrong.

  I knew it the second I opened my eyes. How could I do something so stupid? Willingly enter the viper’s den and then sleep beside it? What the hell was I thinking?

  The house was dark and quiet, which I found rather odd considering three other individuals were lurking somewhere.

  Fuck. I looked at the alarm clock and swiftly got out of the bed, snagging the long white robe off the back of the bedroom door.

  “You know what I decided?”

  “Holy shit.” I jumped out of my skin, placing a hand on my chest and turning in the direction his voice came from. Con stood on the far side of the room, just coming out of the bathroom.

  I took a quick inventory of his bloody clothes and the ax tucked down by his side, along with the knife sticking out of his waistband.

  “Con, what did you do?”

  “I realized that it doesn’t matter if I change the way I look, build you a beautiful house, or even promise you the world. You still haven’t learned how to accept me, Rosie. You’re still trying to leave.”

  Swallowing an angry retort, I made sure my steps were barely noticeable and inched towards the door. His words had déjà vu tingling in the back of my head.

  “Con, put the ax down.”

  “Why? Are you scared?” He co
cked his head and gave me a maniacal grin.

  Fuck yes, I was scared. I was terrified. I knew this wasn’t some scare tactic bullshit—he had every intention of using that tool against me. Con had always been certifiable, but I loved him anyway.

  Everyone picks their poison—a sick little addiction you know is detrimental to your health, but you just can’t help yourself. You blatantly don’t give a damn.

  Some people liked cake.

  I liked serial killers.

  But I never thought we would be here.

  The faint sound of sirens could be heard in the distance, the rescue brigade showing up exactly when Sheriff Reynolds had said they would.

  He’d whispered to let Con take me before I lowered the phone from my ear. I’d pretended I’d hung up when he arrived as ‘Max,’ but I had managed to leave the call going until he forced me to ditch the cell all together.

  “You know what that sounds like?”

  “Sirens?” I answered dumbly.

  “No, that sounds like you trying to run away from me again.”

  I’m not sure how it worked in the wild, but if prey knew when the predator was about to strike, they would run just like I did. I made it into the hall before he sent me careening into the door across from his. My body bounced off and absorbed the shock.

  “Con, no!” I screamed, barely getting out of the way when he took his first swing, fortunately splitting the wood apart instead of me. I took off at a dead run.

  He followed right behind me.

  At the top of the stairs, he shoved me from behind. With nothing to catch myself on, I went down, rolling like a bowling pin.

  My joints banged off the hardwood and pain radiated throughout my body. I crawled for just a second, my heart pounding so hard I feared it would be the end of me. I pushed off the floor and ran towards the front door. It opened, bringing me face to face with Justin.

  “Sorry, little sis.” He shoved me in the chest, knocking me right back on my ass.

  I more heard Con approaching than saw him, spurring me back into motion. I ran through the living room, crossing into a dining room and emerging into a kitchen at the same time Con did.