“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.”

And she’d been my girl every day since then. Even when it became impossible. Even when I’d taken that beautiful, sweet girl, the same girl who’d given me her heart that day in the library and then her body months later, and ripped apart everything she’d been, anything she’d wanted to be.

“That was our anniversary,” I said to myself, resting my palm against my tattoo. “That day in the library, when you became mine.”

Later, when I walked her home—not all the way, because her father still couldn’t stand me—I bought my Emily one single, perfect red rose from a little hole in the wall market along the way. The flower couldn’t come close to her beauty, but I wanted to give her something that reminded her of what she did to me, how full and free she made me feel. A rose was a pathetic second, but it had made her smile. I didn’t care that one of the thorns slit my finger, drawing blood. She gently wrapped my finger in a tissue she had been carrying in her purse, and I thought I was the luckiest man on the planet, to have such a girl care for me.

Now, roses only meant blood to me.

They covered my bed in bunches, petals ripped from the buds, buds torn from the stems. The stems were like knives, dozens of them all over my mattress, on the floor, littered on my desk, my bedside table. Red and green everywhere. And there, right among the dark red petals and broken stems, next to my alarm clock and cell charger, was the note. It was the same as the first one I’d gotten in the mail weeks after I left the hospital.