Painted Red

“The hell you haven’t. Lying by omission is still lying, Rosie.” It took everything I had to keep my distance from her. I had to stay away. The closer I got, the more I would want to touch her and I couldn’t bear to have her in my arms right now. Not when I wasn’t sure she was really the woman I thought she was.

Rosie’s jaw twitched and her little hands clenched at her sides. “I didn’t omit anything, Dex,” she spat my name out harshly, her lips curling even farther downward. “It just wasn’t your business.”

I stared at her in disbelief. “The fuck it isn’t-”

She cut me off, her face twisted into a scowl but still unable to meet me eyes. ”What was I supposed to do? Spill my life story to some guy I had just met?” She threw her arms up. “My fucking boss?”

“So what, Rosie? You thought you could lay up in my house, get fucked a few times by ‘some guy you just met,’ and run back to your fiancé?”

Rosie said nothing, her head shaking slowly back and forth.

“Then what, Rosie? What the hell is it?” I was officially fed the fuck up. “You can fuck someone you barely know but you don’t have the decency to tell him you belong to somebody else?”

“It’s complicated, Dex. But I promise,” she took a long pause. “I swear, Daniel isn’t my fiancé. He isn’t my anything.”

“He seems to think he is.”

“Well he’s a fucking idiot,” she snapped, her voice suddenly acrid with disdain.

She sounded so sure in her declaration that it gave me pause. Barely a couple minutes in and I was already growing tired with this argument. Fighting with her wasn’t going to solve a damned thing. She needed to talk to me. I needed to finally make her talk to me. No deflections, no side stepping, no more fucking bullshit.

“I want the truth, Rosie. All of it.”

16

Rosie

I didn’t know what to say

. I barely knew where to start with my explanation. There was so much garbage, so much fog, clouding my perfect little life that I could hardly sift through it all. Daniel Bennett, my father, school, everything was a mess and I only made things worse by running away.

I moved to Miami in attempt to live for myself. To forget the expectations and pressures forced on me by my family and find out who I really was. Dex had been completely unexpected. The beautiful man with all of his passion and goodness completely trampled all over my carefully laid plans. Though he had yet to say it, he showed me more love and kindness than I ever felt or expected to feel.

In all of my eagerness to explore my newfound feelings of love and security, I outright refused to acknowledge my past. Choosing to forget all of the painful things I left behind. Hoping that, with enough willpower, all of my problems would disappear, leaving me free to ride off into a perfect watercolor sunset with Dex by my side.

It was becoming clearer by the second that wouldn’t be possible. I was naïve to think my dramatic past wouldn’t catch up to me sometime. But it had, much too soon for my liking, and with a vengeance that threatened to ruin my relationship with the only man I had ever felt some semblance of love for.

I couldn’t hide it anymore. Couldn’t hide behind pretty smiles and coy deflections, Dex deserved to know everything. Every ridiculous, messy detail from my past that brought me to him in the first place.

“I…” I took a moment, pausing to get my bearings. “I don’t know where to start.”

“At the risk of sounding like an asshole, the beginning is probably as good a place as any. Why did you come to Miami?”

That one was easy. “I came to Miami because I needed a fresh start. Isn’t that why everyone moves to a new place?”

Dex chuckled humorlessly. “It’s more than that with you though. I can tell.”

“You’re right.” I sucked my bottom lip into my mouth, chewing on it furiously to keep myself from crying prematurely. There would, no doubt, be tears by the end of this conversation, but it was still too soon to fall victim to my emotions. “I was… Am. I am running away from something.”

Dex suddenly looked alarmed, I reached out to touch his arm, attempting to soothe him.

“Nothing like that! I wasn’t in any physical danger, I was just profoundly unhappy.” I knew it sounded terribly dramatic and childish but there was no other way I could explain it.

He stared at me patiently, his eyes dark and expectant but somehow still the most comforting things in the world.

“My father has… All of these plans for me. For my life.” I was fumbling with my words. It was the first time I had ever outwardly discussed the topic and I wasn’t entirely sure how to fully express my thoughts. “He’s a senator.” I spat out a laugh. “Completely unremarkable, but you’d never guess it by his ego.”

Dex’s dark eyebrows furrowed, confusion taking over his handsome face. “So you ran away because your father is some asshole politician?”