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To the girls who taught themselves what love feels like… You turned broken pieces into armor and scars into stories.
I used to live in the shadows, pressed between the crowded pages of somebody else’s tale like a wilting rose. Until he pulled me out of the suffocating paper, showering me with light until I blossomed into the person he knew I could be. Oliver von Bismarck. My best friend. My secret crush. My first love… And these days? My bitter sworn enemy. Ollie might have forgotten me, but I remember the scars he left behind. They say the best revenge is to not be like your enemy. I grew up to be kind, reliable, and responsible. All the things he lacked. Thanks to him, I’m no longer a rose. I’m a thorn.
Problem was, I didn’t want the designer clothes, skyscraper penthouses, and glitzy restaurants. I wanted fiercely loyal friends, home-cooked meals, and rounds of rummy with my parents on lazy holiday evenings. Things Oliver von Bismarck would weave tales about—tales so beautiful and foreign, I didn’t believe they could possibly be true.
Oliver von Bismarck. Count of Carinthia. The eldest son of Felix von Bismarck, Duke of Carinthia. And my own personal downfall.
I wanted to tell him everything. I wanted to tell him nothing. In the end, Oliver von Bismarck was the only person in the world who thought of me as more than an afterthought. I refused to burden him with my issues.
He was outrageously beautiful, but he was also my best friend. Well, my only friend.
God forbid they caused mayhem without him, never mind that Zachary Sun had a permanent stick lodged up his ass and Romeo Costa couldn’t find Fun on a map with a GPS, a compass, and Dora the Explorer on speed dial.
Without fail, Oliver started every summer by gifting me a rose to remind me of who I was. A pact we’d shared since I tried to run away from home at seven to meet my grandparents.
Briar Rose had gotten real pretty in the last couple years. Impossible not to stare at, though I couldn’t pinpoint what exactly made her so different than the rest.
Ever since I started gifting her roses, she consumed any fairytale she could get her hands on.
To her, I was the closest thing to family, and it fucking ruined me that her parents sucked so hard. And now, here she was, her hand on my knee, mere seconds away from milking the truth out of me.
What’s wrong is I want to kiss you, and I can’t stop thinking about it, I wanted to say. What’s wrong is I hate that you live so far away and maybe you should come and live with us. It’s not like your parents are gonna care.
Meanwhile, Briar Rose carried the aura of a queen with her towering height, regal strawberry-blonde hair, and impossibly mauve eyes. Not to mention, she didn’t share a single personality trait with either of them. She loved old books and cozy nights. They liked new money and the blistering heat of their inevitable journey to Hell. She brought joy to every room she entered. They brought joy to every room they exited. She was good. They weren’t.
“One could only hope.” He raised his voice with purpose, pausing to take another drag of his cigarette. “Briar Rose is mine. I want to get to know her. I deserve to form a connection with her. I want to be a part of her life.”
Philomena snorted. “I am not jealous of my own daughter, you fool.” “You are. You cannot handle her beauty and grace. You’re banishing her from your kingdom to feel better about yourself. Quite sad, really.” He paused. “You’re Maleficent. Ferocious. Vindictive. Past her prime.”
“Ollie, what am I going to do? It feels like the sky is falling.” “If the sky falls, I’ll hold it up for you.”
In this moment, I realized I was truly and wholly fucked. Up until now, loving Briar Rose had been inconvenient, exasperating, nerve-wrecking, but overall exhilarating. It was, for the most part, fun. Today, she’d introduced me to the dark side of love. A land where every burn she received lashed at my own skin like a whip, her losses became mine, and her aches weighed down my bones.
“I am always going to be here for you.” I tipped up her chin, my eyes boring into hers. “Not just for the summers, Cuddlebug. If you need me to transfer schools and come live here in Switzerland, I’ll do it. I’ll do anything for you. There’s no mountain too high, no ocean too deep, no planet too far for me to reach you. This is my oath to you. You will always have me. You will never, ever lose me.”
And in that kiss, she sealed my fate. I could never love another. Briar Rose was it for me.
My heart was all the way across the pond, in Europe, with a girl I hadn’t seen since I was nineteen.
“You’re just pretending. You want people to think the worst of you. You actually want people to dislike you. I’ve never seen anything like that. Why?”
The truth was, I didn’t deserve any love, remorse, or sympathy from anyone. I deserved hate. And because I couldn’t tell people why they needed to send it my way, I sought it through other means.
They were what I’d run away from for fifteen years and counting. Briar Rose. My Briar Rose.
Apparently, my first—and only—love had become a fuck up of gigantic proportions. A hedonistic man-child who only cared about partying, vacationing, and corrupting young women.
Once upon a time, he promised me forever. Our forever turned into never. And never was an awfully long time to fester in the newfound hate I felt for this man.
“You will never be a stranger to me.” “Funny you should say that, because after how you left things off, I realized you were a stranger all along.”
He’d kept the ten-dollar ring I’d gifted him. My sole possession as a child. Something I’d won at a carnival. I stared my past right in the eye, and it reminded me of everything I’d lost. My entire world.
Little Briar Rose wasn’t so little anymore. The rose’s fine pointed bud had blossomed into something even more delicate and forbidden. Her beauty was still careless. Haphazard. An intoxicating cocktail of wavy curtain bangs, a messy top bun, an oversized denim jacket, and knee-length socks. It didn’t surprise me that she was stylish and put-together. But it knocked the breath out of me that she’d manage to remain so uniquely herself.
“Yes, it is, and unlike you, I actually support myself doing what I love.” She pursed her lips, whirling around to face me. “You know, my entire life, I dreamed of someone who would protect me. Who would look out for my interests and welfare. That person never came. Not my mother, not my father, not my biological dad, and sure as hell not you.”
“At the end of the day, I didn’t choose this profession. It chose me. I wanted to dedicate my life to making others feel protected when they’re vulnerable. I like to walk into a set knowing that my actors trust me to have their wellbeing in mind at all costs. My job allows me to be someone’s mother and father. Sister and friend. The world wasn’t kind to me. So, I made sure to be kind to others. To right this wrong.”
“That I’m yours. Completely. Unconditionally. Tragically. I will take your hate over anyone else’s love. Your anger over anyone else’s compassion. Your tears over anyone else’s smiles. A moment with you over anyone else’s forever. You’re the one.”
“You’re my one, Briar Rose,” he whispered into our kiss. “And my goddamn only.”
I’d promised to be there for her and failed. The least I could do was nurse her back to health.
“She’s fragile and vulnerable right now, and the only person she remembers positively is you. You’re her support system. You’re the difference between a smooth healing process and a bumpy one. And make no mistake—you will give her a smooth healing process.”
Over the years, I’d tried every kink in the book to get my better half going. It took ten years to finally admit that my only kink, my only type, was Briar Rose Auer.
You’re still the you that matters. You’re still sweet, and smart, and compassionate. You don’t need your memories to be the same girl that loved Oliver von Bismarck something fierce.
“Welcome home, Cuddlebug.” But it didn’t feel like home at all. For a reason I couldn’t fathom, it felt like someone’s gilded prison.
“I remember you telling me that each rose has to be individually dyed, and that you have to order them from somewhere far.” She looked up. “Is this a tradition of ours?”
“Because I would never risk our relationship. I’m too crazy about you.”
The only way to destroy a dream was to make it come true. I finally had Briar Rose. I was going to lose her in spectacular fashion.
How could my fiancé not know I didn’t eat meat? And why was the south wing off-limits? Nothing made sense. And I really needed a healthy dose of sense right now.
But at the end of the day, the Briar and Oliver I remembered could survive any fight. We were so in love as kids. So radically loyal toward one another.
“Women are pioneers. Nietzsche was a bitter man with more health issues than Vogue. Polite society largely shunned him for not believing in God, and he was as broke as your average college fuckboy. A chauvinist, just like the rest of his peers. Still, women nurtured him. Smart women. Feminists. His sister, mother, aunt, Lou Salome.”
Briar snatched up the candle and blew it out. “A man’s shadow is designed to hide a woman’s light. It seeks to contain what it cannot control.”
“You have nothing to worry about. I adore you. I would never intentionally hurt you. We had a hiccup. I just want to wait until you regain your memory before we have sex. If, after you remember everything, you still want me in your bed, I promise to never leave.”
The truth was, I wanted to tell her. I wanted to tell her everything. About my housemate. About my brother. About that night fifteen years ago. About why I’d failed her. But I couldn’t. I’d made a promise, and I’d destroyed enough lives already.
“I want you to fuck me,” she begged, grazing my chest with her nails. “I’ve been wanting you to fuck me since I was sixteen. I wanted it when I was drunk, and I want it now when I’m sober. I want to feel you moving inside me. Filling me.”
“I am home.” She flattened her palm against my heart, and it thudded so violently against it, I feared I was hurting her. “Home is where you are, Ollie.”
“I love you inside of me. I love you outside of me, too, but when you’re inside of me, I feel whole. Like you’re a part of my body.”
reassuring grin. “I don’t remember much, yet somehow, I know that no one has ever looked at me the way you do.”
