Rosalie Briar has never been able to give another person her loyalty. Her love, yes--selectively, restrictively, and regretfully. Her lust, absolutely. But never her loyalty.
In truth, it is a behaviour that extends to much more than her fellow human beings. At twenty-six years old, the blonde con artist has never been able to settle down--never been able to commit to a place, let alone an identity, for any considerable amount of time. In part, that is because of the nature of what she does for a living. She lies. She steals. She is a white-collar criminal who has successfully evaded law enforcement--local, federal, and international--for eight years. She knows better than most that everything ends.
Things get stolen and people go away. Most of the time you don't get them back.
And yet, such a strong and pervasive unwillingness to stop, to slow down for long enough to share her life with someone else--that is the kind of fear that runs deep, much deeper than the illegal lifestyle she chose for herself. Yes, living as a grifter might have certainly cemented Rosie's fate, but the truth is that she was a commitment-phobe long before she was a con artist. Rosalie Briar does not run because she is a criminal. She is a criminal because, one day, she decided to run.
It's a Springsteen song. Get out while you're young.
Frankly, the very idea of standing still has been her worst nightmare for as long as she can remember. It's a classic case of small-town syndrome--an ambitious girl with big dreams, stuck in the middle of nowhere, in a backwards place with nothing to offer her but a few quaint farms and a lot of fields. It wasn't all bad, but for the most part it was eighteen years of going absolutely stir crazy and almost losing her mind. Even if she did the best that she could with the situation, the best of Dragonfly Creek would simply never be good enough for her--not for Rosalie. Because she was better than them. Better than that place. Better than the mundane life her parents had settled for.
Better than Danny Brookes.
He never did become a doctor. Unlike her, he barely even made it out of that town--hitting the closest city with nothing but a torn-up notebook full of photographs and a newly acquired edge to his voice, determined to solve the mystery of the one that got away. Now, no matter what case he's working, Officer Danny Brookes has one file on his table constantly.
It's marked 'Briar, Rosalie.'
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At age twenty-two, most connections that she made with other people were as fleeting as her identities--flickering moments of intense intimacy, firefly romances that burned brightly before fading into obscurity. A weekend in Barcelona. A summer in the Hamptons. Occasionally, there would be an exceptionally special individual who managed to stick around for longer than that, but the longer they stayed by her side, the more likely she was to drop them without a moments notice. It was a promise that followed Rosalie Briar wherever she went: the harder people tried to claw their way into her life, the more abruptly, the more brutally, she left them behind.
Things get stolen and people go away. Most of the time you don't get them back.
Once, she even picked up a professional thief in Europe and brought him back with her. For almost six months, Rosalie and the French cat burglar lived together, slept together, planned and executed heists together, played drunken Twister together. In fact, the French cat burglar was almost as good at drunken Twister as he was at breaking and entering.
She always calls him that, in her head, even though she remembers perfectly well what his name was. She remembers his dimples and the exact shade of his warm, twinkling, brown eyes. She remembers his Parisian accent and the sound of his laughter. She remembers the last job that they worked together, and she remembers in painful, excruciating detail the exact moment that he slipped and fell from that window ledge. She remembers being hit by a second of panic--of real, true fear for the safety of someone that she had come to care about.
And she remembers realising, as she watched the EMTs cart him into the back of an ambulance, that they had stayed together for far too long.
She paid for his medical care. She had new documents forged for him. She mapped out every potential escape route from the hospital, acquired three getaway vehicles and five different flight tickets booked under different aliases, just in case the police came knocking, wondering what he was doing outside the window of the richest family in town.
But she never came to visit him. And he never saw her again.
After that, Rosalie went back to exclusively indulging in fleeting connections that burned brightly before fading away. She had temporary accomplices, but none that she ever invited to help mastermind her heists, or that she even came close to considering a partner. Lovers came to her apartment, but she never let anyone stay the night. And she never felt that fear again.
Until four years later, an 18-wheeler crashed into Hunter Levin's car.
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She might be fickle, she might be a flight risk, but she is in no way above emotions. Rosalie Briar knows what it is to love--what it is to feel affection, to have strong feelings for another person, to care about them. She knows how much it can hurt to want someone. She knows how much it can hurt to leave them. It hurts to choose in life, because it hurts to give things up. But even if it does, the one thing that Rosalie will never, ever give up is her freedom.
And that is why she runs. From her hometown. From her first love. From French cat burglars who play a mean round of Twister, from intrepid journalists called Philip who refuse to leave her alone, and from police officers that she almost went on a date with. She runs, because she fears that she might actually want to give up her freedom for them. And she knows that she will resent them for that.
In her life, she has met exactly one person who wants that freedom as much as she does.
At first, they don't even know each other's real names. Frankly, they don't need to know. What they share is not love, is not intimacy, is barely even affection--it is an instant, mindblowing, addictive chemistry. A constant push-and-pull in a neverending struggle for dominance, fought in mesmerising, breathless wonders and culminating in the sweetest escape.
Dodger is by no means an exact replica of her. He is as sly as she is sophisticated. He is the edgy, colourful graffiti on a concrete wall, whereas she is the water lilies in a painting by a French impressionist. He wanders because he never had a home, she wanders because she never wanted one--and he has his loyalties, whereas she tries valiantly to have absolutely none. But they are both clever and overconfident, and their faults are cracks that fit perfectly together. Like quick hands clutching at superfluous fabric, or soft, swollen lips trailing over glistening skin, whispering sweet nothings into the dead of the night.
But what the con artist and the street gang leader have most in common, where they are the most painfully similar to each other, is this: in their chests beat two bleeding, broken hearts, with other people's names permanently seared onto them. And that is where they have a true understanding.
That it is easier to be with someone that will never want to tie themselves to you--or perhaps moreover, to whom you will never want to tie yourself.
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Rosalie Briar has been in Regium for almost as long as she lived with the French cat burglar. She has slowly found her rhythm, found her place in the city--trying and failing to not put down more roots than she honestly cares for. She has formed bonds with other people, bonds that she cannot in good faith say are only fleeting connections, and that she now finds herself reluctant to leave should she have to.
Philip Gregory. Forrest Hunt. Sally Vanderwaal. Annabeth Morozov. Isabelle Bourgoine. Ramona Infante. Paula Soucie. Hunter Levin. Phoenix Kerr. For someone who claims to avoid attachments, there is certainly a very long and steadily growing list of people that Rosie feels genuine affection for--maybe even a degree of loyalty.
But you know what they say: a tiger never changes its stripes.
Things get stolen and people go away. Most of the time you don't get them back.
I know that you prefer to be called Dodger, or Dodge. I know that you're an incredible leader. I know that sometimes I behave more like a housewife than a friend, but who else would make sure that you and the gang eat proper meals every day? I know that you came to me when I was at my lowest point, and for that I am incomprehensibly grateful.
I know that you like to drift. I know that you don't like to be tied down. I know that even though you'd never admit it, you care about a lot of the people you pretend not to care about. I know that you lie to a lot of people, for various reasons. I know that I don't care about any of those quirks and oddities that some people would dare to call flaws.
I know exactly what I know, but there are a few things that I want you to know. No matter what happens between us, no matter how many times I may fall for the smallest little gestures that you do, no matter what you say or how you feel about me, I'm always going to be your friend. You're the one thing that's been constant in my life long enough for me to say that you are my best friend. I wouldn't want that to change on any terms, and I hope that you feel the same on that front.
Yes, I may feel a certain way about you that you might not feel about me. That's my own issue that I don't want you to feel responsible for. I can't blame you for being bad with romance, but I won't blame myself for being emotionally invested, which is something I'm not entirely sure you'll ever be able to do. Don't get me wrong, your personality is perfect just the way it is. I hope you don't feel at any point in this letter that I'm trying to say that I want you to share my feelings. I've only ever wanted you to be my friend, the rest may come and go.
I'm not entirely sure why I felt it necessary to right this letter. Articulating my words out loud becomes difficult when I talk about things that are near and dear to my heart. I don't know why I felt it necessary to tell you how I feel when I'm sure you already know. I do want you to know that what you did for me changed my life, and I owe you everything for it. It would be unfair to force you into a decision, when I myself didn't decide to feel this way, but I do need to decide where I go from here. I just ask that you make this decision easy for me, because I can't do that alone.
Colton was hesitant about this. He'd had a run-in with a kid a week or so ago, who proclaimed herself as one of 'Dodger's Lot', when pressed. The kid - was her name Jem? Colton couldn't remember - had got into a spot of bother with guards in the supermarket for shoplifting. So, he'd raced over to step in, with, "Annie, what do you think you're doing! I'm so sorry, officer, I'm trying to keep her under control, but our mother just died, she's not good with grieving." He convinced the guards that his 'little sister' was just troubled, and got her to give back the things she'd taken, then they were sent on their way. After quizzing her a bit, he'd let her go. More important things to do.
A few days ago, he'd got a text message asking him to meet the infamous Dodger. Aside from being worried as to how they got his number, he was concerned about what this might entail. He had helped them out, so it probably wouldn't be awful, and the offer had been to meet in a public place, so they probably wouldn't try anything, but all the same. Concern ran in his veins.
At the allotted time, on the allotted day, he took a seat in the cafe, ordered himself a glass of water (he'd had to spend extra that day he'd helped out Jem, as of course his shopping had to be done elsewhere, sadly more expensive), and sat in the window, restlessly staring out at the Autumn rain.
