Roses are Red

Prologue: Maverick

I never believed in love at first sight, the idea that two people could lock eyes and just know, deep in their soul, that they were meant to be. It's preposterous. However, I did believe in lust at first sight. Two people with a mutual attraction that lights on fire when their eyes meet was much more plausible. In fact, it happens all the time.

But today, I became a believer.

I was hurrying out of Little Rainbows, the daycare I worked at, and I was very distracted on my phone. It was a Monday, which was always my busiest day of the week. My friend Katherine was trying to convince me to go to yoga with her, again, but I couldn't be bothered. The Bachelorette was on tonight and I needed to know if my predictions for the final four were correct. They almost always weren't, but that meant my favorites were up for an entire season by themselves.

Caught up in my own fantasies of Dylan and Ethan, I was paying little attention to where I was going. And that's when I ran straight into him.

The neck thing I know, I'm on the ground and the most handsome man I've ever seen is standing over me. He had chestnut hair, windswept and unkempt. He also had the chocolatiest, prettiest brown eyes I'd ever seen.

"Are you alright?" he asked, his voice rough. I just stared. "Are you alright?" he repeated. I blinked twice, my body finally registering the fact that I was laying on the sidewalk.

"I think so," I say, and he holds out a hand to help me up. "I should have been watching where I was going."

"We're definitely both at fault here," he says. There's a pause.

"Where are you headed?" I ask, grabbing my purse and scooping up some of my fallen belongings.

"To the studio."

"Are you a painter or something? A photographer?"

He looks confused for a moment, then chuckles and shrugs his shoulders saying, "Something like that."

"Alright," I agree. "I'm Maverick," I say, reaching out to shake his hand.

He takes it, grasping mine firmly in a way that sends shivers down my spine. "I'm...Zach."

"Did you forget your name for a second?" I joke.

Zach's smile widens. "Something like that," he repeats. Though I'd usually find that weird, I somehow found it charming.

I was not the kind of girl to give my number to a random guy on the street, but every day since then I regretted it.

It's been 5 years since that moment. Since I met my soulmate. Since I let him get away. If I could go back and redo that moment, I would, but I also knew that, if we were meant to be, it would happen eventually.