Velvet Thorns (The Broken Devotion Duet Book 1), page 1
Velvet Thorns
Lea Rose
Copyright © 2025 by Lea Rose
All rights reserved.
No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.
The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this production are fictitious. No identification with actual persons (living or deceased), places, buildings, and products is intended or should be inferred.
No generative artificial intelligence (AI) was used in the creation of this work. The author explicitly prohibits the use of this publication, in whole or in part, for training or developing AI technologies, including but not limited to systems capable of producing text in the same style, voice, or genre as this book. All rights to license this work for AI training or machine learning purposes are expressly reserved by the author.
Editing by Steph White (Kat's literary Services)
Proofreading by Vanessa Esquibel (Kat's literary Services)
Formatted with Vellum
Contents
Content Warning
Playlist
Introduction
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Afterword
Acknowledgments
Also by Lea Rose
About the Author
Content Warning
This story contains sensitive material, including mentions of drug use, CA, and death, as well as themes of stalking, assault, and bullying. Please be mindful of your own well-being while reading, and take care of yourselves and your mental health first.
Playlist
Let The World Burn – Chris Grey
Time is Running Out – Muse
You Broke Me First – Tate McRae
Indigo (feat. Avery Anna) – Sam Barber
Running Up That Hill – Placebo
Toxic – 2WEI
Always Been You (With Josh Mankato) – Chris Grey
You Oughta Know – Alanis Morissette
The Night We Met – Lord Huron
Look What You Made Me Do – Taylor Swift
ABCDEFU – GAYLE
You Should Be Sad – Halsey
DARKSIDE – NEONI
To Shannon, who asked if I’d write her a book with her as the main character—this is for you, even though I had to tweak your name, because there’s no universe where I’m writing about orgasms while picturing my sister.
Love you, and you're welcome.
Introduction
Welcome to book one of the Broken Devotion Duet.
Cliffhanger included.
Safe word not provided.
Enjoy, my loves.
Prologue
PHOENIX
One, two, three, four, five… Breathe, Phoenix.
It’s October 31.
Halloween.
The devil’s holiday.
The one night a year everyone gets to hide behind a mask. But I’ve been wearing mine far longer than that. Mine isn’t stitched from fabric or bought from a store. It’s built from silence and forged in guilt, and now, I’m walking toward the girl who saw through it—the only person who ever looked at my darkness and didn’t turn away.
It’s too late.
I already know that.
The girl who was made for me—who still does, and always fucking will, belong to me—has learned how to survive without me.
I should admire that about her, but I don't.
I fucking loathe it.
When Ava ran her mouth and told me Brandon Michaelson was planning to ask Shannen to the dance just to rip her apart in front of everyone, I was two seconds away from snapping a neck.
His, hers. Didn’t fucking matter.
Maybe anyone dumb enough to think she’s fair game.
Bets were already being made on how fast they could make her cry, and Ava—fucking Ava—laughed when she said it. She blinked those fake lashes at me like she didn’t just toss a lit match straight into the heart of an obsession I’ve spent the last couple of years barely keeping under control.
Something final inside me snapped in that moment.
It was rage. The kind that tastes like copper and sounds like knuckles splitting bone. But underneath my fury lives shame—soul-sickening shame that I won’t ignore a minute longer.
I carved Shannen out of my life like she was the problem, when really it was me. I threw her away for locker room claps, fake smiles, and the illusion of power, like some pathetic, approval-starved little bitch begging to be loved by people who’d feed me to the wolves the second I stopped being useful. I’m pretty sure it comes from my deep-rooted daddy issues. Maybe all those years of getting beaten and being told I was a fucking disappointment rewired my brain until her friendship, as pure and unconditional as it was, felt insufficient.
But here’s the screwed-up part: It was always enough. She was more than enough.
It was Shannen’s voice that silenced the demons my father planted in my head, and yet I still threw her away like she meant nothing.
I didn’t set out to destroy her, but intention doesn’t matter when the result is the same. I broke the most beautiful thing I’ve ever touched and did it with my bare hands. That’s on me.
I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so fucking sorry.
The art room is dressed like a low-budget haunted house. Plastic bats dangle from the ceiling, while a rotting pumpkin slumps on the windowsill, its carved mouth sagging at one corner. Someone’s taped fake-blood handprints across the inside of the glass, and it drips red like the walls are crying.
Breathe. Just breathe.
In. Out. Again.
Shannen Clarke.
My beginning and my end, my heaven and my hell, all wrapped into one perfect, devastating package.
I move toward the easel—four down, three to the left—where she stands with a paintbrush clutched between her fingers. Her blonde hair is scraped back into a ponytail, with messy strands falling loosely around her face. Her black-rimmed glasses sit low on the bridge of her nose as they always do, like they’re one breath away from slipping off, but they never do. She’s needed a new pair for years, but when you grow up in a house where nobody gives a single fuck if you can see or even breathe, you learn real quick not to expect anyone to take care of you.
Nobody around here will hire her either. She’s the kid of the town’s waste-of-oxygen deadbeats, so the stain sticks. It doesn’t matter that she’s never touched a needle, never stolen anything, and never done half the shit they whisper about behind her back. People see her last name on an application and decide the poison must run in the bloodline. But Shannen’s nothing like her parents. She’s light in its purest form, and they’re the kind of rancid shit you can smell before you see.
She looks so goddamn cute it hurts.
She looks almost the same as she did at fourteen, back when I first realized I’d set the world on fire just to keep her warm. She’s nearly eighteen now, but nothing’s changed. She’s still so achingly familiar. She's still the girl I’d lie beneath the stars with while she traced constellations on my back with fingers that felt like salvation, whispering stories about a future I could only hope for and never believed I deserved.
She was hope when I didn’t have any, and I threw it all away. I hate myself for it. I hate that I once had everything I ever wanted right in my hands, and I let my damage and ego smash it to pieces.
I’ll never forget the first time I saw her when we were both fourteen, sitting alone at opposite ends of a lunch table. I remember glancing up and catching her eye, and I was mesmerized because they’re the most vivid shade of gold. Something inside me shifted, something permanent, and I knew even then that she would be important to me.
All I’d ever known was the kind of darkness that breeds in broken homes. A father whose love language was violence and walls that absorbed blood and tears like they were built for it. But Shannen was something else entirely. She had this soft voice, like she was afraid of being too much for the world, and her hair caught the light like it was spun from the sun itself. She was gentle in a way I’d never seen before and the closest thing to an angel I’d ever laid eyes on.
She became my lunch buddy that whole first year, and maybe that’s when I fell for her. No, not maybe. I know it was then because I still remember the moment she marked my soul as hers.
“I’ve claimed you now,” she whispered once, golden eyes burning into mine, promising and threatening me all at once. “In this school full of assholes, you’re mine, and I’m yours, got it? This is where we’re happiest. Not because it’s good, but because at least here, we’re not at home.”
Home for me was fists through drywall, blood on the carpet, and me lying in bed with my hands clenched tight while my mom took punches three feet away and acted like she didn’t. For her, it was junkie parents who forgot she existed until her piece-of-shit father pissed the bed she was sleeping in and had the audacity to blame her.
Home was survival, but Shannen was the first person who didn’t ask me to survive. She just wanted me to stay.
Bleed if you have to. Break if you m
Those were the rules we both lived by until I went and fucked it all to hell.
I’m closing the distance, and my heart’s thudding so violently it’s a miracle my chest isn’t splitting open with the force of it. Any second now, it’s gonna tear free, drop to the floor, and crawl to her like a pathetic, bleeding thing, begging for something I sure as hell don’t deserve.
Forgiveness.
She was the light I probably never deserved. Instead of holding onto it, I spent the last couple of years convincing myself I didn’t want it, letting her fade into the background of my life, while I played the part of someone I thought I was supposed to be, all to fit in with people I fucking despise.
As I walk toward her for the first time in too long, I feel every inch of that choice like a weight crushing down on my spine. The days I looked straight through her in the hallway, the snide jokes I didn’t shut down when those bastards talked shit about her, and the nights I lay awake staring at my ceiling, wondering if she pressed her face into her pillow and cried herself to sleep because of me.
I stop in front of her. She knows I’m standing here. There’s no way she doesn’t, yet she keeps painting like I’m nothing more than background noise. That angel light she used to shine on me is gone. She burns dark for me now, and I know I’m the one who snuffed her out.
“You’re really gonna act like I don’t exist?” I ask, as if two years haven’t passed since I tossed her aside like she was an option.
She doesn’t even flinch. The brush in her hand just continues to casually move across the canvas. “Haven’t you been doing that for years now?”
And she’s right.
It’s brutally fucking fair.
The moment I made the football team in my junior year, everything changed. I pulled that red and white jersey over my shoulders, and people started chanting my name. I let it get inside my head. I allowed it to change me, and I became a stranger in my own skin. My quiet lunches with her turned into parties with people who cheered louder for touchdowns than they ever would for kindness. I traded our little moments of peace for cheerleaders and the guys on the team—idiots who only liked me when I was winning.
I chose popularity, and I left her behind.
Yeah, I fucking sucked as a friend. That’s why I’m getting the silent treatment. She hasn’t spoken a single word to me in almost two years, and while I haven’t exactly fought for her, pretending she doesn’t exist is starting to split me open from the inside out. I’ve tried every way I know to numb it—I’ve drowned myself in parties, let the quarterback crown sit heavy on my head, and smiled when people worshipped me.
The truth is, none of it means shit without her.
“I need to talk to you,” I say, the words scraping out of me because I can’t keep going on like this. I can't keep pretending I'm not dying without her.
She starts to laugh. It’s vicious and mean, and I fucking hate it.
“It’s not funny,” I snap. “This isn’t easy for me.”
She raises her eyebrows like she’s surprised I’d even say that out loud. “Oh, I’m sorry. Are you worried your little friends might see you talking to me?”
I wish the answer were always no, but that’s a lie, and we both know it. I slipped into their circle and watched, dead-eyed, as they bullied the hell out of her, and I did nothing. I would never hurt her, not on purpose, but I didn’t stop them, and my cowardice makes me worse than all of them.
“Meet me for lunch. Our spot,” I try, reaching for something that used to matter to her.
“No,” she snaps, her refusal immediate.
“No?”
“No, Phoenix. I don’t know what you think’s been happening, but I haven’t been sitting around missing you. I don’t even know who you are anymore.”
“You know me.”
“You think so?” she spits out. “Let’s test that.”
She looks right over my shoulder at Ava and Cassie, who are standing there with their judgment and plastic smiles. I made out with Ava at a party once just because she’s the head cheerleader. It was supposed to make sense, but the second her lips touched mine, I wanted to rip myself out of my own skin, and when she slipped her tongue into my mouth, my only instinct was to headbutt her into the nearest wall and wash the taste off with gasoline.
“You still wanna have lunch today, Phoenix?” Shannen says, loud and breezy, like she’s performing for the whole room. It doesn’t take long before eyes lift from sketchbooks and attention starts pulling toward us.
“Oh, that’s so cute,” Cassie sneers, her voice dripping with fake sweetness, and I feel my fists curl at my sides.
“Are you really having lunch with the trailer trash loser, Phoenix? Or do you wanna get blown?” Ava’s voice slices through the room, and laughter explodes around us. Every head swivels to watch the drama unfold, and for a split second, all I see is red.
I want to slam her face through the window, watch the glass split skin from bone, and smile down at her as she bleeds out. I want to carve her up like that pumpkin on the windowsill, just so she can feel what it’s like to be gutted for fun.
Instead, I stand there, silent and useless, feeling like the biggest piece of shit in the room. There’s nothing I can say—nothing that could ever make up for what I let happen. I turned my back while they shoved garbage through the vents in Shannen’s locker. I knew they scrawled “slut” in black marker across her sketchbooks, filled her backpack with tampons soaked in fake blood, and laughed until their faces turned red. I passed her in the hallway when her books were kicked across the floor, while she scrambled to pick them up, and they circled her like wolves. I walked by when her jacket was stolen and strung up the flagpole with the word “trash” taped to the back of it.
Shannen laughs, but I see the tears she’s trying to hide. “Your silence says it all, Phoenix. You don’t know me anymore. So go back to what you’re good at and pretend I never existed.”
She brushes past me, her bag slung over her shoulder, and some asshole yells, “Run along to the trailer park, skank!”
I don’t move, but it takes everything in me not to turn around and slam my fist into the nearest jaw.
Whoever said that just made my list.
I’m going to hurt them one day.
Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow.
But one day.
“What the hell was that, Phoenix?” Ava laughs, tossing her hair over her shoulder. “I mean, I know you used to hang around with that little dork, but seriously? You don’t have to lower yourself like that anymore.”
“Fuck you, Ava.” Her mouth drops open, and I don’t wait for whatever bullshit she’s about to say next.
Lunch comes, and instead of joining the noise and the crowd that never really felt like mine, I drift to the back of the bleachers—the place that still feels like ours, even if I lost the right to call it that a long time ago.
I didn’t expect her to be here after this morning, but she is, tucked into the shadows and curled up so tight she looks like she’s trying to disappear into herself.
The girls at school don’t understand her, so they hate her. They call her weird. They call her poor. They say she dresses like she’s ashamed of her body, but I’ve seen the envy in their eyes. They pretend they’re above her, yet they still watch her out of the corners of their eyes.
She doesn’t show her body off, but I’ve felt it. Once, in the hallway years ago, she slipped on some shit on the ground and fell straight into me. My hands caught her without thinking, and for maybe three long, greedy seconds, her whole body was pressed against mine. I grabbed her by the waist, my hands spanning almost the entire width of her, and she looked up at me with those wide eyes behind her cracked glasses. I felt the soft dip of her hips and the way she fit against me, then she mumbled something before pulling away, brushing it off like it meant nothing. But it wasn’t nothing, not to me.
Maybe I got a little obsessed.
Maybe I still am.
Standing here, looking at her now from just a few feet away, all I want is to cross the distance between us, kneel beside her, wrap my arms around her, and drag her into my chest until she realizes I never stopped being hers.
