8. Rose #3
“Not much to tell so far.” She shrugged, and her mom snorted.
“Yeah, right. You’ve always been a deep well, my sweet girl.
” Her mom’s smile softened, but those eyes Rose looked at in the mirror every day were still fiery.
“You don’t let anyone within a mile without having a sense of who they are.
I think it’s one reason Preston’s betrayal hit you so hard and why you didn’t leave sooner. ”
Rose sat there for a second, watching her mom, who watched her with a tilt to her lips. They’d had their own struggles when she was growing up, but nobody knew her better than her mom, and she never shied away from calling Rose out on her bullshit. This was no exception.
“He’s nice. We’re working on a project together.
He’s a football player, tall and hot—no surprise there,” she said, and her mom laughed.
“He, surprisingly, is not as much of a playboy as I thought when I heard about him at Westmont, and hearing about him around campus is pretty easy.” She sighed and admitted something she didn’t want to face. “I might have a type.”
“Two people you’re attracted to having a thin thread of commonality because of their hobbies and social status doesn’t mean you have a type,” her mom reasoned. “His public persona doesn’t tell me anything about him as a person.”
“Kirin is…” she trailed off, glancing across her room as she gathered her thoughts, wondering where to start. “Not what I expected. He’s been protective at the oddest moments. He knows how to read me, which is weird because Preston couldn’t do that at any point.”
“Can you send me the photo?” her mom asked after a second, and she nodded, flicking through her phone to his SnapSocial account and taking a screenshot to send.
She waited until the photo said “read” and then pulled up her video chat again. Her mom’s head tilted a bit, her lips lifting as she smiled down at the photo before her eyes flicked up to the camera and she asked, “Do you have one of the boy? Or of you together?”
“Yeah,” Rose said, flicking through her apps again until she got to the photos Kirin sent her from their night at Rita’s.
There were a few outtakes, so she sent the one of Kirin looking at her with a smile while her fingers gripped his jaw just after she kissed his cheek.
Her smile was so wide it made her cheeks hurt just looking at it.
Her mom hummed as she looked at the second photo. “Are you two together outside of the project?”
“No, of course not.” She must have answered too quickly because her mom smirked, so she took a breath and tried again. “We’re just faking it for that project, using his social status and social media to track data. It’s dumb.”
Her mom hummed again. “You like him, though?”
“He’s off-limits. It’s only for the semester.
” She shook her head. It was her standard response, and yet every time she said it, it was a damn lie.
They knew they were faking it, but nobody else did.
So, was Kirin really off-limits? Or was she telling herself that as a last-ditch hope of protecting herself when this inevitably blew up in her face?
No, she couldn’t even entertain the option of getting into a relationship again.
She was way too busy to be considering how to make time for someone else.
Her focus needed to be on her team and on her game.
Plus, Kirin didn’t want her, not really.
Once he figured her out, once the challenge of getting her to open up was complete, he’d move on. Her heart dropped at the prospect.
It wasn’t an answer, and her mom’s sharpened gaze called her on it. “You remember I told you about the girl I collided with last year? The one with the broken nose?” When nothing sparked in her mom’s eyes, she kept going, “The one that’s my captain now?”
“Yeah.” Her mom dragged the word out, her brows lifting and head tilting with the word.
“Kirin is her big brother.” Her mom’s eyes flared with interest. “He came up with this scheme to force his sister to give me a second chance and get to know me.”
“Oh, my sweet girl, you are in for far more than you bargained for,” her mom chuckled. The squeal of Josie laughing with their dad in the background had her attention shifting.
“I should let you go.”
“Okay, I love you.” Her mom grinned, a knowing look glinting in her eye that made Rose’s stomach twist. “But Rose?”
She almost wanted to hang up and pretend she hadn’t heard, but curiosity got the better of her. “Yeah?”
“He looks nothing like Preston, and it’s nice to see you smiling again.” Her mom grinned. “Give him a chance. No boy smiles at a girl like that without being interested in something more.”
“He always looks like that,” she deflected. “It’s just his face.”
“Mmm, okay. We’ll let you know what the lawyers say.”
“Sounds good, love you.”
“I love you too, sweet girl.” Her mom disappeared from her screen, and Rose took a slow breath, posting that photo of her kissing Kirin’s cheek while he smiled into the camera on her public account. It was her own minor rebellion.