“I didn’t do that,” Rose immediately says. Her eyes light with fire. “I’m going to kill him.” I’ve heard her say that about Sebastian too many times to take the threat seriously.
“Sebastian?” Connor wonders.
Rose nods tersely. She puts the pizza down, no longer interested in eating, and she inspects the vase with delicate hands. Her shoulders drop. He comes behind her and whispers in her ear. When his voice grows, I catch the syllables, but I don’t understand the words.
He’s speaking to her in French.
She answers back in the foreign language, fluent. He kisses her head, and then she spins around and kisses his lips, standing on the tips of her toes.
Lily turns to face me at this, and her eyes grow wide and eager. I want to, Lil. God, do I want to. Now’s the best time to talk to Rose. Even if it’ll break her moment with her boyfriend, it’ll save me from rejecting Lily again.
“Rose,” I say.
She drops to her feet, but Conner keeps his hand tangled in her hair, intoxicated by Rose’s commanding movements. She possesses him, but he’s equally as possessive of her, which I still find strange. I thought for sure Rose would devour any man she touched, but they have this symbiotic relationship instead of the parasitic one I share with Lily.
“Yes?” she asks.
My throat swells at the thought of asking her for help. Even as the words rest on my tongue, saying them is so fucking hard. So I turn to Connor. “Have you heard anything from the private investigator?”
“He’s working on tracing the messages. We’ll see if we can find any leads.” After the wave of texts in the car, that’s not exactly the news I wanted to hear. I don’t like waiting around. I only have patience where Lily is concerned. Waiting for her to choose me over a quick lay—that was hard, but I endured it. Waiting for this guy to rip apart our lives—that, I’m not taking so well.
“Lo,” Rose snaps. Her hand flies back to her hip. She could tell I was dodging. “Spill.”
I inhale. “As you know…” I rub the back of my neck, heat flushing my body all of a sudden. I’m not used to that. “…I don’t have a college degree, so getting a job that pays better than minimum wage is going to be a challenge.”
The silence lingers, waiting for me to continue, three sets of eyes boring into me in curiosity and hesitation. They think I’m on the verge of giving up, of throwing my hands in the air and saying I can’t do hard, physical labor. I can’t flip burgers. I can’t fucking be a normal lower-class guy who has to work for his money. I’ve never had to do that, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t try. They think less of me, and I haven’t given them reason to believe otherwise.
“I’d have no problem flipping burgers,” I explain, “but I owe Ryke forty grand for rehab that I’d like to pay in a reasonable amount of time…plus, you know, rent.” I pause again, half expecting Rose to bail me out and say, you don’t have to pay rent, Lo, you’re practically family. But I forget who she is for a brief second. Maybe her little meltdown over a vase tricked me, but she stands resolute, strong, unwilling to let me take the easy road.
Good.
Still, I glare. Habit. “You’re going to make me ask, aren’t you?” I say.
She smiles icily. “Last year in the Cayman Islands, you said that not even the abominable snowman would want to fuck me.”
Lily gasps, “You did not.”
“I did.”
She punches my arm. I mock wince. Yeah, I deserved that.
Connor stays completely impassive. But he holds Rose closer, as though silently saying I’m wrong. Clearly guys with insanely high IQs want to fuck her.
I let out a deep breath. Here it goes. “I’ve already been scouted by modeling agencies before,” I explain. “You’d be an idiot not to use me in your menswear campaign.” Way to go, Loren. Call her an idiot. That’s definitely the way to land a job. Jesus Christ, no wonder you’ve never had one.
“I remember that,” Rose says stiffly.
“How come you’ve never modeled if you were scouted?” Connor asks.
“I may have walked into the interview drinking straight from a bottle of Jack Daniel’s.” I was fucking with the agency, wasting peoples’ time and mine. I didn’t really want to model. I still don’t, but it’ll be quick money. And this is a chance for me to redo my past mistakes. I can make things right.
Connor lets out a long whistle. “Impressive.”