The Reinvention of the Rose - Christina C. Jones Page 0,28

shit alive. So I told her, mama, I don’t think it works like that. I believe you can keep them two weeks tops, at max. So… basically she took it as a personal challenge, cause this is week three, and they still look really good. She was calling to rub it in my face.”

“Wow,” I laughed, when he finished. “Your mother sounds… amazing, to be frank.”

“You know… I would agree with that,” he nodded. “She’s always been good at bringing stuff back to life, keeping it alive. I don’t think we ever had a pet growing up that wasn’t half-dead when we got it, then thriving by the time she was through with it. She has this energy about her.”

“I feel like I could tell that from the picture. Like she’s really warm, and sweet, but also not to be played with.”

“And you would be exactly right,” he laughed. “Love that lady, man. What about you?” he asked, after we’d gone a little further, in silence. “What’s your mother like?”

“Oh! Um… I don’t know, actually.”

The smile he’d been wearing dissolved. “Shit. My bad. Were you… adopted?”

“Something like that,” I said, nodding. “I don’t have any family, nothing like that. So, besides my mentor and few others, I don’t… I don’t really have anyone.”

We walked in silence for a few more moments, and then… “That’s fucked up.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, with a dry laugh. “It is.”

“But you can’t say it anymore.”

I raised an eyebrow at him. “Excuse me?”

“You can’t claim to not have anybody anymore, because now… you’ve got me. And I’m worth at least ten motherfuckers,” he said, barely keeping a straight face for that last part, which made it impossible for me not to laugh too.

“Ay, I’m serious,” he said, after a few seconds had passed. “I know we’re still kinda feeling each other out, but if you need anything… you’ve got my number. And if you want anything… my number works for that, too.”

He was looking me right in the face when he said that, holding my gaze so there was no downplaying the significance of his words. It was a little overwhelming – so much that I broke into a smile, because I didn’t know what else to do, and was about to crack a joke about sex to break the tension when someone else called out.

“Tristaaaan!”

He and I both turned in the direction of the voice, to see a woman practically running up the street toward us. When I looked at Tristan, he was smiling, which… annoyed me.

“Nya!” he greeted her with a laugh. “How you doing baby?”

Baby?

Once she was actually close to us, they hugged – too tight, and too long.

I didn’t like it.

And I hated it when, afterward, she kept her arm draped around his waist, and a hand at his chest, like they were taking fucking engagement pictures or something.

Should I kill her?

“Who is this?” she asked, her silky, sandy-brown hair bouncing around her shoulders to frame her face in perfect layers as her head whipped in my direction. Her tone was light, but she didn’t even bother hiding the disdain in her hazel eyes, since Tristan couldn’t see her face.

Yeah. I should.

“This is Tempest,” Tristan spoke, easing from her hold to step to my side, placing a possessive hand at the small of my back. “We were out for a walk.”

“Like a date? This early?” she laughed. “You must be getting this one out of the way for when we get together later.”

Definitely gonna kill this bitch.

“You wild, Nya,” he said, shifting that hand to wrap his arm around my shoulders instead, like he could hear my thoughts and was trying to keep me still. “We’re walking over to the park, to see the sun rise over the lake.”

“Awww. How romantic,” she gushed.

Fake.

“I thought so too. I thought you might like it,” he said, to me, and I forced a smile as I looked up at him.

Not because he was wrong.

Because it was taking a lot for me to not leave my murderous desires on my face.

“You thought right,” I told him, and was rewarded for my cooperation with a soft press of his lips.

“All this sweetness is going to make me throw up,” Nya laughed.

Again – fake.

“I can’t believe you’re giving all this bae behavior to someone else, Tris – you were supposed to wait for me,” she pouted, blinking at him with her freakishly long lash extensions.

“You snooze, you lose,” was his only response to that. “We’ve gotta get on if