EMBRACE winrina

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Winter POV

I was fairly aware of the situation that I was putting myself into when I kissed Karina. I knew that she would most likely reject me, shut me out, or in other words, everything that she had been doing for the past week.

But reality was arguably worse than what I had imagined.

It's not that she was being a bitch about it, because that wasn't the problem at all. I wasn't sure what she was struggling with, but there was obviously something that she dealt with inside of her head every time she saw or spoke to me. I respected the fact that kissing her had made things difficult between us, and I knew she was struggling with the fact that she could get in trouble for both that and our living situation, but to be fair, we'd technically already done the crime and she had moved past it.

The fact that I couldn't understand what was different now that I'd kissed her again wasn't the problem either.

I really didn't want to make her uncomfortable, and especially not in her own apartment. But I had let her into my life, at least more so than I had to anyone besides Taeyong and a girl I used to know in my first group home. It had been hard to talk to Karina at first, but she'd gotten me to confess things to her that I didn't trust anyone with. Now it felt like I was losing her too, even though I had wanted this to happen and I knew that, eventually, it would. She'd been persistent in keeping me away from Leo, and now whether she liked it or not, I did trust her. I had even reluctantly told her my original last name, which was something that Taeyong didn't even know.

Emma did of course, but that was because it had once been her last name as well.

So I really wasn't sure if I could just give up on fixing things between us- at least not until I left her apartment for good.

I was currently leaning against her car, which was parked by the left side of the school, away from the main parking lot. I was watching her from a distance, as she was by the side entrance with her phone pressed to her ear and her hand in her hair. She was obviously frustrated, and she looked just as exhausted as I was, but I didn't want to pry. We already weren't on good terms, I didn't need to do anything to make that worse.

After a few minutes, she seemed to end her call and lean against the brick wall, eyes closed. I sat on the curb and waited for her to start walking in my direction, which she did after a while of thinking to herself. It seemed as though my work schedule was getting more and more random every week, but I knew there was nothing Aaron could do about that. This was the only job I was going to get that would work out for me, so I was happy, regardless of the shitty hours that I was given.

When she had made it to the trunk of her car, I spoke up. "You okay?"

"I'm fine," Karina answered, pulling her keys out of her bag. She looked back up in time to see me simultaneously sigh and frown, and she sighed. "Thanks."

"Yeah," I muttered, getting into her car. It had been a week or so since we kissed, and in most of our conversations since the day that Addy had been over, we were short with each other. I tried to talk to her because I was working less now and the silence that came with sitting around in her apartment was truly painful, but I never got very far.

We sat in silence for a while, before she looked over at me briefly and spoke. "It's Halloween today, you know."

I raised my eyebrow. "I know. I'm living under your roof, not under a rock."

"Damn," she muttered, looking out her window. "Are you always this sarcastic?"

"No.... my sarcasm usually makes an appearance when I'm annoyed."