Playing Adult | ✔ | 18+

Chapter 29 - Rose-Colored Glasses

Author's Notes:

Thanks again to RozamarieH and TheTrebledMom for beta-reading this chapter.

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Rose POV:

After coming home and scrubbing myself down in a boiling shower until I almost bled, I immediately called Christian. As soon as he picked up, I yelled into the phone, "You knew! You lying piece of shit, Christian! You. Knew! And you didn't tell me!"

"Rose, it's not like that," he began, "But you know how wary I was of you going out with him when I first saw you two together. I told him he had to tell you and he said he would. You told me that what you do on a date with a guy or who you go out with is none of my business.'"

"But you could've at least let me know who I was going out with. And why the hell did you tell me Dimitri was in your class?" I asked, "That asshole is in high school!"

"He is in my class," Christian defended, "And in high school. He's in a dual enrollment program because of advanced placement. He's one of the most gifted high schoolers I've ever seen. He's always seemed very smart and responsible."

"More like cunning and calculating. And he's still a kid! He's practically a baby compared to me!"

Christian countered, "It's not like it's a huge age difference, Rose. Lissa and I are eight years apart."

I was getting pissed again. "For fuck's sake, Christian, eight years younger than me is still not eighteen yet, and for all I know he's even younger than that! He's just a teenage boy who just went out with an older girl to try to get in her pants."

"He promised me he would be honorable with you and not take advantage. I made him promise that he wouldn't even start to get physical with you until he went out with you at least three times!"

"You made him ... promise?!" I shrieked into the phone, "WHAT. THE. FUCK! Christian, I don't even want to speak with you anymore!"

I hit the end button and turned off my phone.

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I was hurt.

If I was honest, I was in agony.

I'd spent the last few days - at least the part that was uninterrupted - crying into my carton of ice cream with a tissue box watching sappy romantic tear-jerker movies. I thought that they'd be cathartic, but they just made me hurt more.

It was all because of Dimitri Belikov. I wish I'd never met him. And none of my friends would let me forget him. Lissa kept telling me I needed to at least give Dimitri a chance to tell his side of the story and insisting that she'd never seen me happier than when I was with him. Christian kept trying to call. I'd even had a few furtive texts from Dimitri that second night before I blocked his number to keep them from coming through.

With Jesse, I had given my innocence years ago to a man who had thought of me as nothing but a conquest - even if he found me to be an amazing one -, but he had slowly worked his way in under my defenses for months before I gave in to him, and then shown me his true colors little by little after that. Although I had hated to admit it to myself, I knew, even before Jesse cheated, that he had never been the man for me. Then, when he showed me how much the commitment he'd made to me - the one he made when he took my virginity - had really meant to him, he'd shown me that he truly wasn't.

Then Dimitri had come along. Everything - and I mean everything - about him had screamed that he was the perfect man for me. The dutiful way he cared for his family and shouldered their responsibilities, the way he worked through things like moving strangers' furniture without giving a thought to himself, the way he opened up to me alone, the way he didn't even seem to know how to have fun until I showed him how. His body and face had the beauty - because, let's face it, you don't usually use that word for a man, but there just isn't another word strong enough - of a work of art.