A.N: All the usual stuff. Nothing dirty in this chapter and I really didn't proof read. If you all want to point things out to me, I'd appreciate it.

DPOV

I heard keys in the door which jolted me from the stupor at the kitchen table. I hadn't realized I was dozing until the sound came across. I stood quickly and strode to the door just as Rose walked through it.

"Hey!" I was about to wrap her in a hug before I remembered that we weren't in a relationship that would warrant that.

"Hi."

She hesitated before me before walking past to her dresser. She was setting her stuff down before going into the kitchen.

"You look tired. I thought you'd enjoy having your bed back to yourself for a night."

"Rose. Where were you?" I tried to keep too much of my worry out of my voice, but it was impossible to keep it all from it.

"I spent the night at Lissa's, Christian was at the Hospital all night and didn't want to be alone."

"Why didn't you answer any of my texts?"

"Ugh, my phone died. I didn't charge it the night before because I was a little busy."

I swallowed and nodded. It was all logical, but I still wasn't a fan of the outcome. I wasn't a fan of not knowing everything about her.

"Relax, Dimitri. I'm back now, was there anything in particular you needed?"

"Just general concern. I wanted to know you were safe."

She turned to him at that with a soft smile on her lips. "You were worried about me?" She looked slightly shocked and happy at the prospect of someone caring about her basic wellbeing.

"Of course, Roza." I didn't qualify my meaning in any other way. She still sat there with the little smile while she pondered the idea.

"What did Lissa and you talk about?" I asked, filling the silence.

"Oh, um. Actually, we talked about us.", she looked down awkwardly as she said it.

I nodded, unsure of where this was going to end up for us. She had had space and perspective after our night and morning of sex. "Were there thoughts you wanted to share?"

"Yes."

I nodded again, not taking my eyes off her, willing her to continue.

She walked over and sat on the couch, waiting for me to follow suit.

RPOV

Fuck. I didn't know how to start this conversation. What are you supposed to do in situations like these?

"So, I talked with Lissa" I qualified again. "And I-we pretty much came to the conclusion, that I... don't know you…"

He looked at me, just staring, I filled the silence to keep it from getting too awkward. "What I mean is, I had a great time with you and I'd very much like to do it again, but I feel like we should probably do some of that talking thing and the get to know you thing too. Hell, how long do we have until your family gets here? We should probably get our story straight before we get that story straight."

Dimitri sighed out when I mentioned sticking around and the 'getting to know you' portion of the plan.

"That sounds doable, Roza. We can get to know each other. Where should we start?"

We started off by going and getting coffee (well, Dimitri got coffee and I got hot chocolate) at the same place we had met to talk about the apartment. I think it was good for us to be in public, it would be much harder to take off all his clothes if we were in public.

It started off a lot like a first date. I asked about his family; three sisters, one nephew, his mother and grandmother. "Your grandmother sounds like a scary lady", I quipped.

"You have no idea. Imagine having to grow up with her. I had no secrets." I laughed at that.

He told me about moving here and how hard it was for him to leave. His family was everything to him, leaving them and being alone here was hard on him. That was until his friend Ivan relocated for work. I liked the sound of Ivan, he seemed to be a bit more on the wild side, dragging Dimitri along with him to experience some more of the adventurous side of life.

We talked about why he decided on teaching and why English classics of all things. "I've loved Western novels since I was a boy, but I ran out of materials pretty quickly, so I turned to the other American books and found more things I liked."

"How'd you get the job with NYU? I tried applying to be a student, I can't imagine how hard it would be to be a teacher."

"Fairy easy, actually. Don't get me wrong, it's hard, but I worked at a few community colleges, teaching and a faculty member from the university sat in and talked to me afterwards. He asked if I wanted to be a part of a guest lecture series he was putting together."

"And it was all downhill from there?"

He laughed at that, "I don't know if I'd say that, but I was lucky that they wanted me to have one night class, and then I had a specialty class, and now, well."

After coffee we walked around my new neighborhood. He showed me different food places and bars. The pharmacy if I needed it. He said he preferred ordering groceries as opposed to going and getting them. "A few things are fine, but I wouldn't want to walk across the city with that much. I made that mistake the first few times."

He slipped his arm around my waist as we walked, and I leaned into him as he did. It was nice. Jesse and I were usually all over each other, but it was never in an affectionate way. It was more raw desire than anything else.

We were stopped, waiting to cross the street when I asked what was really on my mind. "So, how did you meet Tasha?"

I felt him tense around me a bit as I asked the question. I knew Tasha, that was the kicker. I had met her several times. I had a healthy respect for her and helping Christian out. She loved him and took care of him when his parents couldn't. But there was a certain…something that just irritated me about her. It was like she was constantly trying to one-up me. If Lissa and I went on a girl's trip, she had to then do a spa day. If Christian came and trained with me, she had to get him to take class from her. It was a constant back and forth. It seems minor, and it would be, except that she would be sure to bring it up. "Lissa and I had so much fun at the spa yesterday. It was exactly what she needed after you ran her ragged all weekend." Just snide remarks that made it clear that she was better than me.

"I remember Christian and her mentioning a boyfriend every so often, but I've never heard much about you. And I've never met you before, which seems odd. I'm at almost all the family gatherings."

"Well" he started with a heavy sigh, "I took a class from her at her gym. It was tough, I'd done a lot of fighting before, to stay in shape and for fun. But her class was difficult for me. I thought it said a lot about her, she was a warrior." He laughed a little, "she told me later that she thought I was attractive and intentionally made the class more difficult. I thought it was flattering." We kept walking, no destination in particular, just wandering like our conversation. "She had similar interests, she was attractive, we were able to communicate. Looking back on it, I remember feeling for her, caring for her, wanting to care for her. But knowing how it's ended between us, I don't know if I like how much time I spent making her happy. She was always trying to impress me. I don't know if I ever really knew her, or just what she wanted me to know."

"Do you think she knew you?"

He paused at the question. "Maybe. Hard to say, she knew parts, but I think that's because I revealed them to her."

I nodded, understanding what he meant. It often felt like people knew me for what I told them, but were unable to connect the information with other aspects of my personality.

"As for family gatherings, she usually shrugged them off and said it was just for her and Christian, and Lissa. It always made sense to me, I knew Lissa's family had been killed in a car wreck, and Christian's parents, well. I never really questioned it. It seemed rude to intrude. I was always invited for the odd family dinner, and of course meeting them the first time."

"But you were going to marry her when you never spent Thanksgiving or Christmas with them? You were going to do holidays by yourself, even when you were married to the girl?"

"We were still planning it out. We've been together for just under two years."

"She lied, you know."

He stared at me, I assumed asking for clarification.

"About holidays. I've been at every holiday Lissa has planned since middle school, back when her parents were-. I've been to all of them. They aren't really that small. It's all our close friends. Lissa, Christian and I, obviously. My friend Mason, Lissa's half-sister Jill was there last year, Tasha started coming the year after Christian, Lissa's doorman, Eddie is there, Jesse started going with me the year we started dating… I think those are the usual suspects. The occasional drop in from the odd that doesn't have anywhere else to go or can't get home."

DPOV

"Why do you think I was never invited?", the revelation that Tasha wasn't inviting me to holiday events that were clearly welcoming to all had me grinding my teeth. I really couldn't begin to understand why I was being left out of such big parts of her life.

"I really don't know. From what I've seen, you would fit in well with all our friends, you're handsome, so it's not like she would be embarrassed about that. Oh! Maybe she was afraid someone there would snatch you up!?"

She said it as a joke, but looking at Rose, I couldn't help the comparison. If I had met Rose at one of those parties, would I have been attracted to her? Would she be more alluring than Tasha? I guess I would never find out. I had Rose in my apartment for the foreseeable future. Did that answer really matter at this point?

We continued walking, stopping when we drew up near one of Rose's favorite restaurants. "Ooooo, can we please eat here? They have the best spring rolls!", I laughed openly at her desire and opened the door for her.

Once seated, I began my own series of questions for my new room and bed mate. "I know that you met Lissa and Christian through school. Did you guys end up going to the same college?"

"Christian and I were at a school for a semester, trying to boost our GPAs to be able to hang with Lissa in Pennsylvania, we didn't take anything too seriously in high school and it really came back to bite us in the ass. After that semester was over, GPAs were boosted, and we were off to join Lissa at the smart people school."

"And that's were you met Jesse?", I asked

"Yeah, he was in a frat. Lissa and I went to the party and that was that. He was a senior when I was freshman. He was known to be a player." She paused and laughed at that. "I always felt a little smug about that I had tamed the great Jesse Zeklos, but now, well, I guess I didn't tame anything." She shrugged at that.

"Zeklos?" I asked.

"Yeah. Why?"

"You dated my best friend's cousin. Jesse was a few years younger than us in school, but I remember him visiting Ivan in Russia, he certainly got around."

"No kidding? Huh, I should've put two and two together when you said Ivan. Jesse had said his cousin had moved here."

"So, he and I met my freshman year, once he graduated, he went and worked at his dad's law firm in Pennsylvania while he did law school and I worked on my undergraduate. We both graduated and he proposed, I said yes…and that's that story."

RPOV

"What was it about him? What made you attracted to him?", Dimitri asked me.

"He was hot. He was really hot. He let me be in charge." I laughed at the thoughts. "He was a catch. Someone you could never tie down. It was fun. Nothing too serious." I paused thinking about it. "It felt like there was a mutual understanding. We were both attractive people that couldn't be tied down. If either of us were going to be exclusive, it was going to be with each other." I shrugged, finally looking at Dimitri, not realizing until just then that I'd been consumed in the memories of what Jesse and I were and could've been, what we were going to be.

"Did you ever think about marriage before him?", he seemed almost hesitant as he asked it.

I let out a rush of air at the humor of it all, "not for one second. Not until he was on one knee asking me to marry him did I think about marriage being in my future. I didn't think anyone ever thought of me like that." He quirked his brow up at that. "I mean, like I said, everyone has told me I was attractive. I'm the kind of girl you hook up with in a club. One-night stand material, the kind of girl you wish to get a second night with…I'm not someone you bring home."

DPOV

Rose's assertion that she was someone to fuck and leave rubbed me the wrong way. But I didn't want to start making assertions to her, or try to validate her worth, she seemed tired of people trying to tell her what she should be or what she was.

"Let's talk about your family." She outright laughed at the topic.

"My family. Gosh, where do I even begin."

She told me about her mother who was an FBI agent, she'd passed on being secret service because of Rose and how she felt like her mother resented her for it. Rose's father turned out to be a 'former' crime boss, who was a criminal informant for the FBI. Rose's mother fell in love with the informant and had Rose. "Seriously, I didn't find any of this out until I graduated high school. The old man showed up and asked about my future plans. Turns out my mom had been keeping him updated on my goings on through out my life. Anytime I needed anything it seemed to appear out of thin air, turns out it was him looking out for me. He's mainly out of the game now. People still have a healthy respect, or maybe it's fear for him."

I asked about Lissa. "She and I were friends from the start of kindergarten. When we were in the first grade, I told her how my mom was letting the fun babysitter stay the night and asked if she wanted to stay over. It brought up a lot of questions from Lissa's mother, from that point on Lissa's family always took me in when my mom had to work." Rose paused at the thoughts running through her head before continuing. "Then, when we were fifteen, I had to return the favor. Lissa's parents and brother died in a car crash." I knew this part of the story, but Rose went on to fill in what I hadn't known yet. "Lissa and I were in the back; we were driving home from the skating rink. The car came out of nowhere. In Montana, when you're driving a mountain pass in the winter, swerving is just as dangerous. We were hit head on and…" she trailed off, not needing to finish. I hadn't known that Rose was in the car when it happened. I didn't realize I was clutching her hand until she started rubbing her thumb against the back of my hand. To think that she was so close to dying. So close to not being in front of me right now. She seemed so vibrant and alive. She radiated life, but she was surrounded by a darkness.

"Roza" I hummed to her. She looked back at me. "I didn't know – I didn't know that you had been in the car too." She must have seen the pain in my face at the idea.

"Don't worry, Comrade. I try to live everyday like I might be hit with a car again. That's how I ended up in the same bed as an extremely hot professor."

She was trying to laugh off the heaviness that came from talking about where she came from. I let her. I asked about high school and then college again. She still wasn't sure what she was going to do with her life, she was just happy working at the gym for now and maybe putting her nursing degree to use. Rose was right about the spring rolls, and the dumplings were fantastic here. We finished up and started back to our apartment. I wrapped my arm back around the girl that I hoped wouldn't be so quick to leave me. From everything I gathered about her, she wasn't used to sticking to anything for too long in the way of romance, but her connection and continued support of her friends told me she was loyal to a fault. She had a good idea about who was worth letting into her little circle. I was hoping that she thought I was worth it.

A.N: I promise I am not abandoning this story! I will not let this go until it is finished. Thank you to all of you who are still interested in it and continue to read it. I swear it will pick back up here in a little bit. I tried to give you all the background in this chapter so we could move on to the more fun stuff in the next ones. I don't have to tell all you how long this took me to write, because you all waited with me.
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this chapter, I promise it will get dirty and delicious again in the next one. It will be pretty short, but it will be there. Please leave me a review or comment, I know other writers on here will confirm, that getting that validation from all of you really makes our days better.