With a sigh, Rose put her arm around Rolf’s neck, her fingers finding the short hair at the back of his neck. Gently, back and forth, she brushed her fingertips over his warm skin, soothing, calming him. She didn’t say anything, but the anger with his parents, the disappointment that they weren’t any better than her own, that they could so easily set aside this amazingly wonderful man that they had somehow managed to produce.
“Curvă*,” she muttered under her breath, suppressing her desire to rave and rant at that horrid woman. Rolf was one of the few people who knew that even if she put on a brave face and mostly didn’t care that her own parents only seemed to attempt contact her was when they felt the need to humiliate her by complaining about her choices to virtually perfect strangers, there was still some part of her that was disappointed and hurt. And this close to his birthday? “She’s missing out,” she said quietly. “And she’s too stupid to see it.”