Chapter 6 #3
WiseWave620: Fuck. Rose, I’m really worried about you. You have NEVER disappeared like this before. No notice, no communication. Even Poison says she hasn’t heard from you at all.
Gl!tch.OS: You talked to my sister??
Oscar started to fuss a little, so Rose switched to typing one handed while keeping the other on his back, doing small circles.
WiseWave620: I talked to Poison about MV.
Rose sagged a little at the clarification.
WiseWave620: I would never betray your secret, Rose. You should know better than that.
Gl!tch.OS: I do! Really.
Gl!tch.OS: I’m sorry I panicked.
WiseWave620: Please.
Fuck. Rose closed her eyes, and simply breathed for a moment.
She didn’t know what to do. She could simply say ‘no’.
It was her right and choice, and if Keys had a problem with it, then it was his problem.
But… But the fact that she was hesitating, the fact that there was even a consideration of turning on her camera, showed just how much she wanted to.
And that spoke volumes.
Gl!tch.OS: Are you alone?
Fuck, what was she thinking? Why was she even considering this?
WiseWave620: Yes.
Rose took her free hand and tried to straighten out her hair. After making the connection, she placed her hand over Oscar’s face and waited for Keys to pick up.
* * *
Keys didn’t think he’d ever answered a call so fast—or been struck speechless so quickly.
Rose was… Fuck, she was beautiful. A mess, and clearly sleep deprived, but beautiful.
He’d seen pictures of her from her youth, school portraits and social media posts, but nothing since her mugshot when she was seventeen.
Thick blonde hair with an elven face and large round glasses framing breathtakingly blue eyes, she likely turned heads no matter where she went.
It had not passed Keys’ notice that over the past year and a half of their friendship, she was constantly able to look in on him, while he’d been unable to check in on her even once.
And while the argument had been made to him several times over the past several days—by numerous people, including Rose’s sister—that people had a right to privacy, Keys found that he did not like the complete blackout of communication between Rose and him.
Not even a single fricking text.
Keys didn’t mind helping out, even though Poison was intimidating enough to scare the shit out of a pissed-off grizzly bear. What he didn’t like was not knowing where Rose was, why she was there, and who she was with. And yes, he was aware he was jealous.
Rose wasn’t his romantically. Not like Lucky and Harper, and Bear and Tessa, and all his other club brothers who were paired up.
But she felt like his, or at least, his person.
In the year and a half since he’d picked up that modulated phone call, she’d easily become the most important person in his life.
Keys didn’t want to delude himself into thinking he was falling for her when clearly she didn’t feel the same way.
Movement against her chest drew his gaze downward for a moment, and he frowned. Her identity and self-imposed isolation shouldn’t be enough to keep her from pursuing a relationship with him if she felt for him as he did for her—but the child she was concealing against her chest might!
“You have a kid?!” The question flew out of his mouth before he could think better of it.
A kid? Rose was a mom! No, wait. He babysat his nieces and nephews all the time, and that didn’t make them his.
“Is…” He wasn’t sure what pronoun to use.
Her hand was covering the kid’s face, so he couldn’t make out gender and people got upset with he/him as gender neutral.
He didn’t want to risk upsetting her. “Um, is it yours?”
“‘It’ is my son,” she snapped harshly. “And thank you. Thank you for reminding me why I don’t trust people. Goodbye, Keys.”
The connection broke.
Wait—what? What just happened? Crap. In trying not to upset her, he’d upset her. Why was he such a weirdo?
Keys quickly burrowed into her system and commanded the video call to reconnect. Rose hadn’t put the cover back over her camera, and he caught her holding her son to her chest as she started to rise.
“Wait!” he shouted. And then cursed when she jumped and quickly scrambled to cover her son’s face again. “That’s not what I meant! I was just really surprised. I didn’t know you had a kid, Rose.”
Rose glared down at her screen. “You called my child an ‘it’.”
“I didn’t know if he was a boy or a girl, and I overheard a conversation recently about how saying ‘he’ is inappropriate anymore when you don’t know the gender!
I was trying to not piss you off.” He swallowed hard, cringing slightly.
“Which I managed to do anyway. Can we just… Can we start over? Please?”
Rose hesitated, and then resumed her seat, keeping a tight hold of her kid. But she didn’t say anything.
Keys fidgeted. “It’s stupid, but I thought you were with a…guy, I guess.”
Rose’s eyes narrowed, but at least she didn’t look pissed anymore. More like, confused. “My son had a stomach bug. I’ve been taking care of him, not having a sex-athon. Not that it would be any of your business if I was.”
Keys’ cheeks flamed. “Yeah, yeah. I know. Like…” He cleared his throat.
“Like I said, I was just worried about you. Is, uh, your son okay?” Rose hadn’t actually introduced them yet, so he didn’t know the kid’s name.
Come to think of it, he hadn’t found any record of Rose having given birth to a child either. Who was the father?
“I can see your mind spinning. Do not look into this, Keys. I’m trusting you with everything I have. Do you understand me?”
He nodded quickly. “Yes, yes. Of course, I’m sorry.
I haven’t been sleeping much.” When her eyes narrowed again, he rushed to correct himself.
“I mean, not that you have either. Obviously.” He waved his hand up and down in front of the screen—and then realized what he’d done when her nostrils flared.
“I mean! Fuck. Crap,” he tried to correct because of the kid.
“I didn’t mean you look bad! You’re beautiful.
I love that you kept your hair long. I saw your pictures from when you’d cut it, and I much prefer it long.
But not in a creepy way,” he hurried to clarify.
“I just… I’m not telling you that you have to keep your hair long!
I’m just saying I liked it… But you can do what you want to your hair!
I mean, of course you can. It’s your hair.
I just mean…” Letting out a whining groan, Keys dropped his head down into his hands.
Fuck, why was he such a basket case when it came to women?
He’d talked to Rose for a year and a half with no issues, but put her in front of him and he turned into a bumbling idiot.
Laughter filled his speakers. Slowly, Keys lifted his head so he could see above his fingertips.
“Wow!” Rose giggled, smiling wide. She still kept her son positioned so he wasn’t facing the camera. “You weren’t kidding when you said you can’t talk to girls.”
Keys nodded pitifully. “It’s really bad.”
Rose shrugged. “Could have been worse. All I got out of it was that you think I’m beautiful.”
Yeah, he had said that, hadn’t he? “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make this creepy.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I’m sorry your son’s been sick. I’ll leave you guys be.”
“Did you mean it?”
Keys paused, halfway through the command to exit the video call. “Mean what?”
Rose chuckled, tipping her head up to the ceiling.
“I must be more sleep deprived than I realized, but fuck it.” Sitting up straighter, Rose looked directly into the camera.
“I’m a mess. I haven’t showered in days, I’m still in pajamas, I can’t remember the last thing I ate, and I’m pretty sure there’s puke somewhere on the couch behind me.
I’ve scrubbed, but I can’t find it. That thing might just permanently smell like that now.
And yet you called me beautiful. I’m asking you if you meant it. ”
Keys stared at the screen, his heart hammering in his chest. He was pretty sure he mouthed more than spoke the word “yes”. His lungs felt like he’d just sprinted a mile.
He’d heard his brothers talk for years about the defining moments of when they’d met their woman, and somehow, they’d instinctively known that their choices in those moments were so cosmically important to their future that they’d put aside pride, life, and everything else to ensure that she knew he belonged to her.
Keys had never understood before, attributing those stories to something akin to fairytales.
He understood it now. He could step up and take a chance now that would change the path of his life forever, or he could sit back, say nothing, and remain exactly the same.
“You’re beautiful.” He spoke as clearly as he could, not even daring to blink. “You’re incredible, Rose. I thought so before I saw you, and I think you’re even more so now. The only thing that could make you more beautiful is if I was there to help you.”
Rose licked her lips. “I wish you were here, too. Don’t make me regret this, Keys. I don’t want to bring my mess into your world, but this week has been awful.”
“Mess up my world,” Keys proclaimed, practically begging her.
“There are things you don’t know, things that I’m not sure I can tell you. I’m just so tired, Keys. And I just keep thinking, what if something happens to me? Who would he have?” Rose sniffled slightly. “I need someone else to know about him. I need someone else to care.”
His heart ached because he couldn’t reach through the screen and touch her. “I care,” he vowed. “About both of you. Now tell me what you need. Whatever it is, it’s yours. Tell me where you are and I’ll be on the first flight there.”
But Rose shook her head. “No, no. Nothing like that. We’re on the tail end of this, and honestly,” she rubbed her son’s back, “I think once we get some sleep we’ll be good. But I need you here, Keys. I don’t know what we are or can be, but I’m tired of calling you my friend.”
“You took the words right out of my brain. These past few days of not knowing where you were, or how you were, has been driving me nuts, and I realized just how essential you are to my everyday life. So how about we don’t define it.
We don’t put a label on it or announce it to the world.
But we don’t hold back anymore. We’re just us, and we’ll be there for each other, however the other one needs, and if it leads somewhere, then it does, and if it doesn’t, then we simply remain as we are. ”
Rose’s smile was bright as her chin shook with emotion, and he saw her shoulders sag like a huge weight had been lifted off them. “I’d love that. Really and truly.”
“I have one request, though.”
She blinked, “Yeah?”
“I want to know where you are. You’ve mentioned moving before, which I can respect your need to do.
But I want to know where you are and where you’re heading.
If something happens, if things are that bad that you need to constantly move and hide your son’s identity even from me, I need to be able to get to you.
” Keys tipped his chin towards her chest. “Get to him.”
Rose bit her lip, uncertain. “If you can track me, so can someone else.”
“Everything is traceable, if you know what you’re doing. You and I know that better than anyone, but they would also have to know to look, and I think if we put our heads together, we’ll be smart enough to come up with a protocol that will protect you without making you vulnerable.”
As Rose hesitated, Keys waited with bated breath. Finally, she nodded before dipping her face down to kiss the top of her son’s head. “Thank you, Keys.”
“We’ll figure this out together, Rose. You’re not alone, not anymore, and I’m sorry it took so long for me to make that clear.
” She raised a hand to quickly wipe at her right eye.
“Tell me where you are and go get some sleep. I’ll have dinner waiting for both of you when you wake up.
And if you try to thank me again,” he added when she opened her mouth, “I won’t add the cookies to your order I was going to get you as a surprise. ”
Rose laughed. “How about I unthank you then?”
“Sounds good,” he told her with a crooked smile. “Message me when you’re awake. Sleep well, Rose.”
After disconnecting the call, Keys pulled up a browser to research what the hell a kid was supposed to eat after being sick. He already knew he was getting her shrimp scampi and caprese salad. They were her favorite, after all.