Chapter 8 #4
Keys felt his face pale. “You know?” Fuck! He hadn’t meant to give away that much information. He thought mentioning meeting someone casually would just get Cage to back off him a little bit.
Cage laughed, dropping his defensive pose. “Kid, everyone knows. I’m assuming she’s the one who paid the fifty-k at the bachelor auction two years ago?”
Keys swallowed hard. “Um, yeah. But that was an accident. She didn’t realize the bids weren’t supposed to be that high.”
That made Cage laugh even harder. “So, have you been dating her all this time?”
Keys shook his head. “No! No. I… We’ve stayed in contact, but it hasn’t been romantic. At least, not seriously. I mean, at all. We’ve just been…” He scrunched his face, not sure how to explain it. “She’s my friend, but she’s also more than that. Like… She’s my person, you know?”
Cage held up his wedding ring. “I know exactly what you mean. And if you recall, Angel was my person long before I was hers.”
Keys chuckled at the memory. Cage had fallen hard for Angel, but Angel’s fierce independence had kept him at bay for many years.
Actually, now that Keys was making the comparison in his head, Rose’s and Angel’s mindsets didn’t seem all that different.
“How did you get her to trust you? To let down her shields with you?”
Cage studied Keys a moment. “I’m going to share a secret with you about women, kid.
At least, what I’ve picked up in my years.
Most women don’t want to do everything on their own.
But she does it because she’s had to, because she’s been let down by everyone else in her life and is forced to survive on her own or give up the fight.
Self-reliance isn’t showing strength, it’s a defense mechanism.
She’s protecting herself after being hurt too many times. ”
Keys frowned, not liking Cage’s assessment, but also understanding it. “So how do I get her to rely on me?”
“Step up. Be the man she needs, the one who never fails her, never makes her have to face this world alone again.” Cage gave Keys a pointed look. “Intimacy is more than sex, kid. She needs to know that you’ll be there for her outside the bedroom, too.”
Keys’ face flamed as he swallowed hard. He was not touching that subject with a hundred foot pole. “She knows she can come to me for anything. I’ve made that very clear, but she still doesn’t.”
“Then maybe you need to show her she doesn’t need to come to you, because you’ve already gone to her, helped her, before she even had to ask.”
As Keys’ embarrassment waned, he thought about that advice.
Rose might have come with him to Mount Grove, but she was still running.
He needed to show her what life with him would be like without the threat currently being held over her.
More than show her, though, he needed to make her crave it, want it as badly as he did.
“I’ll leave you to it then,” Cage said, heading towards the door. “Oh, and, kid?”
Keys looked up, lifting his eyebrows in question. “Yeah?”
Cage made a motion around his own jaw and lips. “Might want to clean yourself up before you go see your lady. You’re looking a bit scruffy.”
Keys’ cheeks reddened. “I’ve been busy.”
“That’s no excuse. Take pity on her. She’s already got to deal with your personality and lack of fashion sense,” he gestured to Keys’ Oregon Trail t-shirt, “you want her having to deal with your ugly mug, too?”
Keys picked up a stylus and threw it at his brother, but Cage easily ducked the attack and headed out the door, shoulders quaking with laughter as he did.
“Fucker!” he called. But after a moment’s hesitation, Keys decided that maybe Cage’s advice wasn’t that bad, and decided to do some online shopping.
* * *
“Ow! Motherfucker!”
Rose shot up in bed, her hand automatically going for the gun she still kept close.
When Oscar had shared a bed with her, it had been in a drawer or nightstand.
Something he couldn’t reach but she could.
Now that he was older, and bigger, Rose kept it in a press-and-release gun safe right next to her bed.
Having it didn’t make her hate guns any less, but damn, she wished it wasn’t necessary. Maybe one day soon, it wouldn’t be.
The apartment Keys had built for her inside his building was the size of a small house, offering a full kitchen, living room, two bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a TV or playroom.
The only part that she didn’t like was that Oscar’s room, the second bedroom Keys had painstakingly designed for her son, was across the living room from hers.
Even the knowledge that this building was more secure than the White House did not keep her from panicking whenever she put Oscar to bed for the night.
She desperately wanted to keep him in her room with her, but Oscar loved his room so much that she didn’t have the heart to insist otherwise.
“Goddamn it!”
Frowning, Rose threw back the covers and turned on her bedside lamp. Heading towards the closed bedroom door, she left the gun in the safe because she recognized that voice. There was no hesitation in her stride as she headed out of the bedroom and into the living room.
The layout had an open floor plan living room and kitchen, meaning no one could use blind spots and corners to hide in.
And a single voice-activated order from her electrified the very floor under her feet.
The waterproof bracelet on her wrist prevented whatever three-by-three panel or panels she was standing on from activating.
Oscar was the only other one with a bracelet.
Not even Keys or the Riley brothers had them.
Grimm had offered himself up as a guinea pig for her to see how it worked, but she refused to possibly harm him that way and was relying on Keys’ skill and knowledge to trust the floor actually functioned as promised.
“What are you doing?” Rose asked as she crossed the living room to the kitchen. Keys had his back to her as he stood at the kitchen sink. A window with a fake screen behind it gave the illusion of the outdoors, including the moon and constellations in the night sky.
“Nothing,” he insisted. “Go back to bed.”
Rose’s eyes narrowed, because his voice sounded funny, almost muffled. “Not a chance. Why are you in my apartment?”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know you’d gone to bed already. I was hoping to catch a movie or something with you.” He still wasn’t turning around, and had his head bent over the sink. Was he sick?
Rose approached closer. “What’s wrong with your voice?”
“Nothing, I’m fine.” He must have sensed her coming closer, because he turned his head away from her. What was wrong with his ear? “Go back to bed. Please, Rose.”
“Not happening,” she snapped. “Either turn around and face me, or I’ll make you.”
Keys let out a string of curses. “I really don’t want to.”
Rose crossed her arms over her breasts. “Why not?”
“Because I did something stupid thinking to surprise you, and now I’m really, really regretting it.”
A part of Rose thought about taking pity on him, but curiosity won out. “What did you do?”
Keys still had his head turned away from her, his neck in what looked to be an extremely uncomfortable position.
“I got some bad advice, okay. I just… I thought this would be easy, and then I could wake you up for a midnight picnic or something stupidly romantic. And now I just need to find a bag to put over my head so I can leave without you seeing me.”
“Keys.” Rose spoke his name softly, almost coaxing. “Tell me what you did, or better yet, show me.”
“Fuccccck,” he groaned. “Okay, fine. But you better not laugh.”
“I swear,” Rose vowed.
Keys turned, leaning back against the counter in front of the kitchen sink.
White sticks stuck out of both nostrils and his right ear.
His left, which had been facing her, did not have a stick but it did have a greenish goo coating it.
Under his nose, over the hair on his top lip, was a piece of plastic with a fake mustache on it.
Rose closed her lips, biting down on them with her teeth in an effort to at least try to keep her promise. But when her laughter couldn’t escape her mouth, it came right out her nose, causing her to lose her composure as well as her balance as she fell on her ass in hysterical laughter.