Chapter 14 #4
Tally nodded, “I was an only child. I would have loved a sibling, regardless of the age difference.”
For some reason, that statement made Rose stiffen. “Yeah, well, ‘dysfunctional’ was an understatement to describe our family when I was a kid.”
“I’m not saying that to offend,” Tally told her steadily.
“I’m saying that family, blood, isn’t the be-all, end-all.
I loved my dad. I never would have thought him capable of such despair and destruction because he hid that side of himself from me.
But the moment I learned he’d threatened Scar, took him captive?
Well, I never even hesitated. You have your reasons for what you did, and I’m sure every single one of them were made with that little boy in mind. ”
The mention of Oscar had her head turning in his direction, where her son was teaching all the non-dinosaur toys the correct Latin pronunciations for all the dinosaur toys with absolute authority.
“Keys has been different this past year.” Rose turned back to the women to see Louisa leaning forward slightly from her place on the loveseat by Abby, her daughter-in-law.
“Lighter. Even when things were hard, there was something steadier about him.” The older woman held Rose’s gaze. “Now I understand why.”
Rose wished she had something to hold onto in front of her, like a shield. She was not used to being the center of attention, and it was making her feel antsy and judged. With nothing else in arm’s reach, Rose lifted the throw pillow she’d been sitting against and brought it against her chest.
“He’s been that for me, too,” she said honestly. “More than I knew how to handle for a long time.”
Louisa gave her an approving nod. “I’m not going to ask you if you love him.
From what we all just saw, that answer is obvious.
I know meeting everyone can be trying and nerve-wracking.
We’re loud, and that doesn’t even include when the kids and extended family are around.
Just know that you have us. No matter what comes, we’re here for you. ”
* * *
“You ran a live interrogation near club property,” Bulldog accused, looking like a pot about to boil.
Keys nodded, “Yes.”
“With real bullets.”
“It wouldn’t have been as effective with rubber ones,” he shrugged, not knowing what else to say.
“That’s…” Bulldog stopped. Jaw tight. “That’s not the point, Keys.”
“I know.”
“The point,” Lucky said, leaning forward, “is that you had all of this going on and none of us knew. You’ve been sitting in Church with us twice a week, had a woman and a kid living across the street from us, and you said nothing.”
The weight of that accusation held more weight than Bulldog’s had. Keys nodded once, “Yes.”
“Why?” Lucky demanded.
“Because Rose asked me not to.” Keys kept his voice even. “She’s been invisible for six years, guys. She built that invisibility herself, from nothing, to keep her son alive. The more people who knew, the more exposed she was. I made a call.”
“You made the wrong call,” Bulldog snapped, his fist slamming down on the table. “You didn’t make a call to help Rose, you made a call not to trust us! Your family! Your club.”
Keys swallowed hard. “I can understand why you would see it that way, but I see it as choosing to honor the woman I love’s wishes.” His eyes flicked to all the married men in the room. “What would you have done in my shoes?”
The room erupted.
Keys heard his name more times in the next three minutes than he had in the past month.
He hadn’t realized how disconnected he’d become from the club until this moment.
How completely Rose had taken over his life.
He had no defense against the anger, and the bottom line was, there was nothing to be gained by defending himself against the grief of people who felt betrayed by a decision he would not apologize for.
Through all of it, Scissors didn’t move, didn’t speak or shout.
Just watched him from her chair with those sharp, assessing eyes that Keys had respected long before she’d been patched into the VDMC and then patched over to the NCMC.
He’d always admired how she’d found a loophole that allowed her to date Sissy, even though she was a member’s daughter.
It wasn’t until the room burned through its arguments without Keys’ open defense to fuel the flames that Scissors finally spoke.
“You want to talk about making calls?” Her voice was low and controlled, which, in a way, was worse than if she’d started shouting.
“Let me tell you about a call I watch my president make daily. Every morning, before dawn, when she thinks none of us are watching, she calls a number she knows is disconnected. She knows that her little sister won’t answer, and yet she dials it anyway.
Morning after morning, listening to that fucking recording that tells her the number she’s dialed is no longer in service.
” The Non Cras’ VP leaned forward, elbows on the table, eyes laser focused on Keys.
“And every night she makes the call to let Kitty hold her in the dark even though she’s furious at him, because she is so destroyed by grief and betrayal that she can’t function without him, and she hates herself for that weakness.
” A pause. “You want to tell me about your call, Keys? Because from where I’m sitting, you made your call and Poison is the one paying for it. ”
The room was very quiet.
Guilt tore at Keys, but he did not back down, did not look away from her. “You’re right,” he said honestly.
Scissors blinked, clearly having been prepared for a fight. The acknowledgement, though, did not take the wind from her sails.
“I’m not going to tell you my call was wrong,” Keys continued.
He turned to face Ghost, who’d been observationally quiet since his order for Keys to confess everything.
“I’d make it again,” he told his president without remorse.
“Rose needed to be invisible and I kept her invisible, and if that costs me,” he glanced around the table, “all of this, then that’s the price I pay.
But you’re right that Poison is paying for it, too,” he added to Scissors.
“She didn’t get a choice in that, and that I am sorry for.
” He held Scissors’ gaze. “Rose knows I did not agree with hiding the truth from her sister, but that was also not my call to make. Could you have betrayed a secret Sissy asked you to keep from Lucky?”
Scissors studied him for a long moment. “You know what?” she said finally, sitting back. “You’re Poison’s problem now.” She crossed her arms again. “And God help you when she gets here.”
Several people around the table made sounds that were not quite laughs and not quite agreement.
Ghost, who had been quiet through most of it, looked at Keys now with that steady, unreadable expression. “You didn’t trust us.” The hurt in the accusation was more profound than any punch could ever be. “This club has bled with you, buried people with you, and you didn’t trust us with this.”
Keys’ jaw was tight as he answered, “No, I didn’t.”
“Why?”
It was such a simple question, one word, one syllable, and yet it was magnitudinous in size.
Keys looked at him, at the man who had found him when he’d had nothing and gave him a place where he belonged.
Gave him the family Keys had always craved.
“I have no defense other than it wasn’t my secret to give, Ghost. I love this club, I love each and every one of you,” he added, his gaze shooting around the room until he brought it back to Ghost. “But I’m not one of you.
I will always be the outsider, the oddball.
Too young to be anything but the preverbal kid brother of the group.
I’m twenty-six, but many of you will never look at me as anything other than the nineteen-year-old runt Ghost brought here out of pity.
“I’m not like any of you. Forced into the military when I was only seventeen and then made out to be the bad guy when Uncle Sam gave me an order I couldn’t obey.
How many of you around this table even know that I wasn’t honorably discharged?
That Steel made an exception because Ghost asked him to?
I’m not honorable! I break laws for this club, that is my job.
I am not a warrior or a soldier. I think Scar is the only other one here whose moral compass is even more broken than mine. ”
He turned his attention back to Ghost. “I’d finally found my person, Ghost. Someone who understood me so profoundly that I fell in love with her without ever setting eyes on her until a couple weeks ago.
Rose trusted me. Not just with her life, but with Oscar’s.
I knew you would see what I did as a betrayal.
I knew, and I did it anyway, because I wasn’t going to break that trust to honor another one, even one I value as much as this.
” He paused. “She needed a home, a sanctuary. She’d been running for six years and deserved some retribution.
I offered that to her, and even though nothing has gone according to plan, I am still willing to give that to her, with or without this club. ”
“The club is everything,” Ghost stated darkly. “You know that.”
“The club was everything,” Keys refined.
“Now, Rose and Oscar are everything. That doesn’t make the club nothing, but it does mean my priorities have shifted.
” He shook his head. “I won’t apologize for choosing her.
I’ll apologize for the way I handled it.
I’ll apologize for not finding a better way to honor both.
But I will not apologize for the choice itself, because if given the choice again, I will always choose them.
” He reached up and put his hand on his cut. “No matter what it might cost me.”
He did not remove his cut as Scar had done nearly three years ago, but he did keep his hand rested on the leather, letting the room understand the gravity of what he was saying.
“If this club can’t accept Rose and Oscar,” he told boldly, “then we have a problem that a cut can't fix.”
The room went absolutely silent.
Ghost’s green eyes never strayed from Keys’, not even to look down at his hand on his cut. The hurt in his expression was still there. It likely wasn’t going away anytime soon, and Keys didn’t expect it to, but something softened in his gaze that made Keys dare to hope.
“Your mistake,” Ghost told him, “was believing you ever had to choose. That this club would not have respected your need for privacy, while offering support and guarding your back. For not trusting us enough to carry this burden with you. And the fact that you believe yourself to be different from any of us, that you believe we see you differently than any other brother at this table, is on us as much as it is you.”
Keys said nothing, not really sure what to say.
“I’m not going to demote you, Keys, or take away your cut for following your heart.
Hell, there’d be almost no married men left at this table if I did so, including myself.
However, I can’t let your actions go unpunished, and that punishment is twofold because your actions affect two,” he held up his pointer and middle finger, “clubs. Knowing Poison as I do, mine will be far less painful, though equally as difficult.” Putting his hand down, Ghost folded them in front of him on the table.
“When you opened the door last night to see Scar and I standing there, I thought I saw something different about you. I didn’t understand it then, but I do now.
I see it clear as day. Maybe one of the reasons we’ve all struggled to see you as anyone other than that scrawny kid I brought here is because you have never believed you’re anyone else.
But the way you stood up for Rose last night, the way you held yourself with her and Oscar today…
That was no nineteen-year-old kid, Keys.
That was a man who knew what he wanted and what he believed in.
So my punishment is this: you started this fight, you follow through on it.
Whatever support you need, you have it, but you see this through.
You are also going to make an honest woman of that girl downstairs, and you be the best goddamn father you can possibly be for that boy who clearly idolizes you. Do you understand me?”
Keys forced himself to sit up straighter, not allowing the weight of responsibility to drag him down. “Yes, sir.”
Ghost nodded once, then dipped his hand into the inside pocket of his cut to produce his phone. The room watched in sheer trepidation as Ghost scrolled, found what he was looking for, and pressed call. He put it on speaker, setting it on the table in front of him.
It rang twice.
“Ghost.” Poison’s voice came through the line, clipped and sharp. The voice of someone who was clearly not having an easy couple of weeks. “This had better be important. We’re in the middle of something.”
“It is,” Ghost said without looking away from Keys. “I need you to come to Mount Grove.”
A pause. “Why? What happened? Where’s Scissors and Sissy? Is it Ranger? Becks? Is—”
“Everyone is fine,” Ghost interrupted. He did not lead with dramatics. Instead, he blatantly stated, “We have Rose, Poison.”
The silence on the other end of the line lasted exactly four seconds.
When Poison spoke again, her voice was different, like she’d just swallowed something without chewing it fully. “You found her? Where is she? Is she okay?”
“Yes,” Ghost declared. “She’s perfectly healthy, but you need to know, she’s been here for weeks. I only found out myself last night. She and Keys are involved. He’s claimed her, Poison. And there’s more. She’s not alone. She’s got a son, a four-year-old named Oscar.”
Another silence. Longer. Keys felt like the walls of the room were closing in, and he tugged on the collar of his shirt in an effort to breathe.
“I’m on my way,” Poison declared. “And Keys, I fucking know you’re listening. Say your prayers, kid. You’re going to fucking need them.” The line went dead.
Ghost picked up his phone and pocketed it. He looked around the table one final time. “Unless anyone has anything else to say, I think we’re done here.”