Chapter 15 #3
“I’m not finished.” Poison’s voice was steady, anger seeping in to mix with the hurt.
“You had a son, Rose. You had a son and you chose to raise him alone. You chose not to trust me with your son’s life, with his existence.
Does he even know his grandparents’ names or his aunt’s?
Maybe now that you have whatever it is that you have with Keys, he knows what family looks like.
But from my understanding, you’ve kept him isolated with you for four years.
I get that he’s your son, that you have the right to choose how he is raised and no one else.
But did you think that when you kept me away from him, you were also keeping him away from me, the only other family besides you that he has?
You took that from him, Rose.” Poison tapped her chest, “You took that from me.” Her voice fractured slightly on the last word.
“And I understand why. I do. I can see it when I look at you, how scared you were. You must have felt so alone. I don’t know all you’ve been through, but I can guess some of it.
And I am so fucking sorry. Not just for what you suffered through but that I—” Poison’s voice cracked and she fought to blink away tears.
“But that I had become someone you thought you couldn’t trust and rely on, that you thought I hated you or resented you or was grateful that you were gone to the point where you thought I wouldn’t have moved heaven and earth just to have you back for one more day?
” She stopped again, a tear escaping down her cheek.
Rose struggled to breathe. There were no words to describe the devastation on Poison’s face. Like she was broken and missing pieces of herself.
“That’s on me, Rose,” Poison finally continued. “That’s on me, because I was such a shit sister that you would rather be a strange voice on the phone, watching me through surveillance videos, than at my side, letting me help you heal and protect your son.”
“Please, don’t,” Rose begged.
Poison’s swallowed hard. “Don’t what?”
“Don’t lay the blame on you. All of this was my doing.
I was a stupid kid who didn’t know what the fuck I was doing, and I always felt like I was better off alone.
Even surrounded by friends, I never felt like I was there because they wanted me to be.
I was a means to an end. I was there because of what I could offer them, not because of me.
And maybe it was cowardly, but I didn’t want to be an obligation to you.
Oscar was my responsibility, and for the first time, I was going to take that responsibility.
It wasn’t about cutting you out! It was about knowing that I was able to stand on my own two feet.
That I could be a mom he would be proud of. ”
Rose reached out and took her sister’s hand, choosing to ignore for the time being how swollen it was from hitting Keys, and held it between them.
“I’m sorry that my choices caused you pain.
I never wanted that, and maybe rather than thinking it wouldn’t cause you pain, I’d blinded myself into choosing to believe you didn’t love me enough that it could.
And I am so fucking sorry that I was such a shit teenager that we couldn’t have been sisters back then.
I drove you away, built up that wall just like I did for everyone else in my life.
Hell, I’m pretty sure if I had met Keys face-to-face, I would have never given him the time of day. ”
Rose ignored the “Hey!” from behind her, even though it gave her the heartbeat she needed to take a steadying breath.
“I’m not sorry for my decisions. I can’t be, because then Oscar wouldn’t be alive.
But I am so sorry for the pain. I should have found a way to tell you sooner.
I should have trusted you sooner.” She squeezed Poison’s hand.
“I think I’ve been afraid of you my whole life, and somewhere along the way that fear started doing things I didn’t intend. ”
Poison looked at their joined hands, but she didn’t pull away. “I never wanted you to fear me.”
“I don’t anymore,” Rose pressed, gentler. “Even though you just beat the shit out of my boyfriend.”
Something like pleasure crossed Poison’s face. She shrugged far too nonchalantly. “He had it coming.”
“He didn’t,” Rose argued. “Everything he’s done has been to protect me and Oscar. But he’s a good man who was put in a difficult situation that I put him in. And don’t you want someone like that for me? Someone who would risk even your wrath to ensure my happiness and safety?”
Poison looked down, grumbling. “Kid didn’t even fight back. Almost took the fun out of it.”
Rose lifted an eyebrow. “Almost.”
Poison shrugged, like that was the best she could offer in regard to Keys, but the look she gave Rose showed the barest hint of amusement.
Rose supposed that was the best she was going to get.
* * *
“So you were never in danger?”
Guilt had Rose’s face scrunching up. “Not…directly, no. Turns out, I’m better at hiding myself than I thought,” she added offhandedly. Rubbing her hands up and down her thighs, she asked Poison, “How much do you know?”
As the Non Cras got themselves settled in their unofficial apartments they tended to stay in when visiting Mount Grove, Poison and Rose settled themselves on the couch.
Keys was sitting on the other side of Rose with an ice pack over one eye with Oscar on his lap.
Once the fists had stopped flying, Rose let Oscar back inside, from where Tessa and Harper were unsuccessfully trying to keep him calm under the pavilion.
It wasn’t until Oscar came back inside and saw that Keys and Rose were both fine that he settled down.
Rose was choosing to see the silver lining in the fact that her son had bypassed her completely and had attached himself to Keys with an iron grip.
“Enough to be extremely confused. Enough to know that certain questions shouldn’t be asked right now,” Poison said with a pointed look at Oscar.
Rose appreciated that. It was bad enough that Oscar’s first impression of his aunt was her whaling on Keys’ face like a possessed demon.
“He’s good with him,” Poison observed.
Rose smiled, unable to look away from the sight of Keys comforting Oscar as her son added unnecessary band-aids to Keys’ body. “He researched parenting books,” Rose told Poison proudly. “Annotated them with highlighters and sticky notes.”
“Ugh, it’s so weird that that turns you on.” At Rose’s giggle, Poison groaned, “Well, fuck. Now I feel like the bully who beat up the school nerd.”
Rose snorted. “You are,” she threw back at her sister.
Poison made a sound that said she accepted this assessment. “I am sorry for scaring the boy, but not for kicking the crap out of Keys. Fucker kept you from me for almost two years!”
Rose hesitated before turning to face her sister. “Is it actually Keys you’re mad at? Or someone else who also knew your secret and kept it from you for two years?”
Poison’s expression darkened. “I’m not talking about him.”
“We have to talk about him,” Rose pressed. “If you can forgive me, the instigator of all of this, you can forgive him.”
“I’d rather fight a bear naked in a Jell-O pit surrounded by lava,” Poison snapped.
Glancing back at Keys and Oscar, Rose turned herself fully on the couch to face her sister. “He wanted to tell you. He wanted me to tell you. I convinced him not to, and somehow it just became a shared secret between us. I knew his identity and he knew mine.”
The look Poison gave her held so many questions, but she didn’t voice any.
“Forgive him,” Rose encouraged with more force. “After everything the two of you have been through together, he deserves it. Moreover, so do you.”
Poison stubbornly shook her head, looking away from Rose. “How can I forgive him when I know he can so easily keep things from me?”
“I can’t answer that for you,” Rose said gently. “What I can say is that he loves you, so much so that he broke our bargain to tell you who I was.”
“That’s the only thing he did right,” Poison snapped, turning back toward her. “Only it was two years too late. Why should I trust him now? When he only just now grew a pair of balls?”
“Well, leaving his balls out of this conversation,” Rose started hesitantly, “technically, our deal was to keep each other’s identity. By telling you mine, it could be argued that I have every right to tell you his.”
Poison sat up straighter, her interest perked, but then she sagged in disappointment. “But you’re not going to, are you? I mean, he told me his name, but there’s obviously more to it than that.”
Rose shook her head at Poison’s question. “He’s here, you know. Outside. He followed you in. Ghost had to tell Scar not to kill him for hurting you.”
Poison made a face. “I don’t want him dead.” Then added, “But if anyone is going to get to kick the crap out of him, it’s going to be me.”
“How about you start with talking to him,” Rose suggested, “and see how that goes?”
“Couldn’t you just tell me and I can make a decision off that? I’ll babysit for, like, two hours so you can get your nerdy rocks off, and I won’t even teach the kid how to shiv anyone,” Poison tried to bargain.
Rose stared horrified at her sister. “You are never babysitting Oscar without adult supervision.” She completely ignored Poison’s attempt to conceal her celebration at this proclamation.
Instead, she brought them back to the topic at hand.
“Go talk to Kitty. You can’t forgive him until you know everything. ”
Looking like a teenager forced to go clean her room, Poison got up, shoulders hunched, and practically stomped her way out of the clubhouse.
* * *
Keys estimated he had forty-plus band-aids on him by the time Rose turned her attention back on him and Oscar. Letting out a long, long breath, Rose slumped back into the cushion of the couch, and then slid over until her head was on Keys’ shoulder. He leaned his head over on top of hers.