Jackson “How’d he take it?” #3
Frank's ability to skate right along the edge of legal is one of the reasons he's managed to make himself so fucking valuable to the board.
I think it goes without saying that you don't become billionaires by doing every single thing on the up-and-up.
You learn where the lines are, which ones have some give, and exactly how close you can get before somebody with a badge starts asking questions.
And Frank? The motherfucker could win Olympic gold.
He knows every loophole, every gray area, and every technically-not-illegal way to get what he wants, and he never leaves his fingerprints on any of it.
That's what makes him dangerous. He doesn't break rules.
He bends them until they're shaped like whatever the fuck he needed in the first place.
Rose holds my hand the entire way out of the restaurant, through the doors and across the walk to the car idling at the curb. One of the perks of a Sullivan board seat: a driver and a car, always waiting, always discreet.
Rose gets the same perk, but she won't allow herself to be drunk in situations like this. Not alone.
Not after what happened to her years ago in a version of her life she's mentioned exactly once. Three flat words, delivered without looking at me.
I was raped.
Then nothing else.
I never asked, and she’s never offered more.
But she'll get in with me. She'll drink until she's hiccupping and let me take her home. She'll hand me her purse, her keys, her whole fucking evening and never once check whether I'm doing what I said I would.
She trusts me.
And on the nights when I'm tempted to feel sorry for myself over the word friend, that's the thing I make myself remember. Out of everyone in her life, I'm the person she trusts with her safety.
Most days that's worth more than the rest of it.
Most days it's enough.
I keep that thought running on a loop as the driver opens the door and Rose slides into the back seat. I follow her in, and she settles beside me before casually laying her hand in my lap, her palm coming to rest high on my thigh.
Shit.
Don't get hard.
Her fingers shift.
Don't get hard.
She leans into my side.
For the love of God, don't get hard.
“I gave him a key to my apartment,” she says.
And just like that, my dick gets the message.
Her voice is quiet now, all the vicious little smirks and sexual taunting gone. She's staring down at her hand where it rests against my leg, and I can hear what she hasn't said yet sitting underneath the words.
“And he used it to fuck someone else in my bed.”
I stay quiet.
There isn't a joke for that. Nothing useful I can say that she doesn't already know, and Rose doesn't need me telling her David is an asshole or that she deserves better.
She definitely doesn't need me turning this into an opportunity to remind her that I've been standing ten feet away loving her for years.
So I let her have the silence.
This is the other thing she means by safe, the part she'd never spell out because I'm not sure she even realizes she does it.
I'm the person she lets herself come apart in front of without immediately trying to put herself back together for my benefit.
She doesn't need me to fix it, and she doesn't need to make it easier for me to witness.
I'd put real money on the fact that she stood in that apartment this morning and made David believe she didn't give a single solitary damn that he'd cheated on her.
Chin up, spine straight, probably some dry little parting line sharp enough that the motherfucker won't realize until next week how badly she cut him.
Then she'd have walked out.
Kept it pushing all day through Bennet's mess, the news cycle, the board and the firm, holding everything together with both hands because that's what Rose does when something hurts.
Until she couldn't.
So she got drunk.
And called me.
Her fingers tighten slightly against my thigh.
I bring my hand up to her shoulder as she cries in my lap. Knowing she loved him enough to cry over him does unspeakable things to my heart, but fuck, if this isn’t the closest I've felt to being useful all week.
By the time we pull up to her place, she's gone quiet.
When I look down, she's asleep. I take her up into my arms as carefully as I know how.
Her head slides into the curve of my neck and settles there.
I have to stand still on the curb for a second and breathe through what that does to me before I can make myself move.
Upstairs, I get her door with an elbow and carry her through the dark to her bedroom, and lay her down on top of the covers first. I sit her against the pillows and crouch to get her shoes off — these absurd, gorgeous heels she's somehow still wearing — easing each one off and setting them by the nightstand where she'll find them in the morning. She stirs but doesn't wake.
I get a glass of water and two aspirin onto the nightstand for the version of her that's going to hate the sun.
I pull the clip out of her hair, so it won't dig into her scalp all night, and her dark waves spill loose across the pillowcase.
I make myself not look at that for longer than it takes to do it.
I work the duvet out from under her, get her settled beneath it, and draw it up over her shoulder.
For a second she fights the dark, brow pinching, fingers reaching for something. "Jackson," she mumbles, not really awake.
"I'm here," I tell her. "Go back to sleep, sweetheart."
Her face smooths out. Her hand goes still.
I leave the door cracked so the hall light reaches her, and head to her kitchen to pour myself something strong and settle in for a long fucking night.