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 itwouldn’tcause 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 wecouldn’thave 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 havetrustedyou 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 thatIput him in. And don’t you want someonelike 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 theNon Crasgot 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 wantedmeto 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 sayis that he loves you, so much so that he broke our bargain to tell you who I was.”
