He honestly could not find it in himself to disagree. Leaning his head forward, Keys rested his forehead against hers. “You look beautiful.”
Rose chuckled, leaning into him as their fingers laced together at their sides.
“Hi,” he mused, simply breathing her in. He wondered if his voice sounded as rough to her as it did to him.
“Hi,” she said softly back.
He hadn’t bothered to drop his backpack off at the computer lab. That would have taken precious extra seconds that he would have much rather spent right where he was. His arms came around her at the same moment hers went around him, and for a long moment, they just stood there in the doorway of the apartment. No further words were spoken because they simply weren’t necessary. He felt the slow exhale move through her entire body, and he knew that feeling. Like he’d been subconsciously holding his breath until he found his way back into her presence. She smelled of coffee and exhaustion and that natural scent women had that was something almost citrusy—and in that moment, Keys felt something shift inside his chest. Like a constricting bind that was finally loosened.
He didn’t know which one of them moved first, and honestly, it didn’t matter.
Torn apart by circumstance, crisis, and the general chaos of a world that had not stopped demanding things from them for six straight days, they ended up in a heap of limbs on the couch. There was no grace or posturing or pose, yet somehow their lips found each other. His backpack landed on the floor in a heap, and was soon followed by his dirty cut and soda-stained shirt.
His hands found their way into her hair. Her fingers curled around his back, nails finding purchase in his sensitive skin. The kiss did not start out slowly and gradually build. It held tension and specific hunger of two people who knew without a shadow of a doubt that they had found their other half, their soulmate.
Keys pulled back just far enough to look at her, gray-blue eyes slightly unfocused behind his steamed-up glasses. She reachedup, tracing her thumb along his scruff-covered jaw in a way that made coherent thought particularly difficult.
Staring up into his eyes, she softly admitted, “I missed you. So much. There were times when it felt like I couldn’t breathe without you.”
Keys opened his mouth to answer, but suddenly heard the distinctive sound of small feet hitting the floor. That was all the warning he had before fifty pounds of four-year-old energy hit him directly on the back like a heat-seeking missile that had finally acquired its target.
“Keys!”
The impact drove Keys forward with an “oof” that was fifty percent genuine and fifty percent theatrical, though he was careful not to allow his weight to drop down onto Rose under him. Oscar had both arms locked around his neck and both legs around his ribs, clinging to his back with the full-body commitment a boa constrictor would envy. His little face pressed into Keys’ shoulder, and when Keys felt something wet touch his skin, he found himself praying it was drool and not boogers.
“Oscar,” Rose started, but Oscar shouted over her warning.
“He’s back! He’s back!" His voice rang out like he was announcing this to an entire auditorium rather than the two people he was trying to squish together into a Keys sandwich on the couch. “Keys is back!” He lifted his head, and out of the corner of his eye, Keys saw the boy’s expression turn to exasperated seriousness. “You were gone forso long!Likeforever!It was a really long time.”
“I know, bud.” Keys reached back and got a hand under Oscar, adjusting the boy so they created an Oscar sandwich instead. Rose shifted, too, as Keys moved to his side. “I’m sorry about that.”
“Did you bring me something?” Oscar asked with eagerness.
“Oscar,” Rose chastised.
“What?” he turned his head to look down at his mom. “I’m just asking.”
Keys snorted, which resulted in Rose losing her composure and laughing. Too exhausted and elated to be back together with his favorite people in the world, Keys could only shake his head. “As a matter of fact, I did bring you something. It’s in my backpack.”
Oscar tried to squirm his way out from between them, but Keys stopped him before the boy managed to topple all three of them onto the floor. Sitting upright, Keys reached for his bag as well as his shirt. Rose sat up too, moving Oscar onto her lap. After Keys put his shirt back on, she patted the cushion beside her in invitation.
When he sat, she pulled his arm around her shoulder, and Oscar let out a triumphant shout as Keys handed him a stuffed stegosaurus plush. Within minutes, Oscar had chosen the dinosaur’s name, Baxter, and an incredible amount of detail about the life Baxter lived in such confidence that it was hard to believe it was make-believe. Keys listened with complete seriousness and asked the appropriate follow-up questions.
It took a long time before they could get Oscar and Baxter settled back into bed, and the couch was once more taken up by just the two adults. As much as Keys would have loved to go to bed himself, he owed her some answers, particularly the details about Ranger’s captivity that he’d kept from her.
During the four days of his captivity, Ranger had been forced into compliance through repeated heroin injections. Additionally, he was beaten, starved, and humiliated through methods that even Keys didn’t know the full extent of yet. And on top of all of that, Ranger was now suffering through withdrawal from a drug he’d never willingly taken. Keys tried to explain the turmoil of watching someone he loved and respected fight a battle that had been forced on them, but feared his words fell short of the hellish reality.
Becks was also in recovery, but for a head injury she sustained while held captive. She negotiated her brother’s release—at a cost. Ghost was barely holding it together, worry for his best friend’s and wife’s lives making his own health and recovery from injuries he’d sustained in the explosion secondary. Beyond the natural depression of funerals, there was a tension now in the club, as if they were all floating around each other rather than leaning on each other.
Rose listened to his entire tale without looking away.
And when he finished, she told him about what she’d discovered about Kennedy’s partner within the Marshal Service, the death of Katy's handler and the poison ivy, the dark web post, and Kennedy’s obvious threat.
He went very still.
“You’ve been sitting on all this for nearly a week,” he accused as gently as he could.
She didn’t back down. “You were dealing with your club. Between the hospital and the funerals, I didn’t want to put more on your shoulders.”
