She couldn’t look at him and his sweet face and his beautiful eyes and his nerdy shirt… Somehow she found her voice, though it sounded like she’d swallowed a fistful of sand. “I should check on Oscar.”
“Oscar is fine. You’ve had eyes on him all night. He’s sound asleep with his little butt in the air like he’s building a mountain for Baxter to climb on in Dreamland.”
Tears welled in her eyes. Why did he have to sound so strong and confident when her world felt like it was imploding? “Keys…”
“Turn around, Rose. Will you look at me?”
But she couldn’t.Coward, she silently called herself. What if there wasn’t love in his gray-blue eyes but accusation? Anger? He’d promised to protect her, and he was honorable enough to follow through on that vow, but what if he hadn’t thought it all the way through? What if he was just now realizing that being with her might cost him his club?
She wasn’t worth that.
His grip on her wrist constricted, his thumb resting over her pulse point in a way that sent shivers up her spine. “Please, Rose.”
Chin shaking, tears streaming down her cheeks, Rose slowly turned around. He was right there, close enough that she would have to tilt her head up to look at him—if she had the nerve.
“I’m sorry.” The words seemed so empty, so inconsequential, but they were the only words she had to express how terrible shefelt for having put him in this precarious situation. “I didn’t mean to make you have to choose.”
Keys lifted his free hand to her chin, but it only made her turn her face further away from him. “How could you think for a moment that I wouldn’t choose you?”
Rose opened her mouth to answer, and a hiccup escaped her. “I didn’t. I don’t. That’s the whole problem, Keys. I know you’ll choose me. I came here and I turned your whole life upside down, and now Ghost is going to punish you for that choice.”
“Rose.” He stepped forward, walking her back until her shoulders met the hallway wall, and she let him because her feet had apparently stopped taking instructions from the part of her brain that was trying to be reasonable. He crowded her, one hand still on her wrist and the other on her chin. “You don’t need to look at me if you don’t wish to,” his face was so close to hers that his breath heated the stream of tears on her cheek, “but you do need to listen to me.”
She shivered, closing her eyes against the velvet of his voice.
“You’re wrong. I didn’t choose you over the club out of obligation or some sense of chivalry. I’m not that honorable. I chose you, choseOscar, because there was no other choice. You didn’t take over my life. Youbecameit,” he declared assertively. His thumb moved over her pulse point again, and she swore he did it deliberately to get another rise out of her. “You belong here, and not because you needed somewhere safe and I had a very secure building. But because you belongwith me.” Rose slowly lifted her eyes to meet his gaze. “Ghost and the club will just have to deal with it, because there is no alternative. You and I are going to walk into that clubhouse tomorrow with our heads held high, because what we have isn’t something to be ashamed of. I haveneverfelt more like myself than when I am with you, and I willnevergive that up. Do you understand me?”
She opened her mouth, her carefully constructed argumentbeginning to lose its structural integrity, and yet no words formed.
Keys did not back down. “Do you understand me?” he repeated.
Rose closed her mouth, cleared her throat, and then opened it again. “Do you know how annoying you are when you’re right?”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “I do, but I’m also not going to let you deflect away or distract me from getting your answer.”
“Damn,” she murmured, which got another lip twitch out of him. “Fine,” she groaned. “Yes, I understand you and your stupid confidence and your infuriating sexiness.”
“You think I’m sexy?” Keys waggled his eyebrows, which, of course, somehow ruined and made the moment at the same time.
Rose snorted. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m also extremely impressed you were able to say all that with a straight face.”
“It was really hard.”
She lifted an eyebrow. “Oh, yeah?”
Keys nodded, his face composed. “Like super hard.”
“How hard?” she inquired, biting the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling.
“Extremely hard.” He lowered his mouth to hers. “So very, very hard…”
There was nothing careful about this kiss. It wasn’t sensual and romantic, but a pure, unadulterated claiming. And for the first time in a very long time, Rose chose to remain exactly where she was instead of plotting three steps ahead.
When he pulled back, they were both breathing heavily.
“Come back inside,” he urged against her mouth.
“Oscar…” Though she said her son’s name like an argument, she did not end their kiss. Somehow her left hand ended up in the back of Keys’ jeans while his thigh settled between hers, and she had no idea if the wall was holding her upright or he was.
