by SR Jones
I need to get her to the hospital.
Turning my phone around, I call 911 and ask for an ambulance. It only takes five minutes before I see the colored lights bouncing off the walls around us.
Roze has opened her eyes a few times, and then closed them again. Girl’s going to have a killer headache. I just hope it’s no worse than that.
Fifteen minutes later, and I’m sitting in a cubicle at the ER with Roze lying on a bed next to me. She’s been checked out already by the doctor, and she’s due a CT scan to check her head. She’s awake now though and making perfect sense.
A nurse is bustling around us, putting a canula in and so far, I’ve not been alone with Roze to talk to her. I’m livid. I’m relieved and I’m also sure. Sure of what I want.
My initial, rage filled reaction has mellowed into stone cold anger. Yeah, she needs to hear a few home truths because this level of bratty? Running away like a child? It’s not okay. But she’s my brat. I’ll be the one to deal with her, no one else.
When the nurse finally leaves us, Roze turns to me, her eyes wide and promptly bursts into tears.
Through all this, all the shit, she’s not cried this way. So openly. So…brokenly.
Shit. My anger dissipates and fades. She’s tiny, and hurt, and in tears, and all I want to do is hold her.
Finally, she struggles to get a hold of herself. Sniffling, and wiping her face on her sleeve, she shakes her head. “You don’t get to sit there,” she says softly. What the hell? “You have a family.”
Then she starts to cry again.
“Go be with your wife,” she sobs.
“I don’t have a wife,” I tell her, voice steely. “Which you would know if you’d bother to fucking talk to me before running away like a damn kid.”
“Okay, sorry,” she says with venom. “Your partner. Or whatever she is. I saw it Priest. The checks. The photographs.”
“Yeah, and what exactly were you doing rifling through my things?”
“Oh, no. You don’t get to deflect and blame,” she shouts.
“Lower your goddamn voice, or I swear, Roze.”
“What?” She hiccups and wipes her face again. “You’ll put me over your knee?”
“Don’t think I won’t.”
“We’re in a hospital.”
The way she says hospital, all scandalized and shit makes my mouth twitch up into a smile. Then I start to laugh. I can’t help it.
She’s scowling at me. Bleeding. Concussed. Probably. Crying. But she’s still got that fire.
“Oh, so now you find it all funny? You’re disgusting,” she says, spitting venom.
I lean in, take her small face in my hands and stare into her eyes for a long moment. “You’re the most impossible, spoiled, stupid woman I’ve ever met,” I say. “You’re also the most vibrant, intoxicating, and beautiful, so I’m kind of screwed.”
“You are?” she asks, her breath quickening as we continue to look deep into one another’s eyes.
“I am.”
“Why?”
“Because I love you.” I let her see I mean it. “In all your bratty glory, I fucking love you.”
“You can’t love me.” She drops her gaze, breaking eye contact. “You have someone else you’re responsible for.”
I don’t set her straight immediately. Before I do that, I tip her face up and I kiss her. I kiss her so damn hard she’ll feel it in her toes.
“Yes, I do have someone else I’m responsible for. Rebecca. She was the love of my best friend’s life.”
“Your best friend?” she echoes.
“Yeah.”
“Not yours?”
“No, baby. Not mine. He died. In my arms. I swore as he took his last fucking breath that I would protect her and her children.”
“You’re looking after his kids,” she says.
“No. I mean…kind of. They weren’t married. The kids were hers by her first marriage, but he loved them fiercely.”
“What was his name?”
“Allan.”
“What happened?” she asks.
I swallow and shake my head. “No, baby. I can’t. I don’t talk about it.”
“I’m sorry.”
I don’t want her pity.
“I mean for how I behaved. I’m sorry you lost your friend, too. You ought to talk about it.” She holds her hand up as my features tighten. “Not to me, but to someone. You need to let it out.”
“I don’t need to let it out.”
Her eyes search my face, and then she simply nods. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Yeah, okay.”
“No pushing me to talk?”
“No. It’s your right to not talk about it. It’s your life. Your memory. I’m here if you ever want to though.” She sits up a little and turns her head, then winces. “Remind me not to move too fast.”
I watch her for a moment, wanting to know what happened. She sighs, and wipes a hand over her face.
“My father called me,” she whispers. “He called me and told me he’d been looking into you and that you had a family. I should have asked you. But…I was so shocked. So hurt. I thought it had all been a lie. My first love, and it was all a lie.”
“First love?” I say.
“Yes. I love you.”
“First implies there’ll be someone after.”
She laughs. “Oh, Priest. There won’t be anyone after you, and if there was…if you left, they’d always be a distant second. You had me the moment you appeared in that doorway dressed in camo. And that’s not stupid hero worship. It’s not. You were the most beautiful thing I’d seen. So big, and sure. You saved me. You came for me.”
“Miss.” The curtain swishes back and a man clad in scrubs walks in, interrupting us. “Time for your scan.”
“Can he come with me?” she grabs my hand.
“You can come down to the scanning area, sir, but you can’t go into the room while the scan is taking place.”
I nod and keep hold of Roze’s hand as two porters grab the foot and top of her bed and start wheeling.
The scan only takes five minutes, but we have a long wait for the results. I’m nervous. What if she’s got a bleed on her brain? What if I lose her?
The whole time we wait, I don’t let go of her hand. Not once. She’s tired and she rests with her eyes closed. Her face is pale. Her hair spiky and pink.
I love her.
I fucking love her so damn much that if she’s not going to be okay, I don’t know what I’ll do.
“Hi Katie.” A different doctor strides in, a woman holding a clipboard with reams of paper attached. “So, the good news is the scan was clear. The bad news is, you’ve had quite a bump. You might have some sickness, headache. You remember everything so I’m not too worried about a traumatic brain injury, but as you passed out there might be some issues that come up later.”
“Issues like what?” I snap.
“Memory loss, possibly. Some neurological signs. There shouldn’t be any because right now everything looks good. I’d simply like you to be aware of things to look out for. Take it easy. Rest. Sleep.”
“Do I have to wake her up regularly?” I ask.
“Once every three or so hours for the first couple of days, and as long as she’s speaking okay, and her movements seem okay, then you’re good.”
“Thank you,” I tell the doctor.
“Yes, thank you so much,” Roze says.
“Pain relief.” The doctor holds up one bag, and then a second. “And nausea meds in case you start to feel sick.”
One of the porters who had wheeled Roze’s bed to the scanning area enters the room, with a wheelchair.
“I can walk,” Roze says.
“Sorry, hospital rules.”
I don’t have a car, so I’ll need to call a cab. Shit. This is not ideal. Fuck it. “Give me five minutes to go bring the car around the front,” I tell Roze, tipping her chin up and giving her what I hope is a serious enough stare
she gets not to say anything.
Then I leave her with the Doctor, and jog to the parking lot. It takes me a few minutes, but I find a car I can hotwire the old school way. A 1996 Mercedes. Perfect.
Once I park my stolen goods out front of the hospital, I head back inside, and to the ER. The porter and Roze are waiting outside the bay, and I go to her. “I have this,” I tell him. “Thanks a lot.”
He shrugs and lets me take over the chair.
As I wheel Roze out of the hospital, she turns around and whispers. “Priest, have you committed a crime?”
I bust out laughing. “Yeah, I have.”
I get her into the car and drive us the hell out of there.
Once we’re at the docks, I lift her out of the car, to much protest, and carry her onto the boat. I place her on the bed, and tell her to stay, while I go secure the doors and make her a hot drink.
I take the cup of herbal tea into the bedroom, and hand it to her.
“You stole a car,” she says.
“I’ll get Reece or someone to run the plates and get it back to the owner.”
She sips at her tea, and sighs. “Lovely.”
Climbing on the bed beside her, I pull her into me. “I was so angry with you for running at first.” I hold her tight.
“Were you going to turn my ass red?” she asks with one lifted brow.
“I’m still going to turn your ass red,” I tell her. “But when you’re recovered.”
“So…we’re in love,” she says with a grin as if she’s told me an earth-shattering secret.
“Seems so.”
“My father is going to go nuts.” She giggles.
“You’re not worried what he’ll say?”
“No. So far as I’m concerned, he’s lost the right to lecture me. Anyway, I’ve probably spent more time with you, hour wise, in the past few weeks, than I have with him in the past fifteen years.”
The silver ring I wear on my little finger catches the light and I stare at it. With a slow smile it take it off. Grasping her left hand, I stare into her eyes as I slide the ring down.
She stares at me, and then looks back to me.
“It’s a battered silver ring, but it’s all I have for now,” I tell her. “Roze, will you marry me?”
“What?”
She’s staring at me, her eyes huge, and her mouth parted.
“Will you?”
“Oh my God, yes.” She squeals, but her face pales and her hand automatically goes to her forehead.
“Baby, take it easy. So, you will?”
“Yes, Priest, I will. Nothing would make me happier.”
Then her face darkens. “Where will we go though? It’s not fair you hitching yourself to me when I don’t have a home and I’m on the run.”
“We can go on the run together. Who cares? Anyway, things are getting straightened out. Your father, with a little help from some Greek and Russian friends, is getting things done.”
“Who would have thought, Greeks, and Albanians working together.”
“Common interest, baby. Common interest.”
“Where will we go right now?” she asks.
“Right now, we’ll stay here for another week or so. Let you rest up. I’ll speak to Konstantin and see if we can go there once you’re feeling better. Once we’re there, we can pitch to Andrius and Konstantin your plans.”
“Oh, God, I don’t know.”
“You do. It’s a great idea, Roze. The more I think about it, the better I think it is.”
“Okay.”
I love her okay’s. She says them all with different emphasis and different meanings. This one sounds hopeful.
Tipping her face up, I kiss her soft and gentle. Then I kiss my ring on her finger. “As soon as you’re better, we’ll go shopping for a real ring,” I tell her.
“No,” she says.
My heart stalls.
“No?” Has she changed her mind?
“No, Priest. I want this ring. Your ring. It means so much. I want to get this one re-sized.”
My heart swells and I pull her into me.
“Although there is something we need to discuss before we seal the deal,” she glances up at me.
“What’s that?”
“I don’t know your name.”
I stare at her for a long moment as I realize she’s right. She doesn’t. All this time we’ve spent together the past few weeks, I never told her my real name. Fuck me. I’m an idiot.
“Well, nearly everyone calls me Priest, but my real name is John.”
“John,” she says. “I like that.”
“Do you like Preston?”
She frowns. “Yes, why?”
“Because that’s going to be your surname soon.”
“I love you John Preston.”
“I love you Roze Preston-to-be. Now go to sleep.”
She curls into me and closes her eyes.
I hold her in my arms, as near to peace as I’ve ever been.
Epilogue
“I can show you how to set up a fundraising campaign and the best tactics to use.” The woman talking to Roze is Stella, who is here with Alesso, one of the Greek men working with Gezim to rid his world of the Polish faction.
Stella is quiet until she talks about her animal shelter, and then she’s animated and happy.
Roze listens to her, making notes on the pad in front of her. Her hair is almost to her shoulders now. It grows fast.
“Thanks, Stella, that would be great. Maybe I could come and spend some time with you to see how you oversee and run things?”
“That’s a great idea.” Stella beams at Roze.
Roze smiles back and then looks to the rest of the table.
We’re in the kitchen in Andrius’ home on Corfu. We’ve been staying in one of the houses here for the past month as Roze researched and planned. Her father is once more in charge of things, so far as the remnants of the Starz Allianz is concerned, but the risks haven’t completely disappeared. For Roze, with who her father is, I don’t know if they ever will. That’s fine. I’m her full-time bodyguard now. Her fiancé too.
She pushes her bob behind her ear on one side and glances at me. I know she’s nervous. This meeting she requested to discuss us setting up a charity for abused women to take sailing and survival holidays here is important to her. It turned out that Andrius and the others were already looking at something similar, and were planning training courses for women, alongside the courses for close protection, but the whole yachting aspect is new. Roze presents her case well. You wouldn’t know how anxious she is from looking at her, though. She has a poise way beyond her years.
In private, she lets her inner brat out, and I take great delight in playing with her. In public? Roze has the manners of the princess I called her not so long ago.
Konstantin leans back in his chair and fixes Roze with his intense stare. “How much seed money do you figure you need?”
“The boat is the main expense,” she says. “If you buy a good condition used boat, though, you can cut the costs massively. This isn’t some luxury yachting holiday. Yes, I want it to be comfortable, but it’s a working holiday.”
“So, how much?” Konstantin asks.
“I think we’ll be looking at around two million in total.”
Andrius whistles. He turns to me. “Two million?”
“In total, and my father is providing half of that, so that only leaves one million we need to raise.”
“Still a heck of a lot of money,” Andrius says.
“We figured you could afford it between you.” Roze gives him a cheeky smile.
He narrows his eyes, but he glances at Konstantin, and I think they’re going to go for it.
“I’m in,” Justina, Andrius’ supposed housekeeper from back in the UK, says. Although as I have come to know these people, I realize she’s more like his sister than anything else. “Any charity that helps women who’ve been through the sort of shit I have, I’m in. I have savings. I ca
n put a chunk of those in.”
“Me too,” Damen says in his deep bass. He has his wife, Maya, on his knee, and she’s dressed head to toe in Versace. She’s so bright it hurts my eyes.
“Once we have the seed money, the ongoing costs will come out of the fundraising,” Roze says. “It’s the start-up that’s the hardest part.”
Damen’s phone beeps, and he reads something and then grins at Roze. “The big boss, Stamatis, says he’s going to put one hundred thousand in.”
She claps her hands, and her cheeks flush. “Wow, thank him for me.”
“I will, and I’ll match it.”
“Oh my God, thank you.”
I give Damen a nod of thanks. The Greeks are doing more than simply helping finance Roze’s business, they’re also looking into the leaders of the Polish mob faction who tried to take out Gezim. The people who trafficked all those women won’t get away with it forever.
“Fuck it,” Konstantin pushes his chair back. “I have to make a call, but count me in, Roze. I’ll give you two hundred and fifty k.”
Tears form in her eyes and hang prettily in the corners. Her beautiful brown eyes, not those damn awful contacts.
For a moment, I get a sinking feeling. All these men with the wealth to throw that kind of money at our venture, and I don’t have the same. I’m comfortably off. Very much so, but these guys? They’re in a different league.
The rest of the meeting passes in something of a blur, but by the end of it we have enough pledges of donations to make this a real possibility.
We say our goodbyes and head to the door, shrugging our coats on for the short walk across the yard and through the woods.
Roze takes my hand as we walk.
“You’re quiet,” she observes.
I shrug and squeeze her hand. “Just tired, baby.”
“Oh, no you don’t. The truth, Priest. Remember? Always the truth.”
We’d made the promise after the events in Sausalito.
I stop walking and turn to her. “I hate that I can’t give you money the way they can. It’s stupid, I know, but it is what it is.”
“I’m glad you can’t,” she says fiercely.