“You need to get out of the hospital? Why? What’s the rush?”
“I need out of this city. I can’t do this anymore, Reeve. Look at me.” She waved a hand at her immobilized wing and bandaged chest. “I have twenty stitches in my chest and half of that in my back. I look like a character in a video game. No one is going to pay money to see a washed-up stripper covered in scars take her clothes off. All of this is just so tired and sad. I’m exhausted and I don’t want to do it anymore.”
I closed the door behind me and walked into the room. I set my purse down on the floor and winced at the heavy thud the gun made when it landed. I was going to need to get used to that or Titus was going to get suspicious.
“You’ve been in the Point as long as I have. Where else would you go?” I had seen the suburbs, thought I could make that work for me, and had been so wrong. I wondered if Key had been anywhere but the Point.
“Anyplace where no one has ever heard the name Honor. I want to bury her. I don’t want to be her anymore. I don’t want her life. I don’t want to want what she wants.” She shifted and used her good hand to push some of her dark red hair over her shoulder. Only she could be shot up and bedraggled and still look so perfect. “There was this girl that danced at Spanky’s for like six months a few years ago. She was kind of a gypsy, not one to settle any one place for too long. She was young, but smart and ambitious. She ended up in Denver, I think. I heard she reconnected with an old flame and has a kid on the way now. We keep in touch here and there, so I was thinking maybe I would head that way. She says Colorado is the most beautiful place she has ever been. Nothing like the Point. Fresh air might be just what I need to get my shit together.”
“It’s not that easy,” I told her quietly.
“What’s not?”
“Leaving this place behind. The scenery changes, the people are different, but you’ll still be you and that means you’ll always have a huge part of the city in you. You can’t just leave it behind; you can try and fool yourself into wanting something different, but it doesn’t work.” I would never settle for an imitation again.
She scoffed a little and then struggled to her feet, forcing me to scramble and help her as she wobbled unsteadily.
“I can try. Now, will you help me outside or not?” She sounded so surly and disgruntled I had to chuckle at her.
“Yeah, I’ll help you.” What choice did I have? “So are you planning on telling Nassir where you’re going or that you’re leaving?”
I put a hand on her waist and let her lean on me as we shuffled to the door. I pulled it open and she grunted in discomfort as the action jostled her.
“I already did. He didn’t believe me.”
The nurses looked up when we hit the hallway. They scowled at Keelyn but she just smiled sweetly as we slowly made our way to the elevator. She lifted an eyebrow at me. “They don’t like me, for some reason.”
I snickered at her and reached out to push the button with my free hand. “Because only you can get shot, operated on, and still look like a goddess. It’s not fair.”
She rolled her eyes. “I paid a lot of money to look this good.”
I’d bet she did. “I saw Nassir when you went down. He wasn’t happy, like really not happy. There is something there with him and you, isn’t there? That’s why he thinks you won’t really leave?”
She slumped back against the elevator and closed her eyes. She was obviously hurting and from more than the bullet wound in her chest.
“Nothing makes Nassir Gates happy. He is a coldhearted bastard and the only thing he cares about is Nassir. What he wants, he takes, and I have had enough of being taken by men to last me a lifetime. He would destroy me.” Her voice cracked on the last part of her sentence, and when she pulled her lids back up to look at me, I saw an expression that was all too familiar. The longing, the yearning, the burn for a man that you shouldn’t want.
“He’s very intense.”
“He’s a killer. There is no good or bad with him like there is with Bax and Race. There’s just this void where he exists in his own world and operates under his own rules, and anyone that doesn’t want to comply is going to be collateral damage. He’s ruthless and the only side that matters to him is his own. He’s all smoke and mirrors and what’s under the reflection of sophistication and humanity is a nightmare. He’s the devil in an Armani suit.”
“I see.”
“Do you? Do you really see, Reeve, because most people I talk to about him only have a vague idea about how dangerous he really can be.”
There were undertones there that spoke to something deeper between her and the exotic-looking club owner but I couldn’t question her about it because the elevator dinged as we hit the ground floor and I put my arm around her waist so that I could almost drag her toward the front doors. She was moving really slowly and I think she was in much more pain than she was letting on. I gave her a little squeeze and told her softly, “I think I see very clearly, Key. You think you can run. You think space, time, and maybe even a different man will get him out of your system because he’s not who you should want. You think that maybe, just maybe, you can be a different person, leave all the shit and mess here in the Point, and be someone you always thought you should be. You think you can replace him, lose him, and I’m going to tell you from firsthand experience it’s not that easy. Just like the city is in you, so is he, and you will always be you, so that part of you that hungers for him, aches for him even though you know he might be the end of you, it’ll still be there.”
A battered yellow cab was waiting for her, so I pulled open the back door and helped her into the backseat. The cab smelled gross and looked like it had bullet holes dotting it, but that was pretty typical for a taxi in the Point. She looked up at me with a scowl.
“Thanks for the hand, but you’re still a bitch.”
I shrugged. “So are you. Good luck chasing down a new life.”
She bit down on her lower lip. “Promise me something.” I lifted my eyebrows up at her and waited to see what she was going to ask of me. “If you see me back here in the next six months, promise me you won’t say ‘I told you so.’ That’ll really piss me off and I might have to swing at you again.”
I smiled at her and grabbed hold of the door so I could swing is shut. “Good luck, Key. I wouldn’t want to be you when Nassir finally catches up to you, but I promise not to rub it in when he brings you back.”
The cabdriver took off as soon as metal touched metal and I crossed my arms as I wandered back inside. I really didn’t want to go up to Bax’s room and intrude on the brother’s time together, so I went to the snack bar and got myself a bottle of water to bide some time. I didn’t need Bax in a worse mood than usual trying to give me hell for getting my hooks into his brother. He was injured and needed to focus on getting better. I took my water and found a waiting area to sit in for a little bit, flipping through old magazines until almost an hour went by. I figured Titus would be wondering where I had gotten off to by then, so I headed back to the elevators to take me up to the intensive care unit.
When the doors opened I ran immediately into a broad chest and had strong arms wrapping around me and moving me backward the way I had just came. Titus wore a thunderous expression on his face and looked mad enough to spit nails. It was amazing to me how much emotional damage Bax could do confined to a hospital bed and unable to speak.
“Are you okay?” Those heavily muscled arms tightened a fraction around me.
“No. My brother is a dipshit and reasoning with him feels like beating my head against the wall.”
“He really doesn’t want Dovie here?” That was sad and wrong in so many ways.
“Oh, he wants her here, but not until he gets rid of the armed guard outside of his door and gets to take a shot at Roark. Bax thinks once Roark hears that he survived the crash, he’ll come after him. He wants me to get him a gun.”
“Oh no. He didn’t really ask you that? He had to know you would say
no.” I shivered at the uncanny way Bax’s plan echoed my own.
“Of course he knew. It was just his none too subtle way of telling me what he has up his sleeve so I’m not surprised when it all goes to hell. And you know what sucks? Of course I told him to fuck off, but Race won’t. If Bax asks Race to help him set this up, he will. Goddammit. Everyone I love has a death wish.”
He put his arm around me and tucked me into his side, and I wrapped an arm around his lean waist. It was such a normal, couple-y type thing to do it made my heart thump a happy beat and I immediately chastised myself. Stuff like that most definitely fell into the category of more and Titus wasn’t there yet. And if he knew what I was planning, knew that this was going to end with me dead or behind bars, more wouldn’t even be an option, so why couldn’t I stop myself from asking for it, from chasing it every time he touched me? Good thing he wasn’t even close to loving me, or I would just be one more person he cared about playing a dangerous game of chicken with fate.
“Did you tell him what you and I have been up to?”
He grunted and paused next to the sparkly-blue car. I was stunned when he bent his head down and gave me a hard and searing kiss. It made me tingle all the way to my toes.
“I told him that you and I have a thing. I told him he doesn’t have to like it, but it is what it is. He was surprisingly quiet on the subject, well quieter than he was about other stuff. He told me not to get my dick shot off.”
I cringed and ran my hands up his chest. I loved the way he felt so solid and hard. I liked to think of him as unbreakable, bulletproof, even if it wasn’t true. I curled my hands around the back of his neck and drew him down so I could kiss him much softer than he kissed me.
I teased his lips open with my own, ran my tongue along the seam of his mouth, and dipped inside when he finally opened up. I licked across the curve of his lower lip and darted inside to twist my tongue around his. He tasted like coffee and a faint hint of toothpaste. He tasted real and clean. He tasted like everything that made life worth fighting for.
In typical Titus fashion he only let things be soft and sweet for a second before he took over. One of his hands found my ass as he jerked me closer and bent his head closer to mine so he could devour me. When he finally pulled away we were both panting and had dirty, sexy things floating around in our eyes. I could see my own rumpled, anticipatory expression shining back at me in the translucent silver of his eyes. It was a good look for me. It was a better look on him.
He pulled open my door for me and I slid in, making sure to drag my fingers across the front of his jeans and the straining hardness that I knew was waiting for me there.
He got behind the wheel of the car and gave me a hot look out of the corner of his eye. “Did you see Honor?”
“Keelyn,” I corrected automatically. “Yeah, I saw her. She’s having a hard time with getting shot.”
“Anyone would.”
I nodded absently. “She’s looking to make some changes.”
“Nassir mentioned that she told him she was leaving. I didn’t think it was a serious threat. I didn’t think he would let her leave. He has women crawling all over him, but for some reason she’s the only one he treats like an actual human being. Typically he treats everyone like they are just a nuisance and a waste of his time.”
I fiddled absently with my hair as the graffiti-covered buildings and broken sidewalks flew by in a blur. If you squinted just right it was almost pretty, like abstract art. Almost.
“I don’t think he’ll know she’s gone until it’s too late. She knows he wouldn’t let her leave and she would let him convince her to stay. She needs to see what it’s like out there. She needs to see that nowhere is like the Point, and that isn’t always a good thing.”
He reached out a hand and settled it on my thigh. Again it was the normality, the simple gestures between us that were tearing me apart and making me crave more. I took my index finger and traced the heavy veins on the back of his hand around the clean bandage I had wrapped around it after our sexual acrobatics on the bed earlier. He was lucky the stitches hadn’t pulled open, as aggressive and handsy as he tended to get when he let loose.
“Is that what you figured out in WITSEC? The grass isn’t always greener?”
I gave a bitter laugh and rubbed my finger across his cut-up knuckles. “I had never even seen grass until WITSEC. I wasn’t one of those girls that chased boys on the Hill. I wasn’t trying to date outside my class. I had no desire to be some Point trash that got used and abused. I was always the one that was doing the using. I learned grass is hard to keep green and you need a lot of idle time and disposable income to even try and grow it. I’m not comfortable with either of those things, so I’ll take the concrete and the asphalt any day. You don’t have to keep it alive, you just have to hose it off.”
He let out a low whistle between his teeth and turned his head to look at me. His eyes were that oh so pretty blue that I could just stare at all day. Keelyn might want Denver for a breath of fresh air, mine was right there in those penetrating orbs.
“That’s a pretty bleak view on life, Reeve.”
I just shrugged. “It’s the way it is. I think it’s important to make the most of what you have. Before you know it, all of it can be gone and then all you’re left with is regret.”
“Are we talking about your sister?” His tone was soft but his fingers tightened on my leg.
“We could be, but we could be talking about anything really. Why did you leave Bax when you were younger, Titus? Was it because you wanted more instead of appreciating what you had? What did it leave you with? Regret that your brother fell in with a bad crowd? Regret you weren’t there for him? Is that why you’re saddled with the overwhelming desire to protect everyone innocent and unassuming, because you couldn’t do that for the person that mattered most? I’m not judging you; I’m just saying that not accepting where you’re from and how that shapes you isn’t good.”
He lifted his hand off my leg and I immediately felt the loss of his touch. His hands curled around the steering wheel until the knuckles turned white. I had struck a chord with him, but I wasn’t going to apologize. I had stopped apologizing for myself a long time ago.
“I know exactly where I come from and how that plays into who I am now. It was why I left in the first place.” He growled out the words in such a rough way I practically felt them scrape across my skin.
“And where is that? Where do you come from?” I knew the answer was more than the Point or the Hill, but I didn’t know if he was going to share it with me.
I held my breath to see what he would do, and felt crushing disappointment when he looked away from me and muttered, “That falls into the more category, Reeve.” Effectively shutting me down and out with minimal effort. I wished it didn’t feel like he was reaching inside of my chest and squeezing my heart with his fist every time he did it.
“It doesn’t matter to me, you know? I don’t care where you come from. I care about who you are now. I see it in you, Detective. I see the parts you try and lock away and keep hidden. The parts that make you wild and rough. I see them and I don’t care because they’re part of the entire package.”
That’s what I had been searching out when I fell prey to Conner. Someone that would see all the parts of me, all the things that made me who I was and love me anyways.
“You see too much.” He was gruff.
“Only because I’m looking.”
We hit an impasse and the rest of the ride passed in heavy silence. I thought when we got back to the condo we would each take a separate corner of the loft and take a time-out. The tension was thick and rolling between the two of us and I hated it.
Apparently Titus hated it too because before the front door was even closed behind us he had his hands all over me, his mouth over mine, and he was efficiently stripping both of us and headed toward the bed. It wasn’t talking. It wasn’t letting me in. It wasn’t giving me more, but it was something, and the so
mething it was felt so good, felt so right, I couldn’t stop him if I wanted to, which I absolutely didn’t.
Only an idiot would say no to those melted silver eyes, that talented mouth, those impatient and heavy hands, that body made to punish and please, and I was a lot of things, most of them pretty unpleasant, but an idiot wasn’t one of them.
Chapter 12
Titus
WHERE I WAS FROM was something I never wanted to talk about with anyone, ever. It had nothing to do with Reeve or the fact that letting her into that deep dark hole was going to cement me even more solidly to her. I might be a man that had a purpose now, but before I was just like every other punk kid running the streets, and I hated those memories. I hadn’t been handed a way out; I made my own, and the way I went about it still left a dirty taste in my mouth all these years later. I had as much bad blood circulating in my veins as Bax did, maybe even more when it came right down to it. It was that part of me that I fought every waking minute of every day to keep buried under honor and duty. That tainted blood, that nasty past, followed me, haunted me, which was why I never had any room in my life for the gray. The fog of the past was full of monsters that feasted on my soul, so I kept them locked in the dark. Usually they wallowed there, starved and angry, but ever since Reeve blasted her way through my fortress of protection they were climbing to the surface and demanding attention.
So far they seemed content to feed on her attention and her luscious body. They drank in the acceptance and understanding in her navy gaze like it was ambrosia, but I knew eventually she wouldn’t be enough to keep those animals at bay. My carefully constructed life was liable to fall victim to the wreckage they would cause if they escaped. That’s why I crawled out of bed every single morning before dawn and went to work, leaving her sprawled on the other side of the bed, naked and marked up from my teeth and hands. Every night she let me have her without complaint and every day I woke thinking she deserved better than what I was giving her. Two weeks that felt like forever while I climbed all over her and let her sink deeper and deeper inside of me. Her pretty skin had angry red marks from my face rubbing all over her, and instead of wincing in regret that I had damaged something so beautiful, messed up such perfection, I wanted to beat my chest with pride and declare myself the winner of the world’s greatest prize. It was a dangerous way to think because she wasn’t a prize, a trophy, and I had done nothing to win her, so I left her there every single morning and went hunting.
Better When He's Brave Page 17