Better When He's Brave

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.