Page 30 of Stripping Keys
Staring at him now while he communes with his brothers across the room, I wonder what I’m doing.
Why I’m even still here. Keys refused to give me the keys to my car, claiming he couldn’t trust that I wasn’t going to take off.Well, he’s right about that. I’m freaking out, and I wanted out of there as fast as possible. He wasn’t allowing me to do that. I was stuck here with him.
“What’s got you thinking so hard?”
I jerk at the sound of West’s voice. I tilt my head in his direction as he pulls a chair back and plops down in it next to me.
“Where have you been?” I ask, watching him closely, noticing something was different about him. There was a peace in his eyes that hadn’t ever been there before. “What’s up with you? Something seems different.” I don’t beat around the bush with West.
“Just something I hadn’t expected to happen.” West shrugs and darts his gaze away.
Narrowing my eyes, I take a better look at him, especially his neck.
Holy shit.
“Is that . . .”
My question falls off as someone joins us. That someone being the last person I ever expected, and that person dropped an arm across the back of West’s chair.
“Can we talk, Marla?” Marshall asks, acting like my big brother and not like I’m learning something huge here.
How has this . . .
I didn’t even know Marshall was . . .
Oh my . . .
This is just . . .
Okay, I’m freaking here, and honestly, I don’t have the right to ask him questions about his love life. Not when I’ve kept so much from him.
We’re just a bunch of fucked up siblings. Loving and wanting to protect each other but pushing one another away at the same time.
“Marla,” West calls, breaking through my mini freakout.
Blinking, I clear my throat and nod. “What do you want to talk about?”
Marshall looks to West, then back to me. “First things first,” he grunts, his expression more serious than I’ve ever seen it. “West and I are together. He’s mine. I’m his.”
“I didn’t even think you were gay.”
“Didn’t think I was either, but West is the only guy I’ve found I want. We’ve been fuckin’ for a while.”
“TMI, Marshall,” I snap and plug my ears. “I don’t want to hear about you fuckin’ anyone, let alone my best friend.”
West shakes his head and looks sheepish as he meets my gaze. “I didn’t want to keep it from you, but I didn’t know how to tell you either. I didn’t know what was going on.”
“And now you know?” I ask, furrowing my brows.
“I guess you could say that,” West confirms.
“No guessing about it,” Marshall growls, turning toward West. “Do we gotta go back to the room for me to prove that shit to you?”
Oh God, I so don’t need to deal with witnessing this.
“What’s going on over here?”
I nearly jump out of my skin at the sound of Keys’s gruff voice. I jerk my head in his direction to find him standing just over my shoulder. How had I not noticed him coming toward me, let alone get so close?
