“Do you have any really scary movies we could watch while we wait?” Sean suddenly asked. “Like ‘The Exorcist?’”
She chewed thoughtfully. “I don’t think so. I have ‘Rosemary’s Baby,’ but all my movies are boxed up. Check Netflix or HBO.”
He handed her the bowl and crossed the room to the hutch that contained the TV. “Where’s the remote? He searched carefully around the television. “It’s not here.”
“I dunno. Maybe it fell behind the set.”
He braced his hands on the TV and peered into the hutch behind it. “Nope.”
She shrugged and unwrapped another candy bar. “We probably packed it. Come sit down and we’ll figure out something to do.”
“Maybe we kicked it under here when we were packing,” he said. He crouched down and swept his hand into the two-inch space beneath the hutch.
“It’s not that important.” She patted the couch. “Come sit by me.”
“Something’s under there. Feels like an index card, maybe?” He grimaced and lay down on the floor. “It’s right at the tip of my fingers…”
Ruby took a bite of the candy bar. “Whatever it is, it’s probably been under there since I moved in.”
Sean stretched out on the floor. “…Almost got it.”
“It doesn’t matter. We’re moving it tomorrow anyway.” She leaned forward and reached for him. “Come cuddle with me again. I’m gettin’ chilly.”
“I will. I got it,” he declared, as he triumphantly drew his hand out, holding an upside-down photo. Ruby froze when he turned it over. It was her stolen picture of him naked in a hot spring with his ex-wife. It must have gotten kicked underneath the bookcase the night Jeremy beat her up. She thought he’d destroyed it. Too bad she hadn’t done a more thorough search.
She grabbed for it as his face changed from puzzlement to anger. “Where’d you get this?” he asked, swinging it out of her reach.
She felt like someone was squeezing her chest in a vise. “Sean, listen—”
He rose to his feet and faced her. “I said, where the fuck did you get this? Why do you have this picture?”
She reached for the photo again, but he snatched it away. “I asked you a question!”
Her eyes filled with tears as she tried desperately to think of a story. “I don’t—”
“This picture was in a box in my room. That’s the only place you could have gotten it, and this is the only copy of this shot. I can’t believe this! You actually rifled through my belongings without asking and took a very private picture of me and my wife!”
His wife? Didn’t he mean ex-wife? She tried to touch his arm, but he stepped away, and she let her hand drop uselessly to her side.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Please let me explain.”
“How can you possibly explain this? And when did you swipe it?”
Ruby started to cry in earnest. “Please. Let me tell you what happened!”
He sank down on the couch, glowering at her. “I’m listening.”
“The night Jeremy beat me up, you left me at your house to go watch Danny. Remember?”
He just threw her a look that said, “Get to the point.” She continued. “I was left alone in your house, and I was cold. I went into your closet to borrow a jacket. I didn’t think you’d mind, and I saw this big milk crate full of pictures. I remember this next part so clearly. I squealed, “Pictures!” and got it out without giving it another thought. It didn’t even occur to me that you’d mind my looking through them.”
“It’s not the looking that bothers me. It’s the stealing.”
“I didn’t steal anything!” Ruby said, as an explanation finally occurred to her.
At his look of exasperation she insisted, “I didn’t! I spent a half hour looking through pictures of you and your family, and when I came to that one in your hand, it caught my attention because you were naked, and beautiful.” Which was the truth.
He glanced at the picture, blushed, and turned it face down in his lap. She continued, “Anyway, I put it aside so I could look at it more carefully when I was done with the rest—”
She saw he was about to protest and put up her hand. “Mind you, this was before we started sexting. Don’t try and tell me you wouldn’t gaze at a nude picture of me pretty closely.”
His mouth twitched. “Yeah, I guess,” he admitted, and she relaxed. It would be okay.
“Then you came home. I was afraid you’d think I was snooping so I threw all the pictures back and put the box away. When I heard you on the stairs, I saw that I’d accidentally left that picture out and I didn’t have time to put it back, and I panicked and…I stuck it down my shirt.”
“What?”
“And then I didn’t know what to do. I went to the bathroom to plant it there, but I realized it was a naked picture, and you lived with your parents, and that meant I had to put it back exactly where I’d found it.”
“And then I got my period and I had to leave, and I figured I’d just take the picture home and sneak it back into the box later on.” She looked at him and he was shaking his head.
“One problem. That was three weeks ago. Why haven’t you put it back since then?”
“Because I was carrying it when I came home to find Jeremy in my house. He knocked it out of my hand and beat me up. When I looked for it the next day, I couldn’t find it, and I figured Jeremy destroyed it. But I guess, it must have gotten pushed under the bookcase in our struggle.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I was embarrassed. I wanted to tell you, I felt so guilty, but I was afraid of your reaction. I’m sorry.”
He cocked his head. “I suppose it’s okay. It sounds pretty funny, actually.”
Ruby’s knees buckled and she sat down on the edge of her coffee table. “I’m so glad you’re not angry. I feel awful. Can you forgive me?”
“Of course.” He stood and put the picture in his back pocket, before pulling her to her feet and hugging her. “You don’t have to be afraid to tell me anything. I wouldn’t have been angry. My pictures aren’t a secret.” He chuckled. “I can’t believe you snuck it out in your shirt! You’re such a goofball.”
“That’s me. A regular laugh riot.”
He ran his finger down her nose. “Any more skeletons hidden in that closet of yours?”
She arched her brow. “What else could there be?”
“I want a policy of total honesty between us from now on. Okay?”
Ruby closed her eyes and nodded. “Of course. That’s the way I like things. Honesty’s the best policy.”
She hugged him. He’d said “I love you” for the first time today, and they’d had their first fight. She needed to get her Sean scrapbook from her safety deposit box and write all this down.
This was too big a day to forget.
CHAPTER 41
Ruby watched the trooper making his way towards her car. “I don’t frigging believe this!” she said. He’d left his flashing lights on, and they lit up the night, putting them on display.
“Just calm down,” Sean said from the passenger seat. “You don’t even know why he stopped you. Maybe you just have a broken tail-light.”
“I better, because I wasn’t speeding. You saw me set the cruise control. You know!”
“Ruby, be calm,” Sean whispered.
“We’re gonna miss the previews. This is bullshit!” Ruby said as the trooper appeared at her window. She scowled at him. “What’s this all about?”
His face was in shadow. “Ma’am, the reason I’ve stopped you is because this is a posted sixty mile per hour zone, and my radar clocked you at seventy-seven miles per hour. May I see your license and registration please?”
“No. I wasn’t speeding. I set the cruise control for sixty before we left Kamata, so I couldn’t have been.”
“I need to see your license and registration.”
“Didn’t you hear me? I wasn’t speeding! How can you speed with the cruise control set? It�
��s impossible.”
“Just give it to him,” Sean muttered.
“I’m going to ask you one last time for your license and registration.”
Ruby gritted her teeth, turned the dome light on, and dug through her purse for her wallet. She took her license out but didn’t hand it to him. “This is totally unfair,” she said, near tears. “I don’t think I should have to—”
“Ruby! Just do it!”
“But I didn’t do anything wrong.” She turned to the trooper and said, “And we don’t have time for this. You’re going to make us miss our movie.”
“Right?” she said, turning towards Sean, hoping he’d back her up. His mouth was agape.
“I need you to step out of your vehicle.”
Ruby’s head shot up. “What?”
“Ma’am, step out of the—”
“Are you arresting me?”.
The trooper slammed his hands on her open car window and leaned in towards her. “I said ‘step out of your car!’ Now!”
Perhaps she’d gone too far. “No. Here, you can have it. See? Here’s my license and…” She reached over, opened her glove box, and rifled through it. She grabbed a paper and said, “…It’s a rental. Here’s its registration. Okay?”
She sat back and shoved them both out the window towards him.
He didn’t reach for them. Ruby smiled ingratiatingly. “Here you go,” she repeated, thrusting them at him again.
Finally, he snatched them from her, turned sharply on his heel, and marched back towards his patrol car. He reached in and grabbed the handset for his radio. She turned and Sean was shaking his head in disbelief. She turned off the light.
“I can’t believe you did that!” he said. It was too dark in the car to read his expression, but she could hear the censure in his voice.
“Oh, you know I wasn’t speeding. And even if I was, I certainly wasn’t going seventy-seven. There’s just no way.”
“He said he clocked you on radar.”
“He’s probably lying. Betcha I’m part of his end of the month quota. It’s the thirty-first.”
“If you’d been civil, you might be getting a warning right now instead of a ticket.”
Dammit. This was going to ruin her perfect driving record.
They sat in silence until the trooper finally came back. “Ma’am, this is a citation for speeding which states you were doing seventy-seven in a posted sixty mile an hour zone. Please sign here.” He handed her a pen, and Ruby turned the light back on and gazed resentfully at the ticket. What would he do to her if she refused to sign? …Probably just arrest her.
She signed quickly. “Is your name on here anywhere?” She heard Sean gasp, but she didn’t stop. “Or your badge number?”
“It’s at the bottom,” the trooper said. She shoved the ticket at him. “I still don’t agree I was speeding. It’s really just your word against mine.”
He handed her the ticket and her license and registration. “Either pay the fine, go to traffic school, or appear in court to contest it. Drive safely now.” He started to walk away, turned, smirked, and said, “Oh, and Happy Halloween.”
Ruby scowled and said loudly, “Fucker.” She scanned the ticket. “What a waste. Can you believe this?” She finally found his scrawled signature down at the bottom of the ticket. It looked like Brian Davis. “…Should’ve gotten his badge number…”
“Forget about it. Let’s just go,” Sean said. “We can still make the movie if we hurry.” He waited a beat and grinned. “But don’t speed.”
“I wasn’t speeding!” she wailed, before realizing he was teasing her. She smiled in spite of herself. “Thank you so very much for your support.”
“Don’t mention it.”
She started the car and handed him her ticket and the registration. “Will you put these back in the glove box for me please?”
He took them. She was putting her license back in her wallet when the hairs suddenly stood up on the back of her neck. She shivered. “A goose just walked over my grave,” she murmured, reaching up to turn off the dome light.
Before she flicked the switch, she noticed Sean peering into her glove box with a shocked expression on his face. The air fairly crackled with tension.
“Sean? Baby? You okay?”
He reached his hand into the glove box and pulled out her radio she’d used to bug his house.
Fuck! She’d forgotten that was in there. She struggled to keep her expression neutral. She should’ve tossed that thing the minute she realized someone had found the other one, but she’d grown complacent. How could she explain this? She needed to say something quick.
She turned the light off and concentrated on merging back onto the highway. “I said, ‘Is something wrong?’”
“What the hell is this?”
Ruby forced herself to sound unconcerned. “It’s a radio. What’d you think it was?”
“It’s a sophisticated walkie talkie, actually,” Sean said. “Where’s the other one?”
Could she say she’d bought only one? No. That would be like buying only one glove or one shoe. No one did that. Maybe she’d lost the other one?
“No answer huh? Well, I think I know. It was underneath my couch with its button taped down until a week ago,” Sean said.
She was glad it was dark in the car. “What are you talking about?”
“I found another one of those under my couch. The pair to this one. What’d you do? Sit around listening to our conversations? How could you invade our privacy like that?”
Ruby wiped tears away quickly with the heel of her hand.
They were almost to Calua. She pulled onto the side of the highway again and stopped. She couldn’t think of a thing to say, even though her entire future was on the line.
“Well?”
“Please stop attacking me.” Ruby bowed her head and rested it on the steering wheel.
“What’d you bug my house for? Are you crazy?” Sean hurled the radio to the floor.
Ruby felt his words like a slap to her face. Crazy? “Baby, this is just a horrible coincidence. I’m sorry if someone bugged your house, but it wasn’t me. The other radio belongs to Hilary. When I first moved back here, Hilary and I went on this big trip to San Francisco to visit our friend Sar—, Samantha. We took separate cars and her husband insisted we buy these radios as a safety precaution. To be fair, they’re really common. Millions of people probably own them.”
Sean looked undecided, and Ruby realized he desperately wanted to believe her. Good.
“SarSamantha. Mmmhmmm. That’s what cell phones are for. I’m not stupid, Ruby.”
“This was…early September?. Hilary had an unreliable cell phone until, like, last week.” At his look Ruby put her hand on his arm. “What kind of a person do you think I am?”
“I thought I knew, but I don’t know you at all.”
“Baby,” she said, gripping his arm harder. “I’m the same person—”
“All this time,” Sean interrupted, voice shaking, “When I thought I was being stalked, it was you doing it. Right? I mean it all fits…the cartoon of yours where Shelby was stalking Donovan…especially the timing.” He unhooked her fingers from his arm and moved out of her reach.
“You’re just upset. This is me, Ruby! I wouldn’t do this. We love each other. This is a terrible mistake.”
“My mistake was trusting you.”
She sniffled and he said, “You even lied about that picture, right? How many other things have you stolen from me?”
“Nothing! Why won’t you believe me?”
“The reason I keep my social media accounts locked down, the reason I still pick up my mail at Millie’s instead of changing my address with the post office, is because I was stalked back when I was in college, and it changed me. And I was being stalked again, before we hooked up. And then it suddenly stopped after we started dating.” He looked her in the eye. “And you lived up here both times.”
“What?” she sputtered. �
��So did thousands of other people, too!”
She bowed her head and began sobbing in defeat. He kept his face turned away. “Let’s go. It’s not safe stopped on the side of the highway like this,” he said.
Ruby wiped her face on her shirt and started the car. As she waited for a break in the traffic, she said tentatively, “I don’t think we should go on to the movies. We need to talk. We need to sort things out between us. After all, tomorrow we’ll be roomies—”
Sean let out a short bark of laughter. “We’re not going anywhere together. As soon as you stop this car, I’m calling an Uber. There’s no way I’d move in with you now. It’s over, Ruby.”
Ruby sucked in her breath as all her dreams crumbled at her feet. This couldn’t be happening! “But what about our house? I’ve already paid the security deposit and first and last month’s rent! I have to be out of my old place tomorrow! You can’t do this!”
“Find a new roommate.”
“Baby, please! You gotta listen to me! Call Hilary! She’ll back up my story.”
He gazed at her with disdain. “Okay. Let’s call her right now.” He surprised her by pulling his cell phone out of his jacket and turning it on. “What’s her number?”
She needed to talk to Hilary before they spoke. Would Hilary automatically back up her story? No. She’d kind of ignored Hilary since she’d gotten with Sean. In fact, Tom had been back for a while, and she hadn’t even called.
And after the Curtis McKnight incident, Hilary thought she knew what Ruby was capable of.
“Her husband just got home from fishing, and they’re on vacation in Hawaii. They won’t be back for three more days, so you can’t talk to her now. But you can call her as soon as they get back,” Ruby said. Three days would give her plenty of time to work on Hilary. She’d pull out all the stops.
He turned his phone off with a vicious flick of his thumb. “I was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, I called your bluff. You lose.”
They’d reached the outskirts of Calua. Sean pointed to a gas station on the right. “Just drop me there.”
Instead, she jammed her foot down on the gas pedal and sped up. “No! Don’t let your anger make you do something you’ll regret. I’m gonna get turned around. I’ll take you home. Or you can come to my house and I’ll make tacos and we can hash this thing out.”
Drawn To You: A Psychological thriller Page 39