“Fuck,” he muttered, and then he said it, the words I didn’t want to hear. “That shouldn’t have . . . that should never have happened.” His arm had loosened around my waist, no longer holding me against him, and his grip on my hair vanished, the strands slipping through his fingers as he pulled them away.
And when he took a step back, putting more distance between us, I knew I was done. With him, with all of it. I couldn’t do this anymore. This thing between us was eating me alive. He’d finally kissed me and now he was trying to take it back.
I was done.
“Ruby . . .”
“Please leave.”
His jaw ticked, then his gaze shuttered and he turned . . . and walked away.
CHAPTER FOUR
Neco
“Mom?” I walked in the front door, checking out the living room first.
I hated this house. Fucking loathed it with everything inside me. My mother refused to move. In the end, I’d bought it for her, after I’d offered to buy her something else, somewhere else, but she wouldn’t budge. I didn’t get it, didn’t think I ever would. This place was the backdrop to every ugly memory I had, the center of all the rage and humiliation and pain I’d felt as a kid growing up.
“Down here, baby,” she called.
Fuck, her voice already sounded slurred and it was only 10 a.m.
I walked down the hall to the small kitchen. It was the sunniest room in the place, always warm. I’d had it redone a year and a half ago, not that she really used it that much. I’d needed to wipe this place clean any way I could. So every room in this house had been painted, had new carpet put down, new furniture, curtains, the lot. It was the only way I could make myself walk through that front door and not tear the place apart with my bare hands.
She was sitting at the table, so damn small and pale. As a kid, I thought she looked like a fairy from one of the books she’d read me. She was so damn tiny, with those bright green eyes and all that wavy blond hair. At only five-foot-two, I towered over her, had done since I was twelve. I could only assume I got my height from the asshole who donated sperm to make me. Not that I knew who he was or where he came from. My mom had been stunning when she was younger, but now the evidence of her hard life lined her face. Her hair had some silver in it and the bright in her eyes had long since gone. She was still beautiful to me, though, always would be.
Her smile was wide and warm when she saw me. She tried to get up, but was too unsteady and sat back down.
“You hungry, Ma? How about I make us some breakfast?” She forgot to eat a lot. I had someone that delivered her evening meals, but she was supposed of take care of breakfast and lunch herself. I often got here to find she hadn’t touched the food in the fridge or eaten the dinners they’d bought her.
I walked around and dropped a kiss to the top of her head and she patted my cheek.
“I’m fine.” She took a sip of what looked like coffee, but was probably fifty percent vodka. We’d tried rehab more times than I could count. It never worked. She’d given up, on herself, on any kind of future to look forward to. So I did my best to make her life bearable, to keep her safe, to be there for her. “I was hoping you’d stop by today,” she said. “You haven’t been to see me in a while.”
I started pulling pans out to make bacon and eggs for us both. “I stopped by yesterday, Mom.”
“Did you?” She waved a hand, dismissing my words. “Anyway, I’ve missed you.”
“You know you can call me anytime, right? If you need something, or you just want to check in, use the phone I got you.”
She took a sip of her drink. “It won’t work. I think I broke it.”
I grabbed eggs and bacon from the fridge, taking her mug away from her as I passed, and poured her a fresh drink, minus the vodka. I put it down in front of her, then opened the junk drawer. Sure enough, the phone was in there. I pulled it along with the charger out, plugged it in, and carried on cooking. “It’s not broken. You gotta remember to charge the battery.”
She grinned a self-deprecating grin. “I’m such an idiot. You must think I’m so stupid.”
I fucking hated it when she talked about herself like that, but she’d had those ugly words hammered into her as a kid, then by the Johns that had used her for her body, and now she believed it. “You’re not stupid. I’ll get Joan to remind you when she brings dinner from now on, so you won’t forget.”
“Okay, baby.”
She hummed to herself while I cooked. If she wasn’t talking, she was humming or singing. It was a way to drown out the noise, the memories, she’d told me once.
If my minds quiet, it creeps in, the bad stuff, the memories. Music keeps them out.
She was a child abuse survivor, had been used and hurt in so many ways, ways I couldn’t even imagine, but she’d never let what she’d been through in her life destroy her beautiful heart. I don’t know how she did it, how she got through that shit, but my mother had shown me nothing but love growing up, even when the ghosts haunting her had threatened to break her completely. To some, what I’d grown up in . . . well, let’s just say, Celeste Malik wouldn’t have gotten any Mother of the Year trophies, but she’d done the only thing she knew how to do. Survive. The frail woman sitting at that kitchen table was my fucking hero. And as soon as I’d gotten old enough, I’d promised to take care of her like she had me. I would have robbed, fought . . . killed, to get her off the streets.
I had.
The memory of that day, when I could finally do that for her, was as clear in my mind as if it was yesterday.
I shoved the door open and went for the guy my mom was leading to her bedroom, one of her regulars. Grabbing him by the back of the shirt, I swung him back, shoved him against the wall, and plowed my fist into his gut.
He gasped then dry heaved.
“Don’t ever come back here,” I snarled in his face.
My mom rushed over. “What are you doing? Let him go.”
I ignored her and dragged the guy from our house, throwing him on his ass, out on the lawn. “If I see you here again, I’ll put a bullet in your skull.” Then I slammed the door shut and turned to my mother.
She stood there, small frame shaking. “Why did you do that? . . . Oh God, we needed the money, Neco . . .” She hugged herself. “We needed that money . . .”
I pulled a wad of cash from my pocket and placed it in her hand. “No more, Mom.” I said, shaking my head. “You don’t need to do it anymore.”
She grabbed my hands, gasping at the sight of my busted to fuck knuckles. “What did you do?”
I kissed her cheek and pulled her in for a hug. “It’s going to be all right now, Mom. I promise. I promise I’ll take care of you.”
I’d done my first job for Tomas that day, a local thug who’d started his criminal empire on our shitty streets. I’d been fifteen years old.
I’d do it again, for her, for anyone I loved, in a heartbeat.
We ate and talked, like always. I kept it light. She liked to hear about Hunter and his woman Lulu. Their son Josh. Hunter had spent a lot of time here when we were kids and she liked to know how the guys I’d grown up with were doing. It made her happy to know they were doing good. “What about you?” she said, head tilted to the side, her green eyes looking suddenly alert and clear.
“Hmm?” I shoved another mouthful of egg in my mouth.
A grin tugged the corner of her mouth. “You got yourself a girl?”
I shook my head. “I’ve got no time for a woman.”
“You need to make time. You’ve grown into such a handsome man. And you’re such a sweetheart. I bet there are lots of girls that would love you to ask them out.”
I chuckled. “I’m not really a dating kind of guy.”
She smirked and I loved it. Loved to see her happy like this, joking around. “Nothing’s changed I see.” She patted me on the cheek. “I mean look at that face. You’re so damn cute. Too cute to be a heart breaker.”
“Come on, M
a, cut it out.”
She smiled and shook her head. “You need to find a girl, like Hunter did. A nice girl, with a lot of backbone, one that can keep you in line and will give me lots of grand-babies.”
Ruby instantly entered my head and I mentally shook myself. “Don’t think there’s a woman out there capable of keeping me in line.”
She laughed. “Of course there is.”
I knew one that could have me on my fucking knees if that’s where she wanted me. Shit, if she asked me to get her the moon, I’d boost a goddamn space shuttle to get it, just to see her smile.
Jesus Christ.
I put down my knife and fork and started cleaning up.
My mom’s chair scraped. “I can do that.”
“You stay there. I’ve got it.”
She started humming again, her eyes glazing over once more, the moment of clarity gone.
Shit. I kissed her cheek and got to work.
I still hadn’t allowed myself to think about the other night in great detail. If I did, I might go to Ruby and claim that perfect fucking mouth one more time. Seeing her rush into that house . . . shit. Anything could have happened. That fucker I’d gone after was up on attempted rape charges. He’d already served time for the same crime a few years back. The guy needed a bullet through the head, not release on bail. Just having Ruby in the same room as him had been enough to send me over the edge. It was either force myself to remain calm or lose my shit completely. But in the end, the urge to stake some kind of claim over her, to prove she was mine and if anyone touched her—fuck, looked at her—I would end their miserable lives, had been almost more than I could resist.
I should never have followed her up to her place.
Christ. I never should have kissed her.
Because now I knew, what it felt like to have her tight little body squirming against mine, the sounds she made when I slid my tongue deeper. It beat my fantasies and then some.
I wanted more of her, but that couldn’t happen. If I gave into it, this thing between us, eventually she’d see what a truly dark bastard I was, the anger inside me that I could barely contain, and she’d leave. She’d have every right to.
I’d sworn to protect her when we were kids, and that also meant from me.
So, I’d walked away from her.
Jesus, the way she’d looked at me when she realized that cop had given me her number. Yeah, I’d taken it, but I hadn’t planned to use it. Another thing I didn’t want to analyze too closely. Lately, casual hook-ups weren’t doing it for me. Maybe that was my problem, why Ruby was never out of my damn mind. I needed to fuck. I needed to screw someone else, anyone else, until I’d pounded and sweated Ruby’s face right out of my damn head.
Being celibate for a woman who I would never allow myself to have was fucked up.
I turned and looked at my mother. She was staring out the window, humming one of her favorite Keith Urban songs, and my gut knotted.
My mom hadn’t always been like this. But we’d hit hard times, and everything had fallen to shit. Rent was due and we had no money. Our landlord gave her a choice, give him the money, or pay on her back. My mom would have done anything to keep me safe, to keep us off the streets. I remembered that night vividly, like a fucking horror movie. That’s how it all started, the moment that sent her on a downward spiral, had set the nightmare of her childhood, that she’d managed to keep locked down, free. She started drinking not long after that.
Once she’d been carefree. She’d laughed all the time, had been a little wild, but there’d been this innocence about her, something that just seemed to draw people.
Hope. She’d had this unwavering sense of hope and excitement that had been infectious.
A lot like Ruby.
Then men just like me, with blackened hearts and marks on their souls, had used her and treated her like garbage. Men that had done unforgivable things. Men that weren’t worthy of even looking at her let alone putting their filthy hands on her.
My mom stopped humming and climbed to her feet, this time a little steadier after food and a coffee. Shuffling over to the counter, she picked up a yellow container that had pink flowers on it, and walked over, handing it to me.
“Take this, baby.”
I knew who it belonged to instantly.
My mom’s eyes lit up. “Give it back to my girl, would you? She brought me some of those brownies with the nuts and chunks of chocolate I like so much.” She patted my arm. “She’s such a sweetheart.”
Her girl.
Ruby.
She’d called Ruby that since she was six years old.
“She do that often, Mom?”
“Oh yeah, all the time, you know that.”
I knew she used to, but I hadn’t asked Ruby lately if she’d been by, and she hadn’t offered up the information. Ruby did a lot of shit like that. She cared about people; most importantly, she cared about my mother. Ruby showed tolerance and affection to a woman who had been known in this street as a whore, who drank at least a bottle of vodka a day. Had never once judged her for it.
She’d been there for me during the toughest time of my life. I knew Ruby thought I’d saved her back then. But she’d saved me, too. I don’t know what I would have done without her in my life. Giving me something else to fight for when things had felt so hopeless.
Ruby had a soft heart. A kind one.
And I refused to break it, to taint it. And that’s exactly what would happen if we ever gave into the banked fire between us.
* * *
Ruby
“You want another drink?” Scott yelled in my ear over the music.
I shook my head. “I’m good. I’m not here to drink. I just wanna dance.” God, Scott looked more tweaked than usual tonight. I usually avoided him when he was like this, but he’d tagged along with me when I told him I was going out. I was usually pretty good at coming up with excuses to ditch him, but I was seriously off my game at the moment—and I knew exactly who was to blame.
One kiss and my life had changed, just not in the way I’d imagined it would.
Harry, who I occasionally moonlighted for, had been trying to get me to come and work for him for a while. He needed a female agent and we worked well together.
I’d called and accepted the offer ten minutes after Neco walked away, leaving me standing outside my apartment door, lips still tingling. Dazed, confused, and then pissed the hell off.
Hunter and Van hadn’t been happy about my leaving, or the fact my resignation was effective immediately. I’d offered to come in after hours and keep on top of things for them for a few weeks until they found someone else, but they let me off the hook, and I got the feeling they had an idea who was behind me finally taking the leap and going after what I wanted. I hated doing that to them, they were my friends first, but it was time I did something for myself. Went after what I wanted, needed.
I loved Neco, I always would, and I knew he would always be a part of my life in some way, but I had to do this for me.
I had to stop letting him dictate my future, no matter how well meaning he was.
“You sure? A few drinks won’t hurt,” Scott said close to my ear.
“I’m sure,” I said, putting a few steps between us.
Scott nodded, then his eyes were darting around the club again. Paranoid as hell. The guy was acting weirder then usual lately, clingy, too, which I didn’t get. Yeah, he tried it on whenever possible, but I’d made it clear I would never go there with him ever again. One drunk, lonely night had been more than enough. I hoped like hell this wasn’t another attempt to lure me back in the sack.
I inwardly winced.
Neco hated Scott. With a passion. And thank fucking goodness, didn’t know about my alcohol-induced mistake with my roommate. He already thought I was an irresponsible idiot; he didn’t need any more evidence on that front. But despite occasionally using Scott to try and make Neco jealous, which was dumb and immature and had been unsuccessful anyway, I had no id
ea why he loathed my sleazy roommate as much as he did.
Maybe I’d just answered my own question?
The guy was a sleaze. None of my friends would stop by if Scott were there. Neco thought of me as a little sister . . . well, that’s what I’d thought until last night. Now I didn’t know what he was thinking, and honestly, I was done trying to work out where his head was at, and I was done calling him all the time, relying on him for everything. Playing games. Every time I pulled that shit, not only had I pushed him farther from me, I proved him right, that I was not cut out to be an agent, that I couldn’t take care of myself. I’d been stuck in a self-destructive cycle that I hadn’t known how to stop. There was no rehab or AA meeting for someone stupid in love.
Or maybe just stupid.
That was over now, though. I didn’t know what that kiss was about, but his words—that should never have happened—had echoed through my head all night, making me feel nauseous. One thing I did know for sure, he was protective. If nothing else, I was family. He took care of family.
I looked over at Scott. My roommate wasn’t all bad. He paid the rent on time, hadn’t skipped out on me like my previous roommate. No, I had no idea where he got his money, since he was more often than not “in between jobs,” but I didn’t really care. He never invited his friends over, and the worst thing he did was watch porn. What guy didn’t watch porn? Hell, I watched porn occasionally. I was willing to put up with him for the guarantee of a roof over my head.
“Come on then.” He grabbed my hand and dragged me through the crowd toward the dance floor.
I let him. I didn’t want to dance alone, didn’t want to be alone. Even if the person keeping me company was Scott. The music was good, just what I needed to keep my mind off my latest drama with Neco. I shoved Neco, and the King Agency, out of my head and focused on the music, of letting it wash away the awful feeling in the pit of my stomach. I was supposed to be celebrating. I had a new job, the job of my dreams. I was going after what I wanted and no one was going to hold me back.
I don’t know how long we danced. It had to be hours. I’d relented and had two maybe three shots, so was feeling pretty good, but Scott kept leaving to go to the bathroom and every time he came back he looked more wild-eyed, his behavior more erratic, his paranoia increasing.
Broken Rebel: A Lawless Kings Novel Page 4