Ruth’s heart stuttered. She bit her lip.
“Tell me no, Ruth.” His fingers slid back and forth, over the inside of her wrist. “Or tell me yes. I need to know I’m not losing it.”
“I can’t do that.” She hadn’t realised the words were true until they came out of her mouth.
“You can’t say yes?” His fingers stopped.
“I can’t say yes. I can’t say no, either.”
He swallowed. Hard. “You’re not afraid of me. Are you?”
“No.” She’d never been less afraid of a man in her life. “I just…” She took a deep, shuddering breath. “I can’t give you permission to fuck me over.”
He smiled slightly. “That’s not exactly what I want to do.”
“But you will,” she said sharply. Was this really what she thought?
Yes.
“You will, and when you do, at least I’ll know I never gave you permission.”
He stared. She’d really fucked things up now, she realised; all the ways she was damaged had been neatly exposed in the space of five seconds, and he’d wish he’d never made her that bloody shepherd’s pie.
Then he said, “I can’t tell you I’ll never hurt you. I don’t make promises I can’t keep.”
Even though she’d known it was coming, it hurt. It hurt like the time she’d sketched her favourite teacher and the teacher had crumpled the paper and thrown it in the bin because she was supposed to be doing fractions, except this time the paper was possibly, maybe her heart. Or something.
Evan grasped her hand firmly in his, drawing her attention back to him. “But I can promise,” he continued, “that I will always treat you as you deserve to be treated. That I will always respect you. That I won’t lie to you or betray your trust. I try not to say never, but I will say this: hurting you is something I would never choose to do. I swear.”
She felt unwelcome prickles beneath her eyelids, threatening tears. How embarrassing. She hadn’t cried in years, and she certainly wouldn’t now.
“I also know,” he said, “that I can’t make you believe me. I have to show you. I’m okay with that. But Ruth, you need to know that I won’t take this any further until you tell me what you want.”
“You’re impossible,” she muttered.
“No,” he said. “It’s just, I want to do things with you. Not to you. There’s a difference.”
“Believe me,” she muttered, “I know.” And then, from the flash of concern in his eyes, she realised she’d said too much again.
His voice carefully calm—maybe too calm—he asked, “What do you mean by that?”
Ruth shrugged, her tongue feeling thick in her mouth. But he waited patiently for her to find the right words, and she didn’t feel the pressure to speak that so often kept her silent.
Finally, she said, “I was with a guy. Kind of. Before. And once I agreed to be with him, I suppose that meant, in his mind, that I always agreed.”
Evan’s jaw tightened. “You mean—”
“I mean, he didn’t really care if I said yes. Most people don’t care about yes. A few more people care about no.” She shrugged. “So I have this new thing where, if I want someone to leave me alone, I bite their dick off.”
It was a joke. Evan didn’t laugh. She didn’t laugh either.
If she’d ever felt like she could actually do that—like she could fight someone off—maybe it would’ve been funny. Lighthearted. Even empowering. But she hadn’t.
She hadn’t even felt like she could scream, because, really, wouldn’t that be so dramatic? Wouldn’t she be attention-seeking, or causing problems? People said it all the time; if you’re in bed with a man, you’ve already said yes.
But she knew that Evan didn’t think like that. Evan didn’t think like that, and honestly, neither did she.
After a tense second, he spoke. “If I killed this guy you were... kind of with, would you come and visit me in prison?”
She bit down on her smile, but it spread anyway. “That’s funny.”
“I’m not joking, love.”
Ruth forced herself to roll her eyes, because it was easy and familiar and something other than crying. Why on earth was she so close to crying?
Pulling her hand from his, she said, “I should go.”
And he said again, “Should you?”
Ruth took a breath. “Um… yes. Definitely yes.”
This time, he didn’t stop her. But he did say, steady as always, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Was she grateful or terrified?
Chapter Nineteen
The next day was painfully boring. Evan ploughed through his workload with the dull determination of a farm animal, only pausing to thank God that Daniel Burne was mysteriously absent.
As soon as the clock struck five, he was gone. Evan didn’t drive to work, because he never used a car when his legs would do—but today, he wished he had. It would be so much faster to drive home.
When Evan finally reached his little block of flats, he was sweaty from work, dog-tired, and all he wanted to do was see Ruth.
He should’ve gone to his own door, let himself in, and calmed down. Showered.
Instead, he went straight to 1A and knocked. Twice slow, three times fast. He couldn’t remember when he’d developed his own weird knock especially for Ruth. He just knew that she felt better about answering when she knew exactly who was there.
As evidenced by the speed with which her front door opened.
He smiled automatically—but then he faltered. Because the girl standing in the doorway wasn’t Ruth.
She had Ruth’s dark skin and diminutive height, but her curves were clad in denim jeans and a perfectly respectable, form-fitting blouse. She had Ruth’s dense, crinkled hair, but it was held back with cute golden barrettes.
Ruth would rather die than use barrettes.
He looked down at the stranger with Ruth’s face and scowled when he noticed her front teeth. Even they were the same; too big for her mouth, slightly too prominent.
His mind thought, almost feverishly, that no-one else should look like Ruth.
“Who are you?” He demanded, as if it wasn’t obvious.
The girl looked him up and down, slowly. Her dark eyes lingered critically over his sweaty brow and worn-out clothes, the tattoos on his arms. Then she met his gaze and said, “I’m Hannah Kabbah. And you’re Evan Miller. Elm block, 1A. Blacksmith at Burne & Co. Making my little sister act weird as fuck. We need to talk.”
When she spoke, her resemblance to Ruth disappeared. Her voice, the subtle expression in her every movement, the sharp focus in her eyes—it was all wrong. She didn’t smell like Ruth either; no chocolate and coconut here. She turned on that dead-eyed look like Ruth, but she wasn’t quite as good at it. Beneath her glower he could see concern, apprehension, things he hadn’t seen in Ruth until he’d gotten to know her.
Evan tried his best to sound patient and friendly. It was difficult, since he’d been waiting all day to set eyes on one woman, and this near-imitation felt like some kind of cosmic joke. “I’m happy to talk to you. But I came to see your sister.”
“I’m sure you did,” said Hannah Kabbah. “But she’s unavailable at present.”
Worry spiked. “Is she okay? Did she hurt herself?” Truthfully, it was only a matter of time before an enormous stack of comics collapsed on top of her.
Hannah’s flinty gaze softened slightly. “She’s—”
Then Ruth’s voice interrupted, grumpy as fuck and almost angelic to Evan’s ears. “Hannah! Is it the plumber?”
Hannah’s jaw set. He knew why. If she said no, Ruth would want to know who it was. If she said yes, Ruth would expect said plumber to appear.
“Need a hand?” He asked.
She rolled her eyes and shrugged. It was such a Ruth sort of gesture that he found himself feeling fond of a woman he didn’t know.
“I can take a look,” he said. “If you let me in.”
“What do you know about
plumbing?”
“A fair bit.” It wasn’t exactly a lie, because it wasn’t a very specific answer.
Before Hannah could respond, Ruth appeared. As soon as she saw him, her face lit up.
She hid it, of course, almost instantly—but not fast enough. He saw the beginnings of a smile, saw her eyes dance, for the split-second before she locked her emotions away.
“Evan,” she said, her voice carefully neutral.
Even though he’d planned to play it cool, even though Hannah’s eyes were boring into him like twin drills, he grinned. “What the hell are you wearing?”
She smiled back reluctantly, shrugging beneath the enormous, green thing she was swathed in. “A towel. More effectively than you do, I might add.”
Between them, Hannah made a strangled sort of choking noise.
Ruth’s smile faded. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice suddenly formal, “but whatever you need—”
“I don’t need anything.”
“Whatever you need,” she repeated firmly, “will have to wait a while. I’m all tied up, as you can see.” Ruth cast a significant glance at her sister. Evan’s heart swelled, because he could tell that Ruth thought she was being extremely subtle. Her weighted tone and speaking looks actually had all the subtlety of a dying hippopotamus. She was, in a word, adorable.
“If you’re having plumbing trouble,” he said, taking in her damp hair, “I could take a look.”
Ruth wavered. She grimaced. Then she said, “The shower spit something vile at me. I really need a wash.”
“Use mine,” he said automatically.
Hannah made yet another garbled sound and sagged against the doorframe. She appeared to be having some sort of aneurysm. He ignored her.
“Oh, I couldn’t,” Ruth murmured.
“Yes, you could. Use mine, and I’ll look at your shower until the plumber gets here. I might be able to help.”
After a long, long pause, and a flurry of hilariously obvious eye contact between the sisters, Ruth said, “Okay.”
Hannah said, “Ruth, love—”
And Evan said, “That’s settled.”
Hannah Kabbah’s constant hovering reminded Evan, strangely, of his mother.
She loomed in the doorway while he took a look at Ruth’s shower. Judging by the brown sludge gathering at the plughole, Ruth hadn’t been joking when she said it spat something vile. He was glad to know, thanks to the clunking of his own pipes through the wall, that she was having a long, hot shower right now.
Hannah cleared her throat for the third time in the last thirty seconds, and Evan stifled a sigh. He’d done his best, but he simply hadn’t been raised to ignore a woman.
Turning to look at Hannah’s oddly familiar face, he said, “Everything okay?”
She looked as if she’d been waiting, just waiting, for him to ask.
Straightening her spine, glaring down at him as a goddess might glare down on unworthy mortals, she said, “What are your intentions with my sister?”
Evan smiled. “You might want to keep your voice down. These walls are very thin.”
Hannah looked horrified. “How thin?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
She crossed her arms over her heaving chest. Evan bit his tongue, fighting back laughter. This was great. It was like watching Ruth get flustered times a thousand. How did such tiny women hold so much emotion?
“You’re friends with Daniel Burne,” she finally whispered, accusation making the words a hiss.
Evan stiffened, the smile wiped from his face. “I certainly am not.”
“Yes you are. You’ve been seen together multiple times.”
He eyed her suspiciously. “What are you, the town spymaster?”
“I know what I need to know,” she said primly. “And I need to know why a man like you is sniffing around my sister.”
Evan sighed as he unscrewed Ruth’s showerhead “I am not sniffing around your sister. I am spending time with my neighbour, who is also a friend, because it makes me happy.”
“And what does Daniel think about that?” She demanded.
“What is he, her husband? I don’t give a shit. Why is everyone in this town so obsessed with Daniel Burne?” His mind distantly registered the fact that his pipes had stopped clunking. Ruth was out of the shower. He glared at the wall and muttered, “That wasn’t long enough.”
“You’re telling me,” Hannah tutted. “She didn’t even take the Dettol.”
He frowned. “Dettol?”
And she threw his own words back at him. “Don’t worry about it.”
Finally stepping fully into the bathroom, she approached him. Her gaze was still wary, her arms still folded. He wondered if all Kabbah women were this skittish, or if it just happened around him.
“Ruth isn’t what she seems,” Hannah murmured, her voice low. “She is very… fragile.”
Evan stared. “She seems fragile.”
“Hm. Most people don’t tend to notice that.”
“Most people,” Evan said, “have their heads up their arses. I’m not one of them. I care about Ruth.”
Hannah gave him a wry smile. “Lots of people care about Ruth. None of them treat her very well.”
“I treat her just fine,” he said, his voice mild. “Ask her.”
Hannah didn’t reply. The silence was deafening, and when he studied her face he found clear uncertainty there.
“You can’t ask her?” He prompted. “You know everything about everyone in this town, but you can’t ask your sister about me?”
Hannah shrugged, but the look in her eyes was anything but casual. “She’ll lie. She’s a good liar.”
“She’s a terrible liar. You just have to know what to look for.”
The front door opened and a loud voice carried down the hall, interrupting what had turned out to be a rather illuminating conversation.
“I thought you were Hannah, you know,” the strange voice boomed. “You always did look just like twins.”
He heard Ruth murmur something in response.
“Yes, well, never mind that. How are you, anyway? I haven’t seen you in an age! My Penny’s always harping on about missing you at the library—”
With a scoff of disgust, Hannah marched out of the bathroom. Then she cried with exaggerated pleasure, “Mr. Clarke! There you are!”
“Hannah!” The man said. “You’re here and all, are you? You know, I always tell the missus, I say, it’s so nice how them Kabbah girls stick together. Our lads are always at each other’s throats. They—”
An older man with grey, balding hair appeared in the bathroom door. He pulled up short at the sight of Evan, his mouth hanging open mid-monologue. Behind him, both Ruth and Hannah hovered anxiously. Ruth was clean again, wearing fresh pyjamas. Her cheeks were shiny. Evan wanted to kiss them.
Inappropriate thought. Move on.
He rose from his crouch by the plug hole and wiped a hand on his jeans, then held it out to Mr. Clarke—who, it seemed, was the plumber. “Hi,” he said. “Evan Miller. I live next door.”
“I know who you are, lad,” the plumber said, his tone gruff. “My sister’s already called me about some strapping blonde feller who stormed out of her shop. Newcomer, she says. She’s taken against ye.”
Evan wasn’t sure what to say to that, so he kept his mouth shut.
The plumber’s face broke into a sudden smile. He grasped Evan’s hand and shook firmly and said, “Any man who pisses off my sister is a friend of mine. Or any woman, for that matter.” He turned back to look at the girls.
Hannah said, her voice a hell of a lot sweeter than it had been with Evan, “We appreciate you coming out yourself, Mr. Clarke.”
The man grunted. “Them lads of mine is alright, but thick as pig shit. Don’t know who’s worth respect. Let’s have a look ‘ere, then. You checked the valve, have you, my lad?”
Evan looked down at the copper pieces in his hand. “Oh, yeah. Nothing there. I just—”
<
br /> “No worries. I already know what it is.”
“You do?”
He turned a wry look back at the sisters. “Oh, aye. I come out to a Kabbah girl once every six months at least.” He winked conspiratorially and lowered his voice, as if Ruth and Hannah weren’t standing a metre away. “I don’t know how they’ve got any hair on their heads, the amount that gets down the plug hole.”
“Mr. Clarke!” Hannah gasped in clearly feigned outrage. When Evan looked up, she was smiling.
Ruth was gone.
While Clarke sorted out the shower, Evan was unceremoniously frogmarched to the door by Hannah. He didn’t expect so much as fervently hope that Ruth might appear out of nowhere and demand that he stay.
Ruth did not appear.
“Thank you very much for your help,” Hannah said as she held the front door open, “but we have things in hand now.”
He crossed his arms and tried to think of a reasonable excuse to ignore her. “Where’s Ruth? I want to make sure she’s okay.”
Hannah didn’t respond; she just gave him A Look. Kabbah women, it turned out, were very good at looking.
“I told you,” he said stubbornly, “I care about her. Why’d she disappear?”
“Because too many people talking at once makes her anxious,” Hannah said briskly. Then, after a moment’s hesitation, she leaned in and whispered, “and because Mr. Clarke is a terrible gossip.”
Evan frowned. “He seems like a nice guy.”
“He’s one of the few people who doesn’t treat Ruth like shit. Or me, for that matter. But it doesn’t change the fact that he couldn’t keep his mouth shut for a mountain of gold—so by this time tomorrow, the whole town will know that she came out of your flat like it was nothing, while you fiddled with her shower.” She made this sound like an accusation of adultery.
Evan almost rolled his eyes. Ruth was rubbing off on him. “I don’t see how that’s particularly incriminating.”
“Right,” Hannah said with icy sweetness. “Because Ruth really needs the town talking about her love life.”
“I—pardon?”
Hannah gave a snort of disgust. “Men.”
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