I had suspected that this was Levi’s perfect revenge for a lifetime of torturing him. And now I could officially confirm that it was true.
Intentionally or not, this was sweet, ugly, horrible vengeance. And I hated every second of it. But I also knew that this was the way it had to be.
I cared about him enough to let him go, to let him move on. To let him find real, true, uncomplicated love. And someday, I might even find a way to be happy for him.
As I came out of the bathroom and found him leaning against the bar, chatting with Kristen March, I knew that day was not today.
Kristen tipped her head back and laughed at whatever he was saying to her. His smile was soft and sweet and everything I had fallen in love with.
God, seeing him like that, drinking with her of all people, killed my happy holiday vibes.
She leaned toward him, running her hand down his crisp white button up shirt, playing with the buttons as she went. She tilted her mouth toward his and I couldn’t stop watching… I couldn’t stop the car crash from happening.
I had walked into this bar finally feeling at peace with who I was and now I wanted to run out of it, knowing I couldn’t ever be totally at peace with Levi Cole in this town.
God, how did this man manage to make everything about him? How had he crawled inside me and under my skin and ruined everything I thought I didn’t need.
He laughed at whatever she said and dropped his mouth next to her ear, murmuring something that had her gripping his bicep. This was awful. I’d avoided looking at him all night for this reason.
It hurt too much.
And now it was time to go. I could still end the night with my favorite corny Christmas movies. I could still salvage what was left of my dignity and pretend I didn’t know the end to their story.
I moved to run and instead ran straight into a ridiculously hard body. I looked up to find Finch staring down at me, his hands gripping my biceps to keep me from face-planting on the bar floor.
“Whoa, there,” he hollered over “Body Like a Back Road” by Sam Hunt. “You all right?”
Unable to help myself, I glanced at Levi one more time, but now his gaze was on me and the scene I’d nearly created. Shit. “Sorry,” I yelled at Finch. “I didn’t see you.”
Noticing the stupid tears I was trying to hold at bay, he asked, “Are you okay, Ruby?”
No. “Fine.” I gave him a wobbly smile. “Just ready to leave.”
He leaned down and put his ear near my mouth, so he could hear me. “What?”
“I’m good!” I shouted. “Just trying to leave!”
He pulled back, nodding. “Gotcha.” His gaze flicked to Levi and Kristen and then back to me, a rare look of sympathy furrowing his brows. “They’re just friends.”
The breath whooshed out of my lungs and my heart dropped to my toes. “What?”
“It’s never been her, Ruby. It’s always been you.” He pursed his lips together and then added in a soft voice I could barely hear over the roar of the crowd and deafening music, “It’s still you.”
I wiggled out of his arms, shaking my head in horror at the painful truth Finch felt necessary to share with me. A quick glance at the crowded dance floor and packed bar area revealed that it was going to take me twenty minutes to squeeze through the crush of bodies. I needed out of here now. I couldn’t breathe in this room. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t… hear those words from Finch and know them to be true in my heart and survive this torturous closeness to Levi. “I need to go,” I shouted at Finch.
He gave me a thumbs up and a frown, then helped me weave through bodies until I was back in the hallway leading to the girl’s bathroom. I rushed through the back exit, gulping in the cold, fresh air on the other side.
My heated skin immediately chilled and goosebumps broke out across my body. Two tears escaped and then froze to my cheeks almost immediately.
God, that place. I seriously needed to stop going there. I was a mom now. There was no reason for me to have a nightlife.
“Rubita,” a voice called from behind me.
Shit, not now.
I turned around and blinked at Ajax. He’d stepped outside to have a cigarette. “Oh, hey, Ajax.”
My ears felt stuffed with cotton after the loud bar and louder music. It was unsettlingly quiet out here. The snow packed ground muffled everything and the still winter night seemed empty of cars and wildlife and sound.
“You haven’t danced with me all night,” he pouted, sticking his lower lip out like a child.
“Yeah, I, uh, I’m here with some friends.” He stepped closer and I noticed how dilated his eyes were.
“I’ve missed you, amor,” he whispered, his fingers skimming over my hip. “In my bed.”
I took a step back, my ankle boots wobbling on the snowy ground. My bare toes were frozen, but I had to deal with this. Ajax didn’t even seem to notice the cold. His skin was super-heated. My smile was shaky, but I managed a regretful look. “Yeah, sorry, Ajax, I don’t think it’s going to work out between us anymore. I have Max to think about. I can’t… be casual with anyone anymore.”
He followed after me, his hand wrapping around my waist this time and tugging me against him. “That can’t be true, Ruby. You do so much for your son. You need to take care of yourself too.”
I pushed back on his shoulder, not liking how aggressively he was holding me. “Yeah, maybe, but what we had is over, Ajax. If I decide I want something, I need it to be with someone that cares about Max, that wants something permanent with me.”
He shrugged. “Then we mess around until then.”
“Stop,” I said firmly. He didn’t. He kept walking forward until my back bumped into the wood shelter of the dumpster. “Stop it, Ajax.”
“Oh, now she doesn’t want it,” he murmured to no one. “She wants a new cowboy. She’s done with the old one.”
“Stop, seriously, Ajax. We were done as soon as you started using.” He rolled his eyes. “For real.”
He shoved me against the fence and I banged my head against the rough wood. “Ow!”
“Now she’s done with me,” he continued to talk to no one. “Now she has the big, bad cowboy and she doesn’t need poor Ajax.”
His hands started moving over my tunic, groping and feeling. “What the hell? Get off me!” I shoved his chest and he flailed backward easier than I thought he would. He fell on his ass and started laughing like a lunatic.
“Leave me alone,” I growled at him. “Don’t ever come near me again.”
He stumbled to his feet, swaying wildly from side to side. “Rubita,” he crooned, throwing his hands toward me. “Oh, don’t be like that. I was just messing around. Come on.” He lunged forward, and I screamed, leaping out of the way of his pawing hands and out of control body.
Levi raced around the corner and stepped in front of me. He swung hard at Ajax, landing a punch on his cheek and sending him back to the ground. “She said to back the fuck off. So back. The. Fuck. Off.”
“Oh, my god, Levi,” I gasped, surprised to see him.
Ajax moaned in a crumpled pile in the snow.
He turned to face me, his hands moving over my arms. “Are you okay? Did he hurt you?”
I shook my head, but I wasn’t sure if I was answering him or if that was the cold making my body tremble. “N-no. I’m fine.”
“You’re not fucking fine,” he growled. He turned a murderous look on Ajax. “Fucking asshole.”
I stared at the unconscious man. “He’s harmless now.”
“For now,” Levi muttered.
“That’s the second time you knocked him out.”
He frowned at me. “The first time wasn’t much of a fight either. He’s a mess.”
“He needs help.”
“Still doesn’t give him the right to fucking touch you.”
I let out a frustrated sigh. “True.”
Levi’s eyes swept over me, taking in my appearance all over again. “Where’s your coat? It
’s freezing out here.”
“Er, the car,” I said through chattering teeth, my breath coming out in puffs of white. “I was on my way there.”
“Why?”
His tone was so straight-forward, so confrontational, I couldn’t help but add sass to mine. “Because I was leaving. Is that okay with you?”
“Not if it means getting yourself into trouble in a back alley.”
“I would have been fine.”
His voice dropped low to a scary tone. “No, you would not have been fine.” He pulled out his phone. “Don’t move yet.”
“What are you doing?”
“Texting Blake Upchurch to come deal with this sack of shit.”
Of course, Levi had the chief of police’s number in his cell. He was the golden boy after all. For some reason that really irritated me tonight. I was so tired of him being perfect, of him doing everything right. And I was so exhausted from doing everything wrong.
Turning away from him, I stomped off toward my car. It was three buildings away. “I’m fine now. Thanks for your help, Levi. Goodnight.”
He stalked after me, anger radiating off him. “That’s debatable,” he snarled.
We walked the rest of the way in silence, the snow crunching beneath our feet. I wrapped my arms around my body and tried not to catch hypothermia. I had a million things to say to him, but I bit them down, deciding I’d done enough damage to Levi Cole.
Just because I was miserable and frustrated over him, didn’t mean I needed to punish him. Although that had kind of been my MO for my entire life.
“There,” I said with a flourish of my hand when we’d reached the Corolla. “I made it safely. You can return to your date now.”
He glared at me. “My date?”
“Kristen.”
“Kristen?”
I just rolled my eyes and pulled my car keys from my purse. “It’s funny how history repeats itself, huh?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I saw you chatting her up at the bar. Don’t pretend the high school flame isn’t still burning. She’s been trying to get back together with you since you got back to town.”
His frustrated stare turned lethal. “I ended things with Kristen seven years ago. You might remember the night well. It’s the same night you got pregnant.”
That was enough to have me biting my tongue and wishing I could crawl into a cave and never come out. Wrenching open the Corolla door, I said, “She’s still into you.”
“And I’m still not into her.”
Sighing in frustration, I managed a small apology. “I shouldn’t have said that about you and Kristen.”
He folded his arms over his chest and moved back a step. “No, you shouldn’t have.”
“I’m going to leave now.”
“Probably for the best.”
Immense sorrow pressed against my chest, crushing my fragile heart inside as I plopped into my driver’s seat and shoved my keys into the ignition.
Netflix, I whispered to my deflated spirits. We can ring in the New Year with Netflix.
I turned the key and was greeted by a sputtering, whining, not-turning-on engine. “No,” I hissed at my piece of crap car. Turning the keys again, I closed my eyes and prayed for a New Year miracle. “Please, please, please,” I chanted alongside the brum, brum, brum of my useless engine.
Levi let me struggle and shiver for five more minutes before he said helpfully, “It’s not going to work.”
I glared at him. “Sometimes if I just…” I tried it again without a positive response.
“Come on.” He tilted his head. “I’ll call you a tow truck, but you can wait inside my apartment, so you don’t freeze to death.”
He started off across the parking lot toward the antique store across the street and I was forced to hurry after him. “That’s all right, I can just ask Coco—”
“For once, please don’t argue with me, Ruby.”
So, I didn’t. I let him lead me up the side staircase to a loft very similar to Coco’s. He flipped the lights on when we stepped inside, and I was greeted with a very warm, very manly space of rich leather couches and a giant TV.
It was also eighty degrees warmer inside and I let out a sigh at the feeling of my skin beginning to thaw.
I was immediately drawn to printed photographs in big frames hung around the cozy space. A group of stallions against the backdrop of a breathtaking sunset, a single horse, his snout facing the camera, the white patch over his eye seemingly too pure for an animal, a lone cowboy on the back of another mighty steed, his body a perfect specimen of the male form, his wide-brim cowboy hat an interesting, nostalgic touch.
“These are incredible,” I whispered, forgetting my purpose for being in his apartment to begin with.
“Thank you.” His voice was softer in this place, his private space. Less hard, less… distant.
There was pride in his answer, an ownership that whispered he had more purchase in them than simple buying power. “Did you take them?” I asked in a reverent whisper.
I glanced over my shoulder in time to see him nod his head. “Mementos of my travels.”
“Do you hate being back, then? Do you hate that your parents wanted you to come home?”
He shook his head and leaned back against the kitchen counter, his arms already folded over his chest. “No, it was time.” He tore his gaze from mine and stared down at his feet. “When I left I felt like there was nothing left for me here. Logan was gone. I thought… I thought you were gone. I just, I didn’t want to come home and feel empty.”
My heart skipped a beat, leaving me flailing to catch up. “And now?”
His gaze lifted, and his brilliant green eyes hit me from all the way across the apartment. “And now I know the life I wanted was waiting for me here all along.”
God, I could resonate with that. I felt those words in the deepest, most centered part of me. I knew what it was like to assume everything I wanted was out there, out in the world. And yet this whole time, it had been here all along.
“I’m sorry I slept with Logan,” I blurted, unable to keep the words inside of me for one more second. “I’m so sorry.”
“Ruby—”
I hiccupped a sob as the tears started streaming down my face. Damn, Fireball, you done me wrong.
“No, listen,” I demanded. “I was afraid, Levi. I’ve always been afraid of what I felt for you. I wanted out of this town so damn bad, that it clouded everything for me. And in my stupid, immature mind, I thought sleeping with him would be enough to break whatever was between us for good. I didn’t even know what that was. I never intended to hurt you or to have Max. I just wanted… I just wanted to leave. And it was the only way I knew how.”
He stared at me, unspeaking, unmoving. The hurt in his eyes and the frown on his face devastated my already broken spirit.
“And I don’t even know what to tell you,” I cried some more. “Because my mistake led me to Max and for that reason I can never really regret it. But I hate how I hurt you. I hate that my mistakes meant pushing you away. I hate that I finally know how I feel about you and it’s too late.”
His eyes flashed with something so intense I gasped for breath. “How do you feel about me?”
How could he ask me that now? How did he not know? How had he not always known?
“Don’t make me say it,” I whispered, my voice dragged over gravel. “It hurts too much.”
“Ruby,” he pleaded, his voice just as fragmented. “Say it. Please.”
I didn’t bother brushing away the tears, there were too many of them, my grief was too heavy. “I love you,” I whispered. “I’ve always loved you. I’ve just been too afraid to say it.”
To admit it.
He stared at me, his gaze heating and sparking and bursting to life. I couldn’t move. I was one hundred percent captivated by the way he looked at me and the frenetic energy in the room.
My boots were pooling water all ove
r his floor and somehow in the last few minutes I’d stopped shivering. I should go. I knew I should go, but I couldn’t make myself move.
I wanted to stand there forever if it meant he would continue to look at me like this.
“Do you know how long I’ve wanted to hear you say that? How many different ways I imagined you saying those words?” He didn’t sound any less pissed and I couldn’t tell if he was going to forgive me or strangle me. “God, knowing you slept with Logan on graduation night…Do you know what that has done to me?”
I nodded, but barely. I could hardly manage even that. “I know and I’m sorry—”
“It destroyed me, Ruby. You destroyed me.”
The tears fell faster. I wrapped my hands around my body to shield me from his painful truth.
“I can’t even be mad at Logan because he’s gone! And I love Max too fucking much to hate you for it. It’s messed me up in a serious way.”
I nodded, knowing exactly what he meant, exactly how he felt.
Breaking his gaze with me, he ran his hands through his hair and made a tortured sound in the back of his throat. When he looked back at me, his eyes were blazing, the intensity in them stealing the breath from my body. “And you? What am I supposed to do with you? I loved you in high school. And not the way you fucking loved Logan. I actually loved you. You were so helpless and yet, so relentlessly tough. When we were kids, I had never met anyone as wild as you, as tenacious. And yet so contained at the same time, so utterly self-possessed. You fascinated me. I just wanted to get to know you, be near you. And as we grew up, those feelings only ever got more intense.
“You became this gorgeous, untouchable fantasy—but more than that. Because I liked who you were as a person too. There was more to us than simple attraction. I liked that you didn’t play games or give into the politics of this town. I liked how you never tolerated bullshit and always gave it to me straight. I liked how you were reserved, sometimes shy, but you never held back at the same time. The way you laughed when you didn’t think anyone was looking. The way you smiled when you walked away from me. The way you said things you meant to keep secret and then threw insults to cover up your real feelings. You didn’t worship me like the rest of the town, as dumb as it sounds now. You saw me. Just as I was.
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