by Parker Grey
The footsteps get closer. And closer. Finally, the door to the bedroom opens, and my whole body tenses in anticipation.
Not yet, I remind myself. He’s on the lookout, doesn’t know the layout of the room, doesn’t know where you are…
In the dark, I raise the bat, holding it with both hands. I want this to be one and done, because anything more than that and it’s out of my control.
The black shadow steps into the room fully, standing at the edge of the bed, hovering like he’s squinting, trying to make out my form. Now I’m slightly behind him, the angle of attack perfect.
I wind up, but just as I start swinging, there’s a noise outside the room. With perfect timing, Viper turns back, moving toward the door, and my bat glances off of his shoulder.
“Shit!” he shouts. “You fucking—”
Before I know what’s happened, the light is on and someone’s kneed me in the solar plexus, knocking the air out of my lungs. I clench my hand around the bat and try to force air into my body, blinking at the sudden brightness.
But before I can do that, someone’s behind me. They wrench the bat from my hands, nearly pulling my arm out of its socket, twisting it up behind me.
I’m still blinking with the light when Viper’s face comes into view, standing in front of me.
He’s holding a gun.
I brought a bat to a gun fight.
Viper cocks it and aims it at my forehead. Whoever’s got my arms locked behind me twists a little harder, and I break out into a sweat, pain radiating through my whole body.
“Where is she?” asks Viper, snarling, his teeth bared like his namesake.
I don’t answer. With our skirmish he got turned around, and now his back is to the bathroom door, with Ruby right behind it.
I need to distract him, get him away from the door somehow. Maybe if I try to run for it he’ll—
As if he can read my thoughts, the guy behind me raises my arms up even further, the pain searing through my joints and sending flickering white spots across my vision. I try to stomp on his feet but it’s pointless — he has every advantage on me right now.
I flick my eyes to the bathroom door again, trying to figure out how to lure him away from Ruby, as Viper prods my face with the gun again.
“I asked you a question,” he says, his voice deadly serious. “I know she’s staying here with you. We know everything the cops know. Now I’m just gonna ask you one more time: where is my girl?”
My vision flashes white, then red, and it’s not just pain. It’s rage.
“Ruby is not—” I start, as the guy behind me jacks my arms up again. Something burns hot in my shoulder joint, like it’s tearing.
“—your. Girl,” I grit out, the words hissing between my teeth.
I glance at the bathroom door again, praying that she went through the tiny window.
Slowly, Viper grins. He pulls the gun back, then looks over his shoulder at the bathroom door.
“You put her in the closet?” he says, that same ugly smile still on his face. “I’d hoped you were a little more creative.”
He holds his gun down by his side. I’ve got sweat dripping down my whole body, and even though I think my shoulder might be dislocated, I writhe against the guy holding me back.
I have to save her. This is all my fault, and she’s in there, helpless against this evil man. He’s going to take her and it’s going to be because of me, because I thought I could protect her.
I try one more time to get away, but the giant behind me pulls and twists my arms so hard that the pain sends me to my knees, something in the joint cracking. Viper steps to the bathroom door, only looking back to look at me once and raise an eyebrow.
There’s nothing I can do or say as he opens the bathroom door slowly, the hinge creaking.
“Come out, come out,” he calls, his voice a spine-chilling sing-song.
Ruby’s not there, but the shower door is closed and there’s a dark shape inside, behind the frosted glass. I have a feeling like a bowling ball to the gut as I wonder why she’d try to hide in there when she knows full well that it’s no hiding place at all.
“Is that you, little girl?” he snarls. “Don’t you know better than to try to hide from the big, bad—”
He pulls the shower door open in a rush.
It’s not Ruby.
It’s a towel draped over a broom resting against the side of the shower. In a better state of mind, I’d have realized it instantly, but my head is fuzzy with pain and I don’t think Viper was ever that bright to begin with.
“What the—" he starts.
He doesn’t finish his sentence because there’s a burst of movement from behind the door. Ruby rushes out her dark hiding place, wielding something big and white.
Moments later, Viper is on the ground, screaming, and Ruby’s standing over him.
“Whoa!” the guy holding me shouts, and he loosens his grip on my arms for a second.
It’s not long, but it’s enough. I ram one elbow backward, my whole arm blazing with pain, and I catch him just under the ribs. He grabs at me again, and for a split second my shoulder is pure fire, but then I turn away and this time I get him with a knee to the solar plexus. Fair payback.
He drops. I’m on him, one of my knees in the center of his back as he gasps for air. I twist one of his arms up behind him, and even though I’m tempted to nearly break it like he did mine, I don’t. I just make sure he’s not going anywhere.
“Ruby!” I call out, my stomach still knotted with panic as I finally look into the bathroom.
She’s on the floor, hunched over with her long hair obscuring her face, and for a second my heart stops.
“Ruby!” I call out again, hoarsely, desperately looking around for Viper. My vision is still sparkly and fractured with the leftover shards of pain, but I can’t find him.
Then Ruby looks up. She’s in the bathroom, on her knees, and when she shoves her hair out of her eyes, I finally see him.
Viper is on the floor, stretched out, bleeding and unconscious. There are panicked tears in Ruby’s eyes as she looks at me, the beautiful blue orbs red-rimmed as she heaves a breath like she’s trying to get control of herself.
“I’m fine,” she whispers.
Chapter Twelve
Ruby
It’s well past dawn, and my eyes feel like they’re full of sand. I’ve had three cups of terrible police station coffee that tastes more like the styrofoam cup it came in than anything else, and this room is freezing.
“This is the last time, we promise,” a middle-aged female detective is saying. She’s wearing a suit and carries an air of authority with her, and the man in the uniform obviously defers to her.
“Where were you when Mr. Thiel came through the bathroom door?”
I swallow again, even though my throat feels like it’s made from an old, dry paper bag.
“I hid behind the towel rack behind the door,” I say, trying to keep my nerves and my tiredness out of my voice. “It was dark, so I didn’t think he’d look there.”
She nods encouragingly, and I take another sip of the terrible, now-cold coffee.
“He opened the shower door, and when he did, I jumped out and hit him.”
“With the tank cover you’d taken from the top of the toilet?”
I just nod, reliving the moment again. I can still feel the heavy white porcelain cold in my hands, slipping as I tried to grip it between my shaking fingers. It was the only thing I could find in the bathroom to use as a weapon, but it had worked. Even though I’d nearly dropped it while I was standing there, waiting for Viper to come into the bathroom.
The heavy, ugly thunk it made when it hit the back of his head. The way he fell to the ground like a dropped marionette, just a pile of flesh and bones. The toilet cover had slipped from my hands and crashed to the ground, and I’d knelt over him, terrified.
I’d never hurt anyone like that before. I hoped I’d never have to do it again.
&nb
sp; “And then?” the detective prompts me.
I take another deep breath, both hands around my flimsy coffee mug.
“Jax had me go get something to tie the other man up with. Shoelaces from his boot. Then he checked on Viper — er, Mr. Thiel, I guess — and I called nine-one-one. And then the cops came, and the paramedics…”
I trail off, because I’m sure she knows the rest, and she doesn’t prompt me for it. I sip my disgusting coffee again, too afraid to ask what I want to ask.
“All right, Miss Bishop. Thanks for your time.”
The detective stands, and I glance from her to the uniformed cop.
“I can go?” I ask.
“Yes. You’re not being charged with anything.”
I blink once. Even though I know that what I did was done in self-defense, it still seems like there should be a punishment.
I take a deep breath.
“Is he— Is Mr. Thiel—"
I can’t even finish my sentence.
“He’ll live,” the detective says. “He’s got a very bad concussion and he won’t be doing much for a while, but once he’s better he’ll be on trial for attempted murder.”
She says more, but I don’t hear the rest of her words. I’m so relieved that I didn’t kill someone that I sink my forehead to the scratched metal table and start crying.
My dad picks me up from the police station and takes me home, where I sleep for nearly twelve hours straight. I can tell that he was worried sick while I was gone, but he doesn’t ask me too many questions or say too much about what happened.
We don’t talk too much in general, honestly. We haven’t since my mom died when I was fourteen.
I don’t know how to tell him about Jax. His absence, after so many days together, feels like it’s torn a hole in my chest. I know that he’s older than me. I know that there’s something fierce and dangerous in his eyes when he looks at me.
But I also know that he’d do anything to protect me. There was a moment in the bathroom when I thought he might kill Viper, the rage in his eyes was so pure and intense, and I knew it was because of me.
I miss him. Intensely. I miss sleeping next to his big, muscled form. I miss laughing and joking with him while he made breakfast. I miss sitting on his lap afterwards, teasing him while he did a crossword.
And I miss straddling his lap while we were on his couch, rocking myself to climax while he kissed my neck and told me I was beautiful.
The missing only gets worse the longer I’m back home. I have nothing to do besides hang around dad’s house, making small-talk with Grandma Flo who’s going just as stir-crazy as I am. I’m on my winter break from college, so there’s not enough time to get a job. I read a lot of books and watch a lot of TV, but there’s nothing much else to do.
Finally, after a week without Jax, I think I might lose my mind.
So I do something about it.
Chapter Thirteen
Jax
The world’s gone dark.
Not literally. But everything feels dark without her here. There are days when I don’t bother turning on any of the lights in my cabin, or only the lights that I absolutely need to function. It doesn’t feel worth the effort.
Not with Ruby gone.
The days she spent here feel like some sort of wonderful, beautiful fever dream. I can’t believe I woke up to her every morning, my nose buried in her hair. I can’t believe I went to bed with my arms around her every night.
I can’t believe the things she let me do to her. The things she begged me to do to her, the way she’d cry out in ecstasy. The look in her eyes when she said Jax, I need you.
I needed her more, but I knew that all along. I knew that from the very first time she came to my road house, over a year ago, and I fell desperately in love with a girl I didn’t know.
Once the police vacate the crime scene, I clean everything twice, top to bottom. I don’t want the memory of that bastard in my cabin or in my life. I don’t want the memory of Ruby kneeling over him, terrified that she’d murdered a man by accident.
I want to remember the good parts. The parts when she was laughing and happy.
Last I heard, Viper is going to be okay. It sounded like it might take him a while, but Ruby didn’t kill him. She didn’t even come close, though I’m not sure she knew that at the time.
But we all got out alive. Or Viper did, at least.
It’s me that had his heart torn from his body.
It’s late afternoon about ten days later when there’s a knock on my door. I’m in the kitchen, making myself a half-assed fried egg sandwich. I’m not really hungry — I haven’t really been hungry since she left, because I haven’t felt much of anything — but I know that I need to put calories in my body.
I stand in the kitchen and do nothing. I figure it’s the police again, and they either want to look at something in the cabin, or they want to ask me another batch of annoying questions, or they’ve decided I’m a criminal and they want to take me in.
I practically stomp to the cabin’s front door, wishing that whoever it is would just leave me alone. I want to eat, sleep, stare into a fire, and occasionally go to work at the road house where the Iron Diablos watch me warily as I pour their drinks. There seems to be some sort of unspoken consensus that what Viper did crossed some sort of line, so no one’s come after me with a knife in the parking lot.
Yet, anyway. Maybe they’re biding their time, but good luck to anyone who tries something.
The knock sounds again, louder this time. I grab my plate and bring it to the front door with me, wondering for half a second what I look like and then deciding I don’t care.
“What do you want?” I ask as I swing the door open, revealing a single, small form standing on my front porch.
She doesn’t answer. She just looks at me, head slightly tilted to one side. She’s got the red coat on, the hood over her hair, snowflakes dusting her shoulders because I guess it’s snowing outside.
Seeing Ruby there knocks the wind out of me, like a punch to the gut, and I stare at her for a long moment, until she looks away.
“Just to say hi, I guess,” she says softly, her eyes roaming over my body. I’m wearing a t-shirt and old work pants — nothing to write home about.
“I just wanted to see how you were doing, but don’t worry—”
I’m on her in two steps. I toss the plate of food at a table on the front porch and I think it breaks, but I don’t care.
“Ruby,” I breathe, barely able to believe my eyes. “What are you doing here?”
She raises one eyebrow, slipping her hand over mine.
“I came to see you,” she says. “I…”
Ruby goes quiet for a moment, and we stand there in the silence right outside my cabin, the hush of falling snow all around us.
“I missed you,” she finally says, the simple sentence echoing through my heart. “I wanted to call, but apparently you don’t have a phone, and I didn’t particularly want to stop by the road house.”
“I hate the damn things,” I muse, tracing the outline of her lips with one thumb. “I used to have one, but people called me on it, so I ditched it.”
“You know that’s the point, right?”
“Doesn’t mean I have to like it.”
There’s another quick silence. My brain is going a thousand miles a minute, my stomach twisting.
She’s here. She came back, after I figured she was gone, after I thought there was no way that Ruby, young and perfect and beautiful, wanted anything to do with me.
But here she is, standing in front of me, face tilted up like she’s waiting.
“I’m going to kiss you now,” I murmur.
“Good,” she says.
I touch my lips to hers and it feels like fate, like it was always supposed to be like this. I’m gentle at first, afraid that somehow, she’ll run away if I don’t treat her like she’s made of glass.
But then Ruby grabs a fistful of my t-shirt and pulls m
e to her with surprising force, our bodies colliding with a heat I can’t deny. She opens her mouth under mine, her tongue seeking mine out, her fist on my shirt never letting go for a second.
It’s warm and wanting, needy and demanding. I feel alive like I haven’t in over a week, and all of a sudden, everything about our days together reawakens in me: Ruby, naked in my bed. Ruby, wet on the lip of the tub, me on my knees in front of her.
Ruby, sitting on my lap, saying she wants me to be her first.
“Come inside,” I murmur to her, our lips still tangled together.
She laughs softly, then captures my lower lip in her teeth, tugging on it.
“What?” I growl.
“Shouldn’t I be the one saying that?” she asks, her voice pure innocence.
That’s it.
I can’t take this anymore. I hoist Ruby over my shoulder, turn around, and haul her into my cabin.
Chapter Fourteen
Ruby
I can’t believe I said that out loud. I’ve been thinking it for ages, of course, but that’s different from practically asking Jax to come inside me.
Seems like it worked, though, because ten seconds later he’s tossing me onto his bed, my coat and shoes still on as his weight settles onto me, his mouth voracious on mine.
“Get this off,” he commands, tugging at the buttons on my coat. “Now.”
My breath catches. He’s never been quite like this before — Jax has always teased me with a smirk — but suddenly he’s powerful, commanding. Like he expects to be obeyed.
I can’t get my coat off fast enough, and Jax practically tears it away from me, tossing it into a corner of his bedroom. The blinds are still up on the window in here, and it’s snowing outside, the room filled with soft, diffuse white light.
“This too,” he growls, tugging at the sweater I’m wearing below my coat. In another second, it’s joined my coat in the corner, but Jax doesn’t stop there, practically tearing through the layers of my clothing until I’m on his bed topless, kicking my boots off with my feet.