Chapter 38
CHAPTER 38
RUBY
W rapped up in her grandmother’s blanket on the old, uncomfortable couch she’d bought secondhand when she’d first moved into her apartment, she listened to the man she loved talk about another woman.
About the love of his life.
She listened to him talk about meeting her for the first time when he was five years old, when he crashed his bike in her front yard the day she moved into the neighborhood. About the fight he got into with another boy on the playground in second grade because the boy had the nerve to say he and Grace had gotten married on the swings.
First dances, first kisses, every single ‘first’ he’d had to give, he’d given it to her. And with every one, Ruby’s heart broke a little bit more for the boy he’d been. The boy who had met his soulmate while crying over a skinned knee, and never looked back.
And the man who’d lost her, far too soon.
When he finished, they sat in silence for a long while, simply watching each other. “Beckett… I don’t know what to say, other than I’m so sorry. I can’t even imagine…”
“Thank you.” Shoving his hands in his pockets, he resumed his pacing, slower now, more thoughtful. “That’s the second time this week I’ve told that story. I thought it might be easier, but it wasn’t.”
“Who was the first?”
“Ice.”
Shock had her mouth falling open. “You never told your best friend you had a whole wife at one point?”
“Never came up.”
“Men,” she muttered, rolling her eyes. “What did Ice have to say?”
“He told me it wasn’t my fault.”
She’d thought nothing else he said could shock her more than the revelation that he’d once been married and apparently nobody knew about it. “Well of course it wasn’t your fault. How could you even think that?”
“Because I should have protected her. Kept her from working so hard she couldn’t even keep her eyes open to drive home. It was my job to keep her safe, and I failed.”
So much about him, about their relationship, clicked into place with that single confession. “That’s not how the world works, Beckett.”
“Yeah, Ice said pretty much the same thing. That I couldn’t shield myself from feeling that kind of pain again by trying to control everything and everyone around me.”
“You can’t, and even if you could, Beckett, I couldn’t let you. Maybe there’s someone else out there who could give you that kind of control over her life, but it’s not me.”
“I know. And it’s not fair of me to ask that of you. I see that now.” He stopped pacing again. “I went to see Grace’s parents today. Mama Julie told me to let you know that if I don’t get my head out of my ass, I’ll have her to answer to.”
“Is that so?” Despite the heaviness of everything he’d shared hanging between them, a smile tugged at her lips. “I’d pay good money to see someone put Beckett Stone in his place.”
He laughed, and to her surprise it didn’t sound forced or strained. “I told her you’d enjoy that. They want to meet you, when things settle a bit.”
How the hell did this conversation keep getting more shocking? “Your late wife’s parents want to meet me?”
“Yeah. Apparently they’ve been waiting for me to find someone new. They seemed pretty annoyed, actually, that I’ve been avoiding falling in love again. Said a lot of the same things Ice did, about how I have to accept that some things are just out of my control. And to stop blaming myself for Grace.”
“Good. Because they’re right.” And her heart broke again, imagining the weight of the guilt he’d been carrying all these years.
“I know. And I’m so fucking sorry, Ruby. You were right, about me taking your choices away, and I don’t have anything else to say but I’m so fucking sorry.”
“Apology accepted.” She wanted that to be the end of it. To just jump into his arms and pretend everything was healed with that simple apology. But it wasn’t fair to her, or to him, to feign ignorance. “But that was a huge breach of trust, Beckett. And I don’t know if I can just let that go. I did that once for a man, turned a blind eye to all those little red flags scattered along the way. Because I loved him, and I thought he loved me. But control isn’t love, and I won’t make the mistake of confusing the two ever again.”
Silence fell, and once again it felt like a barrier between them. Insurmountable.
Until he spoke again.
“Will you tell me about him?”
Wrapping the blanket more tightly around her shoulders, Ruby shrugged. “If you want me to.”
“I do.” Taking a hesitant step forward, he paused, looking so unlike himself her heart broke for him all over again. “I know I need to work on my shit, and I’ve got an appointment with a therapist next week to start doing exactly that. But if we’re going to make this work, I need to know where your hurts are, too. You matter to me, Ruby. I don’t know when it happened, exactly, but this thing between us stopped being casual for me a long time ago.”
“Me too.”
“Okay.” Relief flashed across his face as he settled on the couch beside her. “Then let me in, baby. Please?”
Unease rolled in her stomach at the thought of laying it all out again. At the thought of telling him not just how badly she’d been hurt, but how fucking weak she’d once been. “It’s not, like, losing the love of your life traumatic or anything. He was just an asshole.”
“I didn’t tell you about Grace so you could hide behind my pain, Ruby.” A hint of steel infused his tone, reminding her more of the man she’d fallen for. “This isn’t a contest. Tell me about it.”
“Sorry. I wasn’t trying…” She blew out a breath. “Never mind. That’s a load of shit. I was absolutely trying to hide. Because in a lot of ways I’m still really fucking embarrassed by what happened.”
“Why?”
“Because I should have known better. I shouldn’t have been so damn na?ve. So weak. I gave him all of me, Beckett, and he crushed me.”
“Then tell me. And we’ll carry it together.”
How the hell could she refuse a request like that?
She couldn’t. So she told him. All of it. And she watched as his expression changed from shock to horror to a fury so deep and hot she wondered how it didn’t simply explode out of him.
But it didn’t. Somehow, he kept it all contained and he just… listened.
It wasn’t until the entire story had been told, and she finally felt a weight lifting from her shoulders, that she realized how badly she’d needed him to just listen .
“I want his name.” His voice was tight with cold fury, the same fury she saw burning in his eyes. And even though it healed some more of those hidden cracks inside her for him to be so angry on her behalf, she shook her head.
“So you can go on some white-knight crusade and ruin everything you’ve worked for? Absolutely not.”
“I don’t give a fuck about what I’ve worked for. I will burn my company to the ground if it means I get to see that bastard ended for what he did to you.”
And that right there was one major difference between the man in front of her and the man who’d tried to break her. Preston never would have sacrificed even a single client for her. How many times had she begged him to come spend time with her and he’d put her off because of a meeting?
Yet another humiliation, remembering how she’d lowered herself to begging for scraps of his life, his time.
“Look, I appreciate that you want to save me or whatever, but I’ve already been saved. I saved myself, and I promised I’d never put myself in the position of relying on a man for anything ever again. That’s why I freaked out when I found out you got me fired, and then you started saying you could ‘take care of me’. I know you didn’t mean it that way, but it felt like I was walking into the same trap, and it fucking terrified me.”
“I can see that, now. And hopefully you can see why I maybe overreacted a bit to you trying to work when you were tired and not feeling well.”
“I can.” And she appreciated his acknowledgement that he had overreacted. “The question is, where do we go from here? You’re not going to be able to turn off being a Daddy any more than I can turn off my need for independence.”
“Compromise.” Another smile teased at the corners of his lips. “It’s not a word I’m very comfortable with, but for you, I’d be willing to try.”
If he could bend, maybe she could, too. Bending didn’t mean breaking, under the right circumstances. “Until we figure out what that looks like for us, no sex. No scenes. I don’t want things to get messy.” Again.
“Considering you still look like death warmed over, that’s not much of a compromise on my part. I’d like to stay though. Make you dinner, maybe. I can leave when you’re ready for bed, if you want.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I think I’d like that.”
Beckett
Three days after baring his soul to the woman he loved, Beckett sat in a booth at Club BDE, watching her flit from one end of the bar to the other. She wasn’t moving as quickly as usual, and she was still looking a bit pale for his tastes.
Letting her come to work at all had been a compromise, and one he’d found hard to swallow. His instinct had been to keep her home, bundled up in that ratty old blanket she loved, for at least a few more days. But she’d insisted on coming back to work, with the agreement that she would leave early if she started feeling too rundown.
It was an exercise in patience not to pull the plug an hour into her shift.
Compromise, remember?
Yeah, he remembered. Didn’t mean he had to like it.
“You look like my sister when she’s forced to attend family functions.”
Beckett looked up as Killian O’Rourke, Club BDE’s favorite mobster, slid onto the bench across from him. Killian’s ever-present smirk graced his lips as he tilted his head to the side, studying Beckett. “Want to talk about it, Bex?”
That’s one for you, Ruby Red, whenever I get my hands on you again. “Not particularly.”
Baring his soul twice in one week was bad enough. He certainly wasn’t going to do so again, and he definitely was not going to bare it to Killian O’Rourke of all people.
Killian’s smile didn’t falter as he leaned back against his seat with a shrug. “No problem. Just figured I’d offer since the rest of your posse seems to be missing tonight.”
“I don’t need a posse to handle my woman.”
“Ah, so it is a woman problem. I figured as much but… well, you know what they say about assuming.”
Goddammit. Killian had a way of getting under his skin without even trying. He was usually better at keeping him at bay, but his defenses were already down after everything that had happened with Ruby. “It’s not a problem.”
“If you say so.”
They sat in what could almost be called a companionable silence for a few minutes before Beckett’s curiosity got the better of him. “Have you ever had a woman turn her nose up at your wealth?”
“Beckett, my dear boy, no woman has ever turned her nose up at me, period.”
Rolling his eyes, Beckett drained his whiskey glass and moved to slide from the booth. “Never mind. I knew better than to ask you.”
“But,” Killian continued, cutting Beckett off before he could rise from his seat. “If a woman had a problem with my wealth, I imagine the moral outrage would most likely be directed at how I acquired it, rather than the fact that it exists.”
“As it should.”
“Some might agree. So far, it hasn’t been a concern. Why do you ask?”
Killian wasn’t his first choice of confidant. But if there was one thing he knew for certain, it was that the man could keep a secret. “Ruby has some… concerns. About my money. Mainly that I’ll use it to control her. Trap her.”
Raising one dark eyebrow, Killian let out an indelicate snort. “Has she met you? If you wanted to control her, you have far more interesting ways of doing so than tossing your money around.”
“She has met me. And her concerns about me needing control aren’t unfounded.”
“Beckett. We may not know each other very well, but I know enough about you to say with confidence that while you may be even more of a control freak than myself in some ways, you would never use that control to harm a woman. You’d rather cut off your own arm than hurt anyone. Least of all sweet Ruby.”
“But how do I prove that to her?”
“If she’s worried about feeling trapped, make sure she has an escape hatch. One you don’t control. Make sure she knows that no matter what, she holds the key to her cage.”
“That… actually might work. Thanks, Killian.”
“You’re welcome. But, ah, do me a favor and keep this little conversation between us.” A dimple flashed in Killian’s cheek as he bared his teeth in what Beckett imagined was meant to resemble a smile. “I quite enjoy my reputation as the dangerous criminal of Club BDE, and if the others find out I gave you advice it will tarnish that reputation.”
“Don’t worry. Your secret’s safe with me.” Beckett let his lips curve up in a smile to match Killian’s. “But you owe me a favor.”
“Is that so? And what kind of favor could the unimpeachable Beckett Stone need from me?”
“A hypothetical one, for now. Say I had a name of someone I wanted to have… an accident. How much would that cost me?”
He wasn’t sure what kind of reaction he’d been expecting, but it wasn’t for Killian’s expression to turn from playful rogue to deadly serious in a heartbeat. “That isn’t a favor someone asks for lightly, Beckett.”
“I know. But someone hurt Ruby, and every time I see that haunted look in her eyes, I want nothing more than to deliver his head on a platter.”
Leaning back in his seat, Killian tapped his fingers against the sleek wooden tabletop. “That kind of thing weighs on a man, Beckett. Even if you’re not the one pulling the trigger. Which is why I don’t do it anymore unless it’s absolutely necessary.”
“Is Killian O’Rourke going straight?”
“Let’s say I’m making some organizational changes. But again, I’d appreciate your discretion. You know as well as anyone that tipping your hand too soon can cause… complications in business.”
“I do. Again, your secret’s safe with me. No favor required.”
“Good.” A ghost of a smile tugged at Killian’s lips. “If you decide you’re serious about that hypothetical favor, I can point you in the right direction of someone who can help.”
“That won’t be necessary. As much as I’d love to see him ended, I’m not sure Ruby would approve. And at the end of the day, what she wants matters more.” Though if he ever actually met the bastard in person, he might break his nose whether Ruby approved or not.
“You’re a good man, Beckett Stone.”
Being told he was a good man by one of the most feared men in Charleston was a surreal experience to say the least. But damn if it didn’t actually make him feel a bit better about the thoughts he’d been having regarding Ruby’s mystery ex for the past few days. “Thanks. You’re not too bad yourself, O’Rourke.”
“I am. But I’m working on it.”