26. Twenty-Six
26
TWENTY-SIX
I ’d been sleeping in the same bed with Ruby for weeks at this point. It was a calculated move on my part. Not a “I’m going to burn down Gotham with my death ray” move but more of a “see, I belong here” shift. I wanted Ruby to get used to me. More than that, I wanted her to realize that she would miss me if I was gone.
She wasn’t an easy woman. The trauma she’d gone through with her father had marked her. I wanted to shake Ryder—or worse—for all the harm he’d done to his children. Opal, Ruby, and Pearl would be dealing with the fallout for a long time. Zach would have an easier go of it as the only son, but he was marked by Ryder’s machinations in a different way.
Thankfully, they had strong family bonds and were getting better. Ryder was still a worry, but we would be handling him sooner rather than later. Then Ruby and I could coast to our happily ever after.
At least that’s what I was hoping for. As I propped my head and looked down at her, her back pressed to my chest and her bare shoulder visible above the covers, I briefly worried she would pull back when remembering what we’d done the previous evening. It wasn’t that it wasn’t good—it was freaking amazing—but Ruby was plagued by self-doubt. Her father was the biggest reason. I wanted to erase that self-doubt. I couldn’t do it in one night, though. I had to keep being there for her until she no longer questioned the fact that I was going to show up.
It wouldn’t be easy. I was up for the task.
She made a murmuring noise as she stirred, and I smiled down at her. I wanted the first thing she saw to be my face. Would she realize that my smile was only for her? That I’d never been happier? I wanted to tell her, but she got red-faced and defensive when I was mushy. That was another thing I had to take slowly.
“Hey.” She stretched like a cat when she saw me.
“Hey.” I kissed her forehead and braced myself. Please don’t pull away. That was the only thing that kept going through my head over and over again. Please don’t pull away.
She shifted to face me. Had she realized she was naked yet? I couldn’t tell. Her hand moved to my bare chest. “You’re still here.” She sounded as if she was surprised by that development.
“I’m not going anywhere, Ruby.” It was time to balance my mushiness with facts. “I’m always going to be here, one way or another.”
“What do you mean?”
“I just told you.”
“No.” She shook her head. Her dark hair was snarled from all the sex and snuggling the previous evening. “The one way or another part.”
“Oh.” I smirked. “I just meant that even if you get tired of me and decide you don’t want to be with me, I’ll always be here for you and Rexanne.”
“I am going to kill you if you don’t drop that name.”
Her vehemence made me laugh. “I’m not giving up. Not on any of it.”
“But?” she prodded, her expression guileless. She needed to hear my response.
“But if you decide you can’t love me, then I’ll still be your friend. I’ll still be the father of your baby. We’ll still raise this child together. I’m never leaving you.”
Her expression twisted into one of concentration. It was obvious she was having trouble wrapping her head around what I was saying.
“Your father did you zero favors.” I ran my hands over her back and tried to find a tension point to loosen with my fingers. “He made you feel as if you were less than because you were a woman. That was not fair.”
“My father is a putz.”
“He is. The thing is, I need you to realize not all fathers are like that. My father never made Livvie feel as if she was less than me because she had boobs.”
“You have a great father,” Ruby agreed. “I wish I would’ve had him instead of Ryder.” Her nose wrinkled. “How different would my life have been?”
“Well, I think we would’ve been in trouble procreating if we had the same father. That’s just a guess, though.”
Ruby’s mouth dropped open. “That was so gross. I can’t believe you just said it.”
I laughed. “You’re the one who brought it up.”
“Maybe I should’ve been Bill Carter’s daughter and you should’ve been Ryder Stone’s son. How do you think that would’ve worked out?”
“Zach is a good man. Maybe it would’ve been okay.”
“Zach is a good man because of your family. He practically lived at your house when he was a kid.”
“Yeah.” I pursed my lips. “I also think, if your father had more than one boy, those boys would’ve grown up hating one another.”
“He would’ve tried to pit you against one another,” Ruby agreed. “He tried that with Pearl, Opal, and me. It didn’t work, though, because he wasn’t very good at it.”
“You guys had to figure stuff out on your own. Luckily, you were all smart about it because your mother wasn’t much of a help until recently.” I didn’t realize that what I’d said could’ve been taken as an attack on her mother until it was too late to haul back the words.
“I see my mother in a different light now,” Ruby hedged. She didn’t sound angry as much as tired. “There were times I hated her when I was a kid.” She almost looked embarrassed to admit it. “I thought she was disinterested in us and nothing more than a flying monkey flitting around my father’s Wicked Witch of the West.”
“That’s a fun visual.” I kept rubbing her back, grinning down when I felt something move inside her stomach, which was pressed against my stomach. “Rexanne liked it too.”
Ruby rolled her eyes at my use of the name. “I just mean that she never really fought with him. Now I realize that she did fight with him. She was careful not to do it in front of us, though. She wanted to give us the safest upbringing possible. Her mistake was believing that keeping our family together was the way to do it.”
“Do you think things would’ve been easier for you if she’d divorced your father when you were a kid?”
“Oh, without a doubt. We still would’ve been entitled idiots, but not the same entitled idiots we turned into as teenagers.”
“I don’t remember you being so bad.”
“We weren’t great.” Ruby shrugged. “It is what it is. I think we all managed to grow out of it—thankfully—but we all had rough patches. When I look back at that time, I wish I could change a lot of things.”
“Like … have sixteen-year-old Ruby realize that fourteen-year-old Rex was a catch?” I waggled my eyebrows.
“You are such an idiot,” she said on a laugh. Then, to my simultaneous surprise and delight, she leaned in and pressed her head to my chest.
Everything inside of me went warm and happy. She belonged here, in my arms and heart. I didn’t want her to ever leave this cozy cocoon we’d built. Was it realistic? No. It was what I wanted, though. Just us—and eventually little Rexanne—in this warm cocoon, happy forever.
“Hey.” Ruby snapped her fingers in my face, jolting me out of my reverie. “Where did you just go?”
“Sorry. I was just thinking how good you feel in my arms.” There was no reason to lie, so I didn’t hold back. “It feels as if you should’ve always been here.”
Ruby’s cheeks flooded with color. “How can you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Say that without dying of embarrassment.”
“I’m not embarrassed. I mean it.”
“Yeah, but … what if I shoot you down? What if you allow yourself to be vulnerable and I break your heart?”
Was that what she was worried about? “I would rather take the risk and lose than not take it and always wonder. I know what I want, Ruby. It’s you. It’s this baby. It’s this life. I’m willing to be vulnerable to get it.”
She made a noise in her throat that almost sounded like a sob. Thankfully, she wasn’t crying. “I want this too.” She ran her tongue over her lips. “I’m afraid, though. You have to be patient with me because I’m going to make stupid moves.”
“I’ll be patient.”
“For how long?”
I already knew that answer. I didn’t need to think on it. “Forever.”
She threw up her hands, exasperation spurting out in a huff. “See! That right there!” She waved a finger in my face. “How can you know that you’re in this forever when we’ve only been dating for two weeks?”
“It’s not about dating.” I shook my head. “Stop getting hung up on an arbitrary dating number.”
“Then what is it about?”
“It’s about … trying.” Was that the right word? It felt like the right word. “We’ve been trying to figure things out from that first night. The attempt counts as long as you’re legitimately trying. The past two weeks have been great, but we actually put in the work long before you finally agreed to go out with me. It’s been an ongoing process.”
“You didn’t know what you wanted at first,” she hedged, clearly uncomfortable. “What if you change your mind?”
“See, that’s not exactly true.” I had to be careful here. I didn’t want to overplay my hand. “I did know what I wanted at first. You were the one who kept telling me to think things through, though. That made me wonder if I was doing something wrong because I didn’t need to think things through.
“I was shocked when you told me the news, don’t get me wrong,” I continued. “I couldn’t believe it was happening. I never truly doubted what I wanted, though. I was always going to be a father to this baby.”
“And what about me?” Ruby pressed. “What did you feel about me in that moment?”
“Um … wasn’t I the one who proposed right away?”
“Oh, give me a break.” Her giggle made me go warm all over. “That wasn’t a serious proposal.”
“Actually, it was. It was, however, for the wrong reasons.”
“Because you thought that we needed to be a family for the baby,” she guessed.
“Yes. That was just the first thing that popped into my head. Once you shut that down it allowed me to think outside the box.”
“And now what do you think?”
“That the next time I propose you’re going to say yes.”
Her mouth fell open. “The next time you propose? How can you be so certain that there’s going to be a next time?”
“I just know.” I brushed her hair away from her face with soft touches. “I want this, Ruby. I want to be parents to this baby. More than that, though, I want to be partners with you.”
“And what if I’m too scared to embrace that right away?”
“Then I’ll wait.”
I thought my response would bring a smile to her face, but she frowned. “Just like that you’ll wait?”
“I already told you I would wait forever.”
“Yes, but people say that all the time. Nobody actually means it.”
“I do. I’m always going to be right here.”
The way her eyes crinkled at the corners told me she was running through a bevy of “what if” scenarios. I let her. Finally, she sighed.
“I need you to promise me something,” she said.
I waited for her to finish it out.
“You can’t propose again until after I’ve had the baby.”
Was I surprised that she’d blurted it out like that? Yes. Was I thrown by what she wanted? Not so much. “Tell me why you don’t want me to propose until after the baby,” I prodded to buy myself time before answering.
“Because it’s too soon.” She was firm. “Also … my hormones are everywhere. I do not want to make the biggest—okay, second biggest—decision of my life when I’m full of hormones. I want a clear head and heart.”
“Okay,” I replied amicably. “I can live with that.”
“Just like that?” She was instantly suspicious. “That seems … unlikely … to me. Normally you like to be in control.”
I gave her a wicked grin. “Um … I believe you were the one driving the stick shift last night.”
“You’re such an idiot,” she said on a laugh, closing her eyes. “That’s not what I was even talking about.”
“I know. I like seeing your over-the-top reactions, though.” I leaned in and pressed my forehead to hers. “It was a mistake to propose when I did the first time,” I acknowledged after a beat. “Neither of us were ready. It was a knee jerk response.”
She nodded. “You’re a bit impulsive sometimes.”
“I am. That doesn’t mean my impulses are wrong. I’m still going to marry you.”
“You sound sure of yourself.”
“I am sure of myself. This … is everything I want.” I gestured between us. “I’m not going to push you before you’re ready. I’m going to wait until I know that you want me too.”
“I do want you. That’s what scares me.”
“Then I’ll wait until you’re over the fear.”
She closed her eyes and kissed my chest, causing something inside of me to clench. She really did want this. I could help her get over the fear. In fact, I was looking forward to doing just that.
“We have to deal with my father before we do anything else,” she said. When she opened her eyes, she was determined. “We need him out of our lives. Otherwise, we’re never going to be truly safe and happy. He’s dangerous to our future.”
“He’s dangerous to the future of the casino too,” I agreed. “I think we’re on the right track. I’m going to talk to your mother today. I know she wants to put together a team to talk to Haskins. I know him, though. I think I should be there.”
“Maybe I should be there too. He needs to understand exactly what we—meaning the family—want out of this situation.”
It wasn’t my favorite idea. I needed to buy myself time before coming back with a counter proposal. “Let me talk to your mother, and we’ll go from there, huh?”
She smiled, seemingly relieved. “Okay.”
“Just one more thing,” I prodded.
“What’s that?” She looked genuinely curious.
“I need you to start believing, even if it’s just a little bit.”
“What is it that I’m believing?”
“I’m all in, Ruby. You’re it for me. This family is what I want. This life is what I want. I have no idea what our future will hold. I know I want to figure that out together, though.”
She considered it, swallowed hard, then nodded. “Okay. I’m willing to stop being such a naysayer and embrace what you can give me. Or, rather, what we can give each other. I’m still going to need the occasional bit of bolstering. I can’t help myself.”
I laughed. “I’m more than happy to provide that bolstering.”
“Thank you, Rex. For everything.”
“Including impregnating you?”
She laughed so hard I thought she might choke herself. “I’m especially grateful for that.”
“That’s exactly what I wanted to hear.”