Chapter 36
THIRTY-SIX
Charlotte
I’ve felt a lot of things when it comes to Ruin.
At fourteen, it had been nothing more than a faint awareness of the man who stood closest to my brother. A brother who had dismissed my existence within a day of me stepping into that house Savage dragged me to.
In those first few months, I was always at Ruin’s place. Not because of him. Not even for Mama Deb. But for Dane. Because wherever Ruin was, Dane followed.
Slowly, that awareness turned into something uglier. Jealousy.
Dane—no, Wolf—was more of a brother to him than he ever was to me.
As the months passed, I started trailing after the pair. To the clubhouse. Their hangouts. Even their high school graduation party.
I inserted myself wherever I could. Every second of it fed that envy—sharp and relentless—until it started to twist into resentment toward Ruin. For having something I couldn’t.
I don’t think I ever noticed when it changed. When the lines blurred, and my feelings started to distort.
Maybe it was always there, waiting for the right push.
Maybe it was Glory. She saw it. Recognized it for what it could become. And twisted it into something else entirely.
By fifteen, I was deep in it. I became the doe-eyed girl who thought she wanted Ruin. Convinced that what I felt was something real.
My gaze changed, losing that bitter edge of jealousy and softened into something else. Something warmer. Something dangerous. Adoration, maybe.
Now, when I recall those months, I realize the indisputable truth.
I was a fifteen-year-old girl who had lost the only parent she knew and was thrown into a world that never once tried to catch her when she stumbled.
I was already unmoored. So I clung to that feeling like it was something solid. Something mine.
I let it take root, all while Glory fed it. I started to build entire days around it. Around him. Around a version of Ruin that probably only existed in my head. A version that never existed outside of my need to believe in it.
And then that bubble of my delusion shattered by the menacing hand around my throat that made sure of the decimation.
The measured pressure that wasn’t meant to hurt—but instill panic.
The way my body froze. The way my voice broke into whimpers he ignored. The pleas that never really reached him.
That was Ruin. Not the one I had built. Not the one I had daydreamed about. But the real one.
At nineteen—after four years of orbiting him, of shaping pieces of my life around that illusion—I finally understood what loneliness actually meant.
Not just being alone but knowing you are.
I already knew hurt. My mother made sure of that.
I knew fear too. The kind that seeps into your bones from the men she surrounded herself with.
But everything else? Everything that followed? That was the gift that Wardens of Sin bestowed upon me.
If I’m being fair, the real Ruin gave me something else too.
Hatred. And eventually, indifference.
But love? That’s where everything breaks. I can’t reconcile that word with him.
Not because it’s coming from him, really. Processing it means accepting something else entirely. That the man who once wrapped his hands around my throat—is the same man who inked those hands with restraint.
That the man who didn’t protect me—who chose the recklessness of club bylaws over due diligence, even hesitation—is the same one now trying to put my safety above everything else.
I’ve heard him more times than I can count. With Wolf. Ryder. Hound. Bulldog.
Shutting down plans that made perfect sense. Plans that would’ve otherwise worked but carried the slightest risk to me.
He argues. So does Wolf. They push back. Refuse. And choose to recalibrate instead. Like my safety is suddenly non-negotiable.
And that does something to me I don’t know how to process.
How could he be the same man? The man who is part of the reason I lost my peace in the first place. And yet—he’s also the only one who’s tried to rebuild it.
It’s seven in the morning, and I’m already reeling with these splintering thoughts with barely four hours of sleep.
It doesn’t help that they revolve around the one man I’ve been avoiding since coming back here.
Shit. Even that thought doesn’t give me the relief it should, because his stupid ass started to miraculously respect the boundaries I set.
I hate it. I absolutely hate the fact that it’s no longer indifference that I feel for him. That it’s not his guilt, or apologies, or even his self-loathing that has penetrated my walls.
It’s the love he’s so willingly admitting to me. A love that has currently been shaping my peace.
And I pray to any higher power that it doesn’t start to coax me into developing feelings for him. For the real Ruin.
God. Please, no.
I stare at the last bite of my peanut butter and jam sandwich. The direct evidence of his love.
“No!” I snap at the damn thing angrily. Then, huffing, I finish it.
After freshening up for the day, I steel myself at the door. Preparing myself to face him again today.
The moment I open the door, I freeze.
Leaning against the wall, lost in the screen of his phone, is Ryder.
He looks up when I make my way out, but just like every time he’s been around me since our kiss, he stares through me. A tight smile on his face that doesn’t reach his eyes.
“Good morning,” he says, but his tone is hollow.
I gulp hard, struggling to understand why it’s him on my duty today. “Where… where’s Ruin?”
God. I no longer feel the ache in my chest when I form that word. I’m pretty sure it’ll be a while before I can even utter his given name.
Ryder shrugs casually. “At his parents’ house. He hadn’t seen them since the ‘lockdown’ so he swapped with me.”
I haven’t seen them either. Even Torch doesn’t show up in person for church anymore, not wanting to leave Mama by herself.
As far as I’ve been told, he joins in remotely, even though their house is barely a ten-minute walk away.
Silence takes over. Ryder stares at me, waiting. Like I’ll have more to say. But I just nod numbly.
He sighs and starts walking toward the main hall. I follow—ignoring the sharp pang of disappointment that Ruin purposely had Ryder take over for today.
“Alright. I’ll be working with Bug through the afternoon. You got anything on your agenda?”
I shake my head, realizing stupidly that he isn’t even looking at me. So I finally mumble a quiet ‘no’.
My agenda. What a joke. All I can do—or am allowed to do, in this situation—is keep my eyes and ears open. All while looking over my shoulder in case Hell’s Army has clawed its way in deeper.
Ryder and I spent the whole morning in Ruin’s office.
The clacking of his keyboard is the only sound enveloping the room.
It also doesn’t help that I’ve made myself oddly comfortable on the couch, which is also Ruin’s bed. That awareness is the only thing running through my mind. Even as I try to stay productive.
His scent settles deep—something earthy mixed with soap and a hint of citrus.
Then I practically lie down, reading my BSW coursework for the next semester on my phone.
But the words start to blur. I try my best to convince myself that it’s exhaustion from barely getting any sleep last night.
Maybe even a hangover, but that’d be pretty weak of me to admit—even to myself—that it barely took me two glasses of wine to get here.
I don’t realize when the clock hits noon. I’m barely reading the case study I have open in front of me. My blinks start to last longer and longer. The next thing I know, I jolt awake, almost panicked.
My phone is no longer resting lazily on my chest. In fact, I’m sideways on the couch. A duvet wrapped snugly around me. His duvet.
There’s no clacking of keys in the room anymore. Just silence. Which is why I naively conclude that I’m alone and snuggle deeper into the musky scent. Inhaling deep.
A throat clears, and I nearly jump out of my skin.
Yanking the duvet off, I hastily sit up blinking away the sleep, bleary-eyed and embarrassed as hell.
My vision finally clears, and there he is. Ruin. Wearing a small smirk on his face, probably because he caught me sniffing his stupid duvet.