Chapter 5 - Ruby
I feel like an idiot.
Crying in a motel bathroom, kneeling on a floor that's seen better decades, in front of a man I met approximately four hours ago. A man who's covered in tattoos and has a scar on his face and just beat up two people tonight, one of whom I'm fairly certain has a broken jaw.
I am the definition of pathetic right now.
"Sorry," I say quickly, pulling back from his hand, from the devastating gentleness of his thumb against my cheek.
I stand, busying myself with tidying away the first aid kit.
Caps back on bottles, wrappers in the trash, everything in its place.
"I don't know why I… I'm not usually like this. I'm sorry."
"Stop apologizing."
"I just… It's been a long day, and I'm tired, and you were—" I stop myself before I say *kind*. Before I say *the first person in years who did something for me without wanting something back.* "I'm just tired," I finish lamely.
"Okay."
He's still sitting on the edge of the tub, those massive tattooed arms resting on his knees, watching me with those gray eyes that see too much. The bathroom light catches the scar on his cheek, and I have the most inappropriate urge to trace it with my fingers.
"You should go," I say. "It's late, and you probably have—"
"You said stay."
I did say that. I did, in a moment of weakness that I'm now thoroughly regretting. "I know, but I wasn't thinking straight. I don't want to keep you from—"
"Ruby." His voice is quiet but it stops me cold. "I said I'd stay. So, I'm staying. Stop trying to take it back."
I stare at him. "Why?"
"Because you asked me to."
"But you probably—" I stop.
What does he think of me? That's what's really happening here. That's the spiral I can't stop falling into. He sat through my breakdown and now he's looking at me with those unreadable eyes and I can't figure out what's going on behind them.
He probably thinks I'm a disaster. A crying, curvy disaster with a kid in the next room and a first aid kit full of mostly expired supplies. He probably already regrets the ride, regrets following me upstairs, regrets all of it.
Men like him don't stick around for women like me.
I know this. I learned it young, learned it thoroughly, learned it in ways that left bruises both visible and not.
"Come sit down," Havoc says, pushing himself up from the tub.
The bathroom is so small that when he stands, he takes up most of the available space, and I have to press back against the sink to avoid our bodies touching.
Or maybe that's an excuse. Maybe I'm pressing back against the sink because if he gets any closer I'm going to do something monumentally stupid.
He moves past me into the main room, and I follow, pulling the bathroom door mostly closed so the light doesn't wake Marcus.
My son shifts in his sleep, throwing one small leg out from under the blanket, and I go to him automatically, pulling the blanket back up, smoothing a curl away from his face.
Gap-toothed smile even in his sleep. My whole heart, this boy.
I feel Havoc watching from behind me, but for once it doesn't make me nervous. Feels different from being watched by the drunk downstairs, or by Marcus's father when he was cataloguing my failures. This feels like being witnessed rather than surveilled.
I settle on the edge of the bed beside Marcus, and Havoc takes the chair Mrs. Amber vacated, pulling it to face me. It's too small for him, looks almost comical, this giant of a man folded into a motel chair with a floral print that's twenty years out of style.
He doesn't seem to notice.
"Tell me about her," he says.
I blink. "Who?"
"Your grandmother. You mentioned her. Said she was the last person who..." He pauses, seeming to search for the right words. "Who did something for you. Who you let in."
I stare at him. "You want to hear about my grandmother."
"Yeah."
"Why?"
Something moves across his face. Not quite a smile, but close. "Because I want to know your story."
No one has ever said that to me. Not like that. Not with that quiet certainty, like my story is something worth knowing rather than something to be fixed or pitied or used against me.
Even my grandmother, who loved me fiercely, was more practical than sentimental. She showed love through action, through having dinner ready and clothes clean and showing up when no one else did. She never sat across from me and said *I want to know your story.*
"That's..." I clear my throat. "That's a strange thing to say."
"Probably."
"Most people don't actually want to know other people's stories. They just want to share their own."
"I'm not most people."
That's the understatement of the century.
I look at my hands, folded in my lap, and try to figure out where to start.
How do you summarize the kind of childhood that sounds like a country song when you say it out loud?
Mother who loved drugs more than she loved me.
Father I never met. A little girl bouncing between relatives until her grandmother took her in at age seven and finally gave her something that felt like solid ground.
"Her name was Delia," I start quietly. "Delia Lane.
She was my mother's mother, which is a lot to forgive someone for, raising the woman who did what my mother did.
But she never made excuses for her. Never pretended my mom wasn't who she was.
" I pause. "My grandmother used to say that some people are born with holes in them that can't be filled with love, only with whatever substance comes closest. She said it with sadness, not anger.
I never understood that until I was older. "
Havoc is utterly still across from me. Not the stillness of someone waiting for me to finish so they can talk. The stillness of someone actually listening.
It disarms me completely.
"She took me in when I was seven," I continue.
"My mom had been arrested again and there was no one else.
Grandma Delia lived in a small house in Dayton, Ohio.
Three bedrooms, one bathroom, a kitchen that always smelled like cornbread and lavender.
" I smile at the memory, involuntary and aching.
"She worked two jobs her whole life. Cleaning office buildings at night and working a register at a pharmacy during the day. Never complained once."
"She sounds tough," Havoc says.
"She was the toughest person I've ever known." I glance at Marcus, sleeping through all of this. "She's the reason I know how to be tough. She showed me that you could survive hard things and still be kind. That strength wasn't about not hurting. It was about hurting and showing up anyway."
"She raised you alone?"
"Pretty much. My grandfather was long gone by then.
So, it was just the two of us." I pause.
"She's the one who made me feel like I was worth something.
Like being loved wasn't conditional on being perfect or quiet or small.
" My voice cracks on the last word, and I hate it.
I hate that my body still betrays me when I talk about her.
"She died when I was twenty. Heart attack.
No warning. Here one day, gone the next. "
"I'm sorry," Havoc says, and the simplicity of it, no platitudes, no silver lining, just those two words delivered with complete sincerity, slams me harder than anything elaborate could.
"Thank you." I exhale. "After she died I was just... completely alone. I thought I was in love with Marcus's father by then. Thought he was my next solid ground." I laugh, short and humorless. "I was wrong about that."
Havoc's jaw tightens, barely perceptible, but I catch it.
"He was charming at first," I say, because I want to tell the truth tonight and the truth starts there.
"They always are, right? Charming and attentive and making you feel like you're the only person in the world worth looking at.
" I pause. "Then my grandmother died, and I was grieving and vulnerable, and I guess he decided that was the right time to show me who he really was. "
"What did he do to you?"
"What didn't he do." It's not a question.
"Mostly he made me feel worthless. Made sure I knew exactly what he thought of my body, my intelligence, my choices.
The physical stuff came later, after Marcus was born.
" I look at my son, that fierce protective love rising in my chest. "The day he shoved Marcus…
He was barely two years old, just in the way, and he shoved him into a doorframe, that was the last day. We were gone by midnight."
The silence that follows is so complete I can hear Marcus breathing.
"Good," Havoc says finally, low and rough. "You got out."
"We got out." I meet his eyes. "That's all that matters."
"It matters what you did to get there too." He leans forward, elbows on his knees, those gray eyes steady on mine. "Leaving took courage."
I laugh softly. "Leaving took terror. I was absolutely petrified. Still am, most days."
"Courage and terror aren't mutually exclusive."
I stare at him. "That's surprisingly profound for—" I stop myself.
The corner of his mouth twitches. "For what? For a tattooed biker who beats people up for fun?"
"I wasn't going to say that."
"Sure you weren't."
There it is again, that almost-smile, and God help me it does something catastrophic to my insides.
He's sitting there in that ridiculous floral chair, bandaged hands loose between his knees, looking at me like what I just said wasn't pathetic or depressing but instead like he's taking every word and treating it with utmost care.
"No one's ever..." I start, then shake my head.
"Say it," he says.
"No one's ever told me they wanted to know my story. That's all." I feel heat rise in my cheeks. "It sounds stupid when I say it out loud. Obviously people ask about people, that's just being normal—"