Chapter 7 - Ruby
I slept maybe three hours.
The rest of the night I spent staring at the water stain on the motel ceiling that looks vaguely like a rabbit, going over and over and over everything until my thoughts wore grooves in my brain like a scratched record that won't move past the same damaged section.
I told him everything.
Everything. My mother, my grandmother, Marcus's father, the midnight escape with nothing but my son and a duffel bag.
Things I've never told anyone. Things I barely let myself think about because they live in that part of me that's still bruised, still tender, still figuring out how to scar over properly.
And he listened. He sat in that ridiculous floral chair and he listened like what I was saying mattered, like my story was worth the space it took up in the room.
And then he told me his.
I turn onto my side, facing Marcus, who's sprawled diagonally across the bed the way he always does, taking up three times more space than a five-year-old has any right to. His curls are wild against the pillow. One fist is tucked under his chin.
How does a person grow up the way Jake Mercer grew up? Eleven foster homes, no one staying, no one choosing him, and come out the other side capable of that kind of listening? That kind of gentleness, buried under all that severity?
And the kiss.
I press my fingers to my lips in the dark like I can still feel it, which is pathetic. It lasted maybe four seconds. It was barely anything.
And then he was gone. Apologizing, backing away, out the door before I could form a single coherent word.
What does that mean? That he regrets it? That it was a mistake? That I'm a woman he feels sorry for, a charity case he got too close to in a weak moment?
The old familiar voice, the one that sounds suspiciously like Marcus's father on a bad night, is happy to fill in the blanks.
*Obviously he regrets it. Look where you're living. Look at your situation. What would a man like that want with someone like you?*
I shut that voice down hard. I've gotten better at that over the past two years. Not perfect, but better.
By five in the morning, I give up on sleep entirely, shower quietly so I don't wake Marcus, and make us both breakfast on the tiny two-burner stove.
Scrambled eggs and toast, the breakfast I can make with my eyes closed.
Marcus wakes up at six-thirty with his usual demand to know what superheroes eat for breakfast and whether eggs count.
"Definitely," I tell him, kissing the top of his head. "Spider-Man loves scrambled eggs."
"Does he put ketchup on them?"
"Absolutely."
He considers this very seriously. "Okay then."
Mrs. Amber arrives at noon, cheerful and carrying a paper bag that smells like the bakery down the street. She presses a pineapple bun into my hands before I can leave and tells me I look tired and should eat more.
I eat the bun on the bus.
The forty-five minute ride gives me entirely too much time to think, which is the last thing I need.
I watch Vegas scroll past the scratched bus window, the gradual transformation from residential neighborhoods to tourist corridors, the shift from ordinary city to the version of itself Vegas sells to strangers.
I need this job.
That's what I keep coming back to. One hundred and sixty-three dollars last night, that's what matters. That's what's real. Not kisses that lasted four seconds, not gray eyes that see too much, not confessions exchanged in motel bathroom fluorescent light.
Marcus needs new shoes. I need to save first and last month's rent on an apartment. I need to find out about evening classes at UNLV, community college, anything that moves me one step closer to the nursing degree I've been postponing since I was nineteen years old.
I need to be a functioning adult, not a woman who can't stop touching her own lips on public transportation.
So, here's the plan: I go in, I work my shift, I make good tips, and if I see Havoc I am professional and pleasant and completely unbothered. I am a woman who has been through actual hard things, real things, and I can handle being in the same building as a man who kissed me and apologized for it.
The plan lasts approximately until I walk through the employee entrance and Liz falls into step beside me.
"You survived night one," she says brightly. "Ready for night two?"
"Ready," I say, with more conviction than I feel. "Has to be better than yesterday, right?"
"I mean... statistically? Probably yes."
"You're not filling me with confidence."
"You dumped beer on the club enforcer and he didn't fire you, ban you, or spontaneously combust," she says, pushing open the locker room door. "I'd call that a solid foundation."
I change into my uniform—clean black tank top, black pants, the Steel Sinners apron, and take an extra thirty seconds with my hair.
My curls are cooperating today, which feels like a minor miracle, and I pull them back more loosely than I usually do because the tight bun I wore yesterday gave me a headache.
This is not because Havoc's hand felt caring when he adjusted my helmet last night. This is because of headaches. Practical reasons.
I look at myself in the mirror. Dark eyes, dark curls, the beauty marks on my cheek that Marcus likes to connect with his finger like dot-to-dot puzzles. I look tired, which I am, but I look determined, which I also am.
*You can do this.*
My grandmother's voice, still present after five years. Still showing up exactly when I need it.
*You can do this, baby girl. You've done harder things.*
"Okay," I tell my reflection. "Okay."
The casino floor is already moving when I start my shift at two, the afternoon crowd a different animal from the Thursday night crew.
More retirees, more tourists on a budget, the steady rhythm of people feeding money into slot machines with the particular zen of those who've made peace with losing.
I find my section, twelve through twenty-four, and I get moving.
Take orders, deliver drinks, collect empties, smile, repeat.
The rhythm comes easier today than yesterday, the geography of my section already more familiar.
I remember that table fifteen likes their drinks delivered from the left because the guy in seat A is missing peripheral vision on his right.
I remember that Miguel goes faster if you call your orders in groups of two.
I'm delivering a round to table nineteen—three beers and a vodka tonic when it happens.
Not a dramatic entrance. Not a statement. Just a voice, low and close, coming from directly behind me.
"Ruby."
I finish setting down the last beer before I turn, because my hands are full and I refuse to spill again, and because the extra three seconds give me the opportunity to rearrange my face into something that doesn't betray the fact that my heart just launched itself into my throat.
Havoc is standing a foot behind me, and he looks…
He looks like he hasn't slept either. Which shouldn't make me feel better but somehow does.
There are shadows under his gray eyes, a tension around his jaw that suggests a night spent in his own head.
He's in his usual uniform—black t-shirt, jeans, his cut over the top, and he's watching me with an expression that's trying very hard to be neutral.
He's not quite pulling it off.
"I need to talk to you," he says, low enough that the players at table nineteen can't hear. "In private."
I stare at him. "Are you serious right now?"
"Yeah."
"It's my second day." I keep my voice equally quiet, equally controlled, very proud of myself for both. "And after yesterday—" I stop, because I'm not airing what happened yesterday on the casino floor. "I can't just disappear. I'm working."
"I know." Something moves across his face. Not quite discomfort, but close. "I'm sorry. About last night. That's what I need to… I need to talk to you about it."
"You apologized last night," I say. "Several times. Very efficiently, actually, right before you left."
The faintest wince. "Ruby—"
"I really can't just wander off in the middle of my shift, Havoc. I need this job. This is my second day, and I need it to go well, and I can't be the girl who disappears with the—" I stop again.
"With the enforcer?" His voice is dry.
"I was going to say with a club member."
"If anyone says anything, I'll tell them I needed you for something." The way he says it, like this is a completely reasonable thing to say, makes me want to laugh and also throw something at him. "Nobody will question it."
"That's a little arrogant, don't you think?"
"It's accurate," he says, and then, before I can respond to that, his voice drops lower and loses its defensive edge entirely. "Please, Ruby. Ten minutes. That's all I'm asking."
The please undoes me. Not because it's a magic word, not because I'm a pushover, but because I don't think Havoc says please very often.
I don't think he asks for things very often.
He handles and protects and enforces, but asking, actually asking for something that seems like a different language for him entirely.
I think about last night. His hands shaking when we were in the bathroom, something he probably didn't realize I noticed. The way he looked at Marcus sleeping.
I think about how safe I felt on the back of his bike with my arms around his waist and the city blurring past us.
I've had so little of that feeling in my life that I've almost forgotten what it is.
Safety. If there's a chance, even a small, probably stupid, likely complicated chance, that I can sit with that feeling for ten more minutes, then I'm going to take it.
Because I'm tired of denying myself the small things out of fear.
I'm tired of flinching away from anything that might be good.
Besides, he ran last night but came back today; that has to mean something.
"Ten minutes," I say.