Chapter 10 Obsession Unmasked
OBSESSION UNMASKED
RUBY
With zero ceremony or presentation, Zane gives me a new phone in the morning.
Just drops the sleek black box on the hotel bed like he’s placing a sacrificial offering at my feet.
“What is this?” I ask warily.
“A phone.”
My droll stare can crash galaxies. “No shit, Sherlock. I mean…why?”
“Yours was… compromised.”
“Compromised how?”
He shrugs, all innocence and demon energy. “I threw it out the window.”
My jaw drops. “ZANE! What the fuck?”
“To be fair, it was mid-argument and I thought it was King’s.” He lifts a brow. “Also, I’ve heard you listening to Coldplay, so don’t act surprised,” he adds darkly as he paces.
My hand flies to my chest. “Who hates Coldplay? I’ll tell you who. Demons and assholes.”
He pauses, brows raised. “Are you done having a Q&A with yourself or shall I give you five more minutes, baby?”
“Go fuck yourself, Zane.”
“Nah,” he says casually, “can’t get past my very big balls to do that. You’ll have to fuck me instead. You’re welcome.”
“Jesus. You are definitely high.” I jab a finger at him. “And do not say you’re high on me—”
“Again with the self-Q&A.” He tsks. “You spent too long in that coffee shop. My fault. I should’ve come and found you earlier.”
“Do you hear yourself when you speak,” I demand, “or is that massive ego blocking your ability to act like a rational human being?”
He grins. And it’s unfair. Un-fucking-holy.
The kind of grin that knocks my heartbeat sideways and makes my knees wonder if their contract includes collapse clauses. “Should I even ask?” I mutter.
“I’m just pleased you didn’t say ‘normal person.’” He actually air-quotes it. “Hate that phrase.”
“That is what you hate?”
He shrugs. “Who gets to decide who’s a normal person and who’s not?”
“Hmm… society? The social contract we all signed as civilized human beings?”
“Don’t recall signing up.” He cocks his head. “Must’ve been one of the days I was attempting to fuck myself. Or stroke my… ego.”
He winks so broadly my whole face betrays me with twitch, a tremble. Then a traitorous snort-laugh that becomes a full laugh spilling out before I can stop it.
He stares, his eyes twinkling, bright silver in the morning sunlight.
Then the laughter fades. Slowly.
Too slowly. Replaced with that belly-flipping look that warns me I am about three seconds away from a very stupid decision.
“No,” I say quickly. “Zane—no.”
He stalks me around the bed. One step. Then another. Predatory. Purposeful. “Yes, Ruby,” he murmurs. “Very much yes.”
My ass hits the nightstand and I half-screech in outrage, but he’s already cornered me, bracing my arms above my head, blocking my escape, caging me with heat and scent and impossible intensity.
“You’re so fucking beautiful when you laugh,” he whispers.
“I thought I was beautiful when I was pissed.”
His head tilts. A look that says either how cute, she thinks she’s catching me out, or God, she’s stupid if she doubts this. “You’re beautiful all the fucking time, baby.”
I swallow. Hard.
And once again, I want to slap him just a fraction less than I want to wrap every limb around him and let him ruin my entire moral code.
But I hold the line. Barely. “Pretty sure I’m letting the social contract down by not immediately reporting this to HR,” I deadpan. “Or society. Or a priest.”
“You don’t need any of those,” he says, brushing a thumb across my lower lip. “You need the phone.”
“What is ON this phone?” I demand, narrowing my eyes and eyeing the sleek device.
He smiles, too innocent and way too dangerous. “You’ll see.” He wobbles it at me.
And because I’m weak, and because my old one is now probably a pancake on The Strip, I take it.
Just as the door opens softly, and the most stunning woman I’ve ever seen materializes in the doorway like a sage-scented prophecy.
My eyes widen as she glides forward to the middle of the room like she teleported in. She’s in her mid-sixties maybe in a floating skirt, chunky crystals. Silver hair streaked with lavender.
She smells like sage and moonlight and something my Oregon childhood called witchy stuff the PTA didn’t approve of.
“Oh,” she gasps, clasping both hands over her heart when she sees me. “Oh my frequencies, Zane, you didn’t tell me she was this radiant.”
I jerk back from the thank-you kiss I’m slapping on my man. Or I try to.
Zane tightens his hold on me, barely moves his mouth from mine as he groans. “Mom.”
She ignores him entirely, circling me like she’s evaluating my chakra alignment or checking if I have a soul.
“I saw you on TV,” she declares. “And the energies were vibrating. Unstable. Chaotic. Calling to me.”
Zane rubs his forehead. “Here we go.”
“We must talk,” she insists. “The frequencies are unstable again.”
Zane’s jaw clenches like he’d rather chew through concrete. “Not now.”
“Yes, now,” she snaps, then beams at me. “I’m Mama Draven. I know who you are, of course. You hum.”
I blink. “Um. Yes?”
She sighs dramatically. “Such a rare gift. I felt it from my meditation mat.”
Zane mutters, “It wasn’t a mat, it was a throw rug from Target.”
She whips around. “Energy flows where intention goes, Zane Augustus Draven.” She turns back to me. “I wonder if you could be a siren the way you’re so tuned to him.”
I choke, then my mouth drops. “A what?”
Zane goes rigid—stone, steel, sin and fury. His breath hits the back of my neck like he’s been sucker-punched.
His mom smiles with absolute certainty. “It’s rare. Very rare. Your vibration affects him. Anchors him. Pulls him. Sirens call to the bones, to the blood. They make warriors go to war, and kings go to ruin.”
Zane steps forward like he’s afraid someone else might hear her. “Mom.” But his voice is hoarse. “Mama—”
“You’re vibrating again,” she repeats.
“Mama. Stop it.”
“He vibrates when he’s in high emotion.”
“NO, I DO NOT,” Zane barks.
She pats his cheek. “You’ve always been sensitive to frequency, honey. But her? She’s tuned directly to you.” She turns back to me, eyes softening. “Be gentle with him, dear. Sirens don’t choose their warriors…but their warriors die for them.”
And with that, she sweeps out to the mini fridge like a benevolent hippie ghost.
Silence.
Then Zane grips the bedpost, muscles flexing under the ink, breath ragged. He looks at me like he’s seeing me for the first time—and the thousandth.
He whispers it, half-prayer, half-curse, “I knew it.”
My chest tightens. “Zane, that’s…not…” I pause because I don’t want to insult his mother but this? This is fucking nuts.
Especially when his eyes blaze silver fire. “You’re not leaving me.” It’s a refrain he emphasizes on a daily basis now. And I sigh as he steps forward, jaw tense, voice thick with something wild. “You hear me? After what she just said? After what you do to me?”
I swallow hard. “I didn’t do anything. And you don’t believe that…do you?”
He shakes his head slowly, like I’m the one losing my mind.
I can’t breathe. I’m dying. I’m actually dying of secondhand embarrassment.
Mama Draven returns and clasps my hands gently. “We’ll have dinner, you and me, do a thorough cleansing, darling. But I’m here for my boy. I must realign his energy field before he combusts.”
Zane snarls, “Mom, this is Ruby. And she’s not going anywhere—”
Mama Draven cuts him off with a glare strong enough to exorcise demons. “You combust ONE TIME at the Staples Center and I realign you,” she hisses, “and suddenly you think you’re above a recalibration?”
Zane rakes a hand through his hair. “Holy shitting saints, save me.”
I giggle. I can’t help it, this is so surreal.
He looks at me sharply at the sound, and goes still.
Still like the first time I hummed. Still like something inside him locks into place.
“You hear that?” Mama Draven whispers triumphantly.
“She laughed,” Zane murmurs back, eyes devouring me softly. “And yeah. I fucking heard.”
Mama Draven smiles and fuck me but it’s the same gorgeous, mildly-deranged glow her son gets when he’s about to ruin me with either a kiss or a confession.
Suddenly I know exactly where Saint Sin learned to be sanctified crazy. He got it straight from this stunning, woo-woo menace of a woman.
I wake up to screaming.
Not literal screaming.
Phone screaming.
Notification screaming. A digital tsunami of bells, dings, emojis, and all-caps hysteria. My new phone—Zane’s “gift”—is having a meltdown on the nightstand.
Hundreds of alerts. Jesus, thousands.
#SIRENSONG is trending.
So is #SaintSinHasAMuse and #WhoIsShe??? and, horrifyingly, #RubyLaneIsFake #HomewreckingBarista #SaintsDontNeedSirens
My stomach drops so violently I nearly fall out of bed. “What the actual fuck—”
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
I whirl.
Zane stands at the foot of the bed, naked, viscerally beautiful with arms folded, hair messy, skin glowing with smug satisfaction.
“Zane,” I whisper, voice cracking. “What did you do?”
He lifts his phone, screen still open on a music app. With a track titled just one word: Siren.
My blood pressure leaves the chat. “Please tell me you didn’t—”
“I did,” he says proudly, thrilled with himself. “I posted the piano track.”
I choke. “YOU WHAT?”
“The world deserved to hear what you do to me.”
“I didn’t even know it existed until five seconds ago!”
He shrugs. “Now millions do.”
My heart pounds in my ears.
His fans are losing their minds, some crying, some making edit videos, some drawing fanart, some speculating wildly that I’m his new girlfriend, some digging through my old social media photos, an insane number already hating me for breathing.
“I can’t believe you did this,” I whisper. “People are searching me. People are attacking me. Zane, you didn’t ask—”
“Why would I ask?” he demands. His eyebrows crash down, offended. “I’m not asking to breathe. I’m not asking to sing. I’m not asking to want you.”
How in the world has he— “This isn’t the same thing!”
“Yes, it is.” He steps closer. “It’s all the same thing.”
Before I can argue, the door creaks open and Mama Draven pokes her head in.