Chapter 26 After the Ruin, Us
AFTER THE RUIN, US
RUBY
Zane stays on his knees in front of me for a long moment, breathing like he’s trying to relearn how, staring at me like I just handed him the universe and told him it was his to keep.
“I fucking love you, Ruby.”
Tears flow faster as I slide my fingers into his hair. “Oh God…Zane.”
“I’ll spend the rest of my life making this right,” he repeats, voice low, rough, reverent.
My heart squeezes painfully. “Then start by listening, okay?”
He nods instantly, too instantly, like he’s ready to carve the words into his bones.
My thumbs stroke his face, still wet from tears, still open in a way that guts me. He leans into my touch with a small, broken sound that shouldn’t undo me but does.
“I want a say,” I whisper. “In everything. Where we live. How we do this. When we do anything. You don’t get to steamroll my life because you’re scared of losing me.”
His throat works hard. “Okay,” he murmurs. “Whatever you want.”
Tremors roll through him and I see that he’s holding himself together by sheer force of will, not impulse, not possessive instinct.
But then, because Zane is Zane, he ruins it.
“We’ll have a wedding,” he says suddenly, the words rushing out like a dam cracked open. “A huge one. Lights everywhere. A string quartet. I’ll fly your whole family out. I already thought up the vows—mine will destroy every man alive. And I found a villa in Tuscany and—”
“Zane.” My voice sharpens.
He freezes. Blinking. Realizing he’s fucking up again in real time.
He deflates and drops his forehead to my stomach as both hands cradle my hips. He breathes out a long, shuddering apology. “Or not,” he whispers. “Whatever you want, my love.”
My chest twists. “Say that again?” I whisper.
He lifts his head, and his eyes glow, silver ringed with red from crying, silver warmed by the kind of emotion I don’t think he’s ever shown another living soul.
“My love,” he says again, steadier. Then he adds, voice reverently, “You’re the verse I waited my whole life to write. The line that saved the song. The note that pulled me back from the edge.”
My breath catches. “Zane…”
He touches my cheek. Barely. Soft as breath. “You don’t have to cry, baby.”
“I’m pregnant,” I murmur. “I think crying is my new normal.”
His mouth curves in something tender and faintly smug. “Pregnant women get extra horny too.”
I gape at him. “Zane—”
“I read about it,” he says solemnly. “I’m willing to serve. Selflessly. Heroically. Anytime. Any room. Any hour. Use me.”
A startled laugh bursts out of me, wet, shaky and unstoppable.
He brightens like I handed him oxygen as soft footsteps echo down the hall. I’m reminded that we still have a live audience to this carnage.
The band, Freddie, Mama Draven, all hovering like nervous wildlife.
“Ruby?” Jude calls gently. “We heard—um—laughing? Is everything okay?”
Zane’s head snaps toward the door. “We’re having a baby,” he announces.
I slap his arm. “Zane!”
The hallway explodes with noise. Cheers. A muffled “holy shit.”
Mama Draven humming a celebratory note in some astral frequency only she understands.
He opens the door and I try to hide my face in his shoulder but I’m grinning like an idiot and he knows it.
Ten minutes later, it finally dawns on him what time it is.
“Hey, fuckers! It’s the middle of the night,” he growls. “And I’d like to spend it with my future wife, so everyone needs to fuck off.”
“Zane—”
He looks down at me, wiggles his brows, and opens his arms.
I brace for the familiar routine—being thrown over his shoulder like a barbarian trophy—but he shakes his head.
“No more of that,” he murmurs. “You’re carrying precious cargo.”
He scoops me into his arms, gently and carefully as if I’m made of something irreplaceable.
My heart folds in on itself as he carries me upstairs and lays me on the bed, covering my body with his, kissing me slow, sweet, reverent, until the anger and fear dissolve into something aching and real.
We make love—soft, slow, tender—every touch a vow he’s too undone to speak aloud.
When I’m sprawled under him, breathless and warm, I drag my wrist into the moonlight. The tattoo he designed for me glows softly where his lyrics circle my skin.
His gaze follows my fingers.
“And this,” I whisper, touching it, “means something. It anchors me.”
He brushes hair from my face, gentle hands, reverent eyes.
“But you know what I wouldn’t mind being surprised with?” I say.
His gaze sharpens. “What, baby?”
“A…ring.”
Zane freezes. Then vaults off the bed, gloriously naked, and crosses the room, enters the wall safe with the urgency of a man defusing a bomb, and returns holding a velvet box.
My breath stutters as he opens it.
Inside sits an exquisite diamond, haloed by deep, blood-red, breathtaking ruby stones set in platinum, catching every sliver of light.
My hand flies to my mouth. “God, Zane…”
He slides it onto my finger, slow and careful, his one hand trembling. “Had this started the morning I came for you in the coffee shop,” he rasps.
Of course he did.
It fits perfectly.
“You’re mine,” he murmurs softly. “And I’m yours. Forever.”
Tears spill down my cheeks.
He doesn’t give me time to overthink. He doesn’t even let me wipe my face.
I sink to my knees and take him into my mouth, humming the melody he wrote for me—the one that belongs to us, to this baby, to the life he’s fighting for.
He curses my name, voice cracking, hands buried in my hair, body shaking under the sound he can’t survive and can’t live without.
After he comes down my throat, he pulls me up, strokes my cheek, and lifts me into his arms again.
He holds me close, foreheads touching, breath shared.
“I love you so fucking much,” he whispers. “We’re going to have the best life, Ruby Draven. The fucking best.”