Chapter 16—Ruby #2
The creak of the door pulls my attention, and I see it’s Kooper.
We hold each other’s stare. I haven’t spoken to him since he told me about Dad.
We’ve seen each other, just haven’t spoken.
When I left him in the clearing, I went back and helped.
I did everything asked and not asked. Then, when that was all done, I came here.
I go back to the club to rest when Bass comes in.
I’m not about to go home. I’ve got a place at the club.
Always did. A room just for me. Dad had it that way.
Might seem like torture to go back to the place he ran, but I’d rather be in a bed and a room that has less of me and him than what I have at my childhood home.
Where his smell still lingers. Where things he left out in hopes of putting away would still be there.
It’s what happened when Mom died. I know it’ll be the same for him now that he’s gone.
I’m strong. Or I like to pretend I am. But I’m not strong enough to go home yet.
Bass sits in the chair beside the bed and pulls Milly’s hand to him, kissing her knuckles. “He didn’t win, sweetheart. He thinks he has, but he hasn’t. I promise you won’t wake to having him in your nightmares. I swear it. To both you and Ollie. I’ll bring you his damn head to have you rest easy.”
Rising, he pushes her hair back and kisses her head before leaning his forehead against hers. I don’t know if he whispers something or just soaks in her touch, but he only hovers for a moment before he stands and straightens.
“Look after her for me,” he says, and then he’s out of the room, leaving me alone with Kooper.
I look at him and wait. I know there’s more. Bass wouldn’t be saying that, leaving like that, if there wasn’t.
“We’re going after them.”
“Who?” He knows I’m asking who’s going, not who they’re going after.
“Bass, Domino. The prospect who was with us before.”
I nod. The prospect will be a brother soon with the way he keeps making waves in the right way. First with going after Ollie to bring him back and now this, it seems.
“And me.”
I flex my hands, but he can’t see them as I have them folded around me.
Seems to be my permanent position of late.
Like if I hold myself tight enough, I’ll be able to hold myself together.
But I can’t. Not the way I felt for a split second when I was in his arms. But I hate him.
I hate him for telling me my worst fear.
I hate him for being the one who was there and didn’t call me.
I hate that he got to see my dad’s last moments.
And I hate that I wake up calling out his name and wanting him there to hold me just for a second longer. To make me feel like I’m truly not alone and that I have the club, and him, behind me.
“When?”
“Tonight. We’re on a flight going out in a few hours. Got a few contacts working on getting us somewhere to stay and some intel about Ivan’s place. We want to get this done and come back before it’s too late.”
Too late and miss the funeral.
I’ve been asked a few times about it, but when someone asks about Dad, I shut down. I try not to, but it just happens. It’s like my world closes up shop and all the color is drained from it, and for a moment, I have no idea where I am or who I’m with. Just long enough for them to stop asking me.
I know it’ll happen. Casper mentioned that they want to get a few other chapters down here before they do it, to give him the full respect and send-off he deserves.
But unless Kooper and his group of men can take out Ivan, the head of the Russian mafia, in a few days or a week tops, I doubt he’ll be there.
Which means I’ll be doing it alone. Standing alone. At a grave.
The only thing I want is for it to be open casket. But the club refuses. They say he needs to go out with honor. And a busted-up face ain’t the respect he deserves.
I don’t get it, but I’m not fighting it.
Why? To look like a little girl who can’t keep her shit together?
Half the club already looks at me with pity in their eyes.
I heard others say they hate that, but I had never seen it before.
Now that I do, I get it. It makes me want to scream at them and then take a bat or a chair, anything I can reach, and just start beating the pity out of their eyes.
Probably not a normal response.
Mama Bear suggested therapy. I think the look I gave her had her running away screaming.
She’s never mentioned it again. Nor has she approached me alone since.
All the old ladies have tried to support me in one way or another, offering food and words.
I’m sure I’ll appreciate it months, maybe years, from now.
But right now, I don’t want to think about it.
I don’t want to be reminded that my world has ended.
I want to stare out windows and pretend it’s all a bad dream, that Dad’s just running late because he doesn’t want to drive in the rain.
“Are you going to be okay?”
His words pull a snort, then a smile, then a laugh out of me. More and more laughter, like I’m locked up in the looney bin and was just told that the nurses who give me drugs and tie me down to my bed at night are my friends.
He lets me have the moment. And when it’s over, I look back out the window. A fog has set in, preventing me from seeing anything but the rain hitting the glass.
“What do you care?”
I hear his footsteps, and when I turn to look at him standing directly in front of me, I don’t flinch. He’s close. Like that one time we were arguing over some stupid townie giving me a ride. Our toes touch, but nothing else. It’s almost painful how much I resist reaching out.
He must want to hit me. To smack some sense into me or something.
No other reason for the vein on his forehead to be ticking.
Or his arm muscles to be bulging. I’ve only seen him like this once before, when a former prospect called me a cunt.
Even now I internally flinch at the word.
I hate it. It might just be a word, and it’s stupid of me, but it holds power over me.
It makes me mad on too many levels. I knocked the guy out when he called me that.
Kooper was mad till he figured out what happened.
Then he got like he is now and knocked the guy out a second time when he woke up and confirmed my story.
Whatever. If he thinks I’ll respond better with a bit of slapping around, then I’m all for it. I’m more sick of my mood than he is, and it’s only been two days. Two days of nothing but darkness seeping in and showing me how bleak my future is.
“I care, Ruby. We all care.”
I look at him. Searching his eyes and seeing he honestly believes it. And it’s sweet, I guess, but not what I need right now. I don’t want words. I want… I want a hug. But I’ll never ask for one. That would make me weak, and I can’t deal with that.
Having Kooper see me as weak does things to my stomach.
It’s as if it would be the worst mistake of my life.
He watched me fall apart, but I can rationalize that because I was just told about Dad.
Anyone would break down when they’re that close to a person.
It makes sense. But doing it again? Leaning on him in the process of more falling down and wanting someone to put me back together again?
I don’t think I can handle that.
“The job’s done. Dad’s….” I clear my throat, blink a few times, and shake my head to get rid of the cry that’s threatening to come up. “Dad’s dead. I’m no longer the club’s princess. I’m just a townie now. You don’t have to care anymore.”
He’s quick to reach out and grab the back of my neck, his thumb on my pulse point as he brings me close and leans his head down.
My eyes widen at his actions, and I grab his arm with one hand and put the other up to his chest to push him off.
But my movements stop at the look of fierceness in his eyes.
At the set jawline and his breath fanning my face.
His scent, some kind of cologne that I know he likes, clogs my senses and makes things fuzzy.
“You were never just a job. And your dad being dead doesn’t kick you out of the club. You will never, ever, be just anything. You get me?”
His words are harsh, but the way his eyes look over my face and then land on my lips has me parting them.
My tongue flicks out to lick them. A moment hangs between us.
I don’t know if I sway or if he pulls me closer.
But we get closer. Barely a hair between us, and yet we remain untouched, just our breaths passing between us, giving life to each other on each exhale and inhale.
A moment that has me wondering where I end and he begins. A moment that’s shattered when a nurse comes in.
“Oh, sorry. Just doing a small check. I’ll be out in a second.”
But a second isn’t needed. With one last flick of his eyes to mine, a soft squeeze of my neck, and a caress of his thumb down my pulse point, he’s out the door and gone. Never once looking back.