Chapter Four Griffin
Chapter Four
Griffin
“Shit,” I muttered, watching helplessly as Ruby pushed through the door of the coffee shop.
“You think she’s coming back, bro?”
Bro? I gave him a dry look.
The new guy’s eyes widened when he took in our matching outfits, eyebrows arching in sudden comprehension. “Ahhh . . .”
“Where’d you travel in from?” I asked, watching through the floor-to-ceiling windows as Ruby walked briskly across the street and disappeared between two buildings.
Her shoulders were pulled up tight by her ears, and her short legs moved way more quickly than I thought possible for someone of her height.
“Vegas,” he answered. He blew out a short breath. “It’s not, uh, illegal there. You know . . .”
My mouth flattened. The thought of Ruby Tate paying for a prostitute made my brain melt.
I gave him as friendly a smile as I could manage. “I’d head back to your hotel for the time being. I’m gonna go talk to her.” Slapping a hand on his shoulder, I was mildly gratified to see him flinch. “She’ll get in touch if she needs you.”
“Oh, I think she needed something, considering how much she was paying me to fly over here and show her a few things. None of the really fun things, of course. Can’t engage in those outside of a few very specific places back home.
If she wanted to for free, though . . .” His eyebrows bounced.
“Wouldn’t have been a hardship. I love it when they’re tiny like that. You know what I mean?”
As I pulled in a slow breath, I imagined the headlines if I broke this guy’s ribs in a quaint little coffee shop in the middle of fucking nowhere, Colorado.
My agent would probably drop me. Sponsors sure as hell wouldn’t be happy.
My brother would shake his head, feeling perfectly settled on his moral high ground as the Good Brother.
In fact, I might get arrested, unless I could get him to swing first.
That should be easy enough, actually. If I had any talent in this life, it was pushing the right buttons to really piss people off.
And it wasn’t like I had to break all his ribs. Maybe like, four. He could live with four broken ribs, right?
“Yeah?” I asked, and the quietly dangerous tone of my voice sharpened his gaze. “Maybe you should forget you came here.” I took a step closer, extremely fucking gratified when he had to tilt his head up. “Forget you met her, in fact. I think you’re better off, bro.”
Instead of backing away, though, he lifted his eyes to mine. “You her keeper?”
I loved guys like this. Who thought they could intimidate me.
I straightened to my full height—six five—and met that look of his head-on with one of my own.
The kind of look I saved for when I lined up on the field before a snap.
When I stared down the offensive line and imagined tearing through every fucking body they had lined up against me.
The kind I saved for the quarterback right before I took his ass to the ground.
His throat worked on a nervous swallow.
“I’m an old friend,” I said steadily. “And I promise you, that’s so much fucking worse for you right now.”
He snorted. “Whatever you say, dude.” With a haughty sniff, he brushed his hands down the front of his shirt and angled his head toward the counter. “Nice meeting you,” he said, sarcasm a little too heavy for my taste.
I walked over to the counter, and the woman with the blue hair arched her eyebrow. “Need another muffin?” she asked.
“Do you know where Ruby lives?”
Her eyes flattened immediately. “You’re off your rocker if you think I’m gonna tell you that.”
Blowing out a frustrated breath, I looked in the direction of where she ran. “Fair enough.”
“She works at the library,” Mr. Prostitute answered from behind me.
My jaw tightened as I turned. “What’s that?”
He was studying the baked goods. “The library in town. She had to supply some information to my employer.”
The blue-hair behind the counter muttered something that sounded decidedly unfriendly, but it wasn’t clear enough for me to understand.
But she stopped me with a wave of her hand, putting one of the blueberry muffins into a to-go bag.
“I don’t think Ruby ate breakfast,” she said.
“Bring her this if you find her. Can’t have her going hungry before work. ”
Ten seconds later, I was jogging across the street in the direction she’d fled.
The narrow alley between the two-story brick buildings was clean, leading straight through to the next block.
Through the alley, there was a long stretch of empty land on the other side—a weeping willow tree and tall grasses, bright groupings of wildflowers, and a small creek cutting through the middle of the land as it meandered toward a one-story brick building wrapped with windows.
Everything about this place was quiet and clean and peaceful, except for the way my brain reacted when I caught sight of an ivory blouse and messy golden waves on a wooden bench. She was staring at the weeping willow tree. Next to her was the big dog from outside the bakery.
Her hand rested on the back of his neck, idly scratching his short fur.
When you get older, you stop thinking about your childhood, don’t you? Unless something very specific happens. A song that pulls you back. Or you see something that triggers a memory. I’d gone years without thinking of Ruby Tate. A lot of them too.
I couldn’t even say that we’d known her well, but she was always there.
There wasn’t even a lingering sadness when I’d heard that she and her parents had moved away when we were in high school. Once or twice, I’d glanced up into that oak tree that straddled her yard and mine, at the empty spot where she used to sit.
Approaching quietly, I tried to figure out what the hell my endgame was here.
There was only one place in my entire life where I could read people well, and that was on the field. I didn’t have practice consoling a kid or a spouse or a girlfriend. There was no navigating personal relationships once I got home from work.
Wasn’t that how I’d ended up here? It was all the outside shit that got me twisted up. The constantly seeking something shiny and new and exciting so that the quiet at home didn’t make me feel like I was drowning.
I knew how to play the game. I knew how to prep for those games—in the weight room and on the field and in studying film.
I knew how to be a good teammate. All my friends did the same job as me. Most of them had families to go to when they walked out the facility doors. Some were single like me. Those were the guys I partied with, traveled with.
I knew how to do that too. The moment I was on my own, separate from that big part of my life, there was no one who relied on me. It left me reeling now, as I approached where Ruby sat.
Don’t fuck it up, I thought. That was about the best pep talk I could muster. Just . . . don’t fuck it up.
When I neared the bench, Ruby’s frame went visibly stiff, her hands moving to her lap as her dog popped up on four legs to greet me.
“Careful,” she said airily, in complete contradiction with the tension visible in every inch of her body. “He’s really mean and overprotective. He might bite.”
“No kidding.”
“Yup. One word from me, and you’re toast.”
I whistled low. “Hope you aren’t thinking about saying that word right now.”
Bruiser tilted his head as he stared me down, and for a split second, I wondered if she was being serious.
Nah. She wasn’t serious. Even though she didn’t turn her head, Ruby eyed me from her spot on the bench, gnawing on her bottom lip and looking ten times warier than her dog did.
There was no tail for him to wag—his was docked—but his entire butt wiggled back and forth when I came a step closer.
I kept my arms loose by my sides, and Bruiser wiggled sideways against my legs, nudging my free hand with his big ol’ head. “Yeah, he looks vicious.”
Ruby didn’t say anything, simply kept her head straight forward, but her eyes kept cutting over to me and her dog.
“Hey, Bruiser,” I murmured. “You’re not gonna eat me, are you?” His response to that was a happy groan as my fingers dug into the spot right behind his ears. Ruby scoffed quietly, and the annoyed sound made me grin. “You love me.”
“How do you know his . . .” She snapped her gaze forward. “Never mind.”
“Bruiser and I met outside the bakery.” I smiled as he licked my fingertips. “He’s definitely happier to see me than you are.”
Her brow furrowed slightly. “Of course he is. He’s a dog, and his critical thinking skills are lacking because you taste like muffins.”
“Nah, I think he’s a great judge of character.”
“You would think that.”
I fished around in the bag and pulled off a piece from the top of the blueberry muffin. “May I?”
Her answer was a tiny roll of her eyes, but her chin dipped a fraction of an inch.
“Bruiser, sit.” His butt kept wiggling. “Sit. Gotta do something good to earn it, buddy. Otherwise, the next thing I know, you’ll be chomping my face off because she said the scary word.”
Ruby pinched the bridge of her nose, sighing heavily.
The massive pink tongue hanging out the side of his mouth made me smile, but his butt went nowhere close to the ground.
“Bruiser, wiggle your butt,” I commanded. That he did epically, so I tossed the chunk of muffin in the air. His mouth opened wide, and the muffin bounced off the side of his snout. Ruby rolled her lips together to hide a smile, and we both watched as he snuffled the piece off the ground.
Since she wasn’t commanding her dog to eat me, and she had yet to tell me to get the fuck away from her, I decided to risk it.
There was enough space on the bench that I could sit and my shoulder wouldn’t brush hers, so I set down the bakery bag first, allowing it to serve as a buffer between us. Ruby eyed it as if it were a bomb.
“That’s from, uh, the blue-hair.”