Chapter 8
Beckett
Ranger stirs first. The fire’s burned down to a red glow, the cabin quiet except for wind pressing at the eaves. Ruby’s asleep on the floor nest she built, one arm flung out, curls spilling over the quilt.
“Stay,” I whisper, but Ranger’s already on his feet—nose twitching, tail wagging slow and suspicious. He gives the kind of low huff that means I smell a mystery.
“Don’t you dare,” I mutter, because nothing good ever follows that sound.
Too late. The dog noses into one of Ruby’s open boxes, rustling tissue paper, tail thumping like a drum. A boxes. A second later, he backs out proudly carrying something shiny and pink. Oh no!
“Ranger,” I say, voice low. “Drop it.”
He prances toward me instead, doing that full-body wiggle dogs reserve for showing off their crimes. I catch enough firelight to realize exactly what he’s carrying.
“Buddy, that’s not a bone.”
Ruby stirs, blinking up at us. For one blessed second she’s dreamy and soft-voiced. “Beckett?”
Then she focuses. Sees the dog. Sees the object.
“Oh my god!” She launches upright. “Ranger! Drop it!”
Ranger bolts like this just became his favorite game. She chases him around the living area, the cellophane packaged pink thing swinging from his mouth like a victory flag. I lean an elbow on my knee and try very hard not to laugh.
“Ranger,” I say, using my serious-dad tone. “Drop it.”
He freezes, sighs, and obeys, then sets it gently on the blanket between us.
Silence.
Ruby snatches it up, face redder than the fire. “That is not a chew toy,” she mumbles, stuffing it behind her back.
I keep my voice steady. “Looked durable.”
Her glare could melt ice. “Don’t.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
“You so would.”
“Probably.”
Ranger yawns, satisfied his midnight enrichment activity was a success. Ruby’s shoulders start shaking, and suddenly she’s laughing. I can’t hold mine back either.
When she finally collapses onto the couch, still giggling, I bank the fire and sit beside Ranger. The candle’s burned down pretty far. The room smells like spice and sin and laughter.
“Next time,” I tell the dog, “steal something less educational.”
He thumps his tail once in agreement.
Ruby wipes her eyes. “If my customers could see me now,” she says, voice still wobbly with laughter. “First I crash the van, then I chase a dog waving a…” She gestures vaguely. “… deluxe holiday edition.”
“Some people pay extra for that,” I say.
She gives me a look. “Is that your professional opinion?”
“Just a guess. I’m not up on the latest market research.”
She holds the package up to eye level, then tucks it behind her back again. “For what it’s worth, the craftsmanship is excellent. Would make a great stocking stuffer. For certain recipients.”
“Noted.”
She wraps her arms tighter, still holding her prize. A long moment passes. Ranger settles between us, chin on his paws, eyes darting from her to me like he expects the next round.
Ruby tucks her legs beneath her, glancing at me through a fan of hair. “You know, I always assumed if I got snowed in with a stranger, the worst thing that could happen would be … murder. Not humiliation by a dog and a vibrating ornament.”
I nod, solemn. “Most of my guests leave disappointed by the accommodations.” My mouth quirks. “Glad to exceed expectations.”
She lifts the candle stub, sniffs it, and says, “Sin-namon Nights: now with thirty percent more trauma.”
I want to say something reassuring, something that would smooth the awkwardness, but she’s already burrowing deeper in the couch, eyes bright above her knees.
“Hey, if it’s any consolation, Ranger’s done worse.”
She drops her head sideways, considering. “Worse than brandishing an adult toy at three in the morning?”
I glance at Ranger, who is now chewing the edge of a box and looking smug as only a dog can. “Last year he ate a pack of firestarter sticks and spent Christmas shitting neon blue.”
This delights her, which is a relief. We sit there, letting the laughter echo out.
I watch the way she twirls the edge of her hair, how she keeps sneaking glances at me, as if she’s still weighing whether or not I’m about to bust a joke about her shop.
I realize something. I do like the sound of her here.
She leans forward suddenly, like she’s about to tell a secret. The look she gives me is so direct it punches a hole right through the bullshit of the hour.
“Beckett? Are you scared of me?” she asks.
I freeze for a second. “No.” But the word lands blunt, truer than she’ll ever know.
She grins, tilting her head. “You act like I’m a grenade with the pin pulled.”
“You’re not a grenade.”
“Then why do you keep looking at me like …” she gestures, flustered, “… like you’re waiting for me to blow up and take the cabin with you?”
I want to say something funny, to knock her off this subject, but I can’t. I just look at her, and it’s like she’s already seen every splintered part of me and decided not to flinch.
“Because you’re … alive,” I say, choosing the word carefully. “You walk in and the place stops being a bunker and turns into a …” I break off, because I don’t have a word for it. “You fill the room. That’s not what I’m used to.”
She absorbs it, smile twitching at the corners, the firelight illuminating her eyes.
“A … what?” she says, gently mocking, but there’s an edge of hope in it that I can’t ignore.
“A home,” I say. It comes out small, embarrassing. I want to take it back, but she doesn’t let me. Her face changes, softening into a thousand-watt version of herself.
The silence grows warm again, not in the way a stove heats a room, but in the way a body radiates from someone’s skin, how it changes the air.
I want to touch her. More than that, I want her to let me. Ruby stares at me, too much in those eyes — hope and mischief and the kind of vulnerability I try to keep out of rooms like this. She doesn’t look away, doesn’t laugh, doesn’t rescue either of us from the weight of it.
I break first. “What about you?” I ask. “You afraid of me?”
She shakes her head slowly, curls bouncing. “Nah. You’re safe.”
“Am I?” I ask and realize that’s the first time anyone’s ever called me that.
She grins. “I’ve seen how you fold laundry. Not like you’re going to start a fight with anyone, ever. Mostly I just think you’re …” She stops and shrugs, but the look in her eyes says everything else.
I know this is the moment you’re supposed to escalate, bridge the gap, do whatever move the internet would vote on in a ’will-they-or-won’t-they’ poll.
I don’t. I sit there, steady, waiting to see if she’ll let the silence spook her.
She doesn’t. Instead, she closes the distance by prodding my knee with her toes, then tucking her legs up again, all the while grinning like she looks at a secret she’s keeping just for fun. I want to know what it is.
We sit like that, not quite touching, the air between us getting crowded with what we’re not saying. Then Ruby says, “Do you ever sleep?” So matter-of-fact that it takes me a second to realize it’s not a setup.
“Some,” I say, but my voice sounds like a dare.
She stretches, cat-like, and stands, letting the thick flannel fall a little off her shoulder. “You look like you could use it,” she says, not looking away. “You want the couch or the bed?”
The question short-circuits my three a.m. brain, and for a moment I just stare at her. She rolls her eyes, soft but challenging, shoving a hand through her hair.
“To sleep,” she says. “Nothing weird. Unless you want it to be weird, but I’m too tired to be interesting.”
I almost laugh, but the words stick. “You take the bed. I’ll crash out here.”
Ruby stops at the edge of the hallway, wagging the toy at Ranger, who looks one second from relapsing into theft and then, to my surprise, she just sets the pink thing on a shelf, like a trophy or a dare, and gives me a look that says she knows exactly what she’s doing.
“Night, Beckett,” she calls over her shoulder, and the way she says my name makes every good intention I had regret its existence.
I stoke the fire down, pour a mug of water, and try to cool off.
Ranger circles twice, then collapses on my feet, warm, heavy, loyal to the bitter end.
I scratch him behind the ear. “You’re a menace, you know that?
” He sighs, satisfied with his day for reasons only dogs understand.
I sit back, breathing in the last of the cinnamon air and the melted wax, letting my mind wander where it wants.
It doesn’t surprise me at all that it stops on Ruby.
She’s not what I expected. I thought she’d be loud, or exhausting, or too much.
Sometimes she is. But she’s also the kind of person who makes you want to tell stories, even when you’ve spent your whole life not wanting to be heard.
She fills every inch of the room with her colors, voice, and wild energy that comes from living at full volume.
She’s exhausting and intoxicating. Right now, she’s in my bed down the hall snoring softly into my pillow like she’s always belonged there.
Why didn’t she take the pull-out couch again?
It’s the middle of the night. Maybe she didn’t want to go through the hassle.
I try to sleep. I really do. But my mind keeps going back. First, I recall the blush that climbed her face when she realized what Ranger had in his mouth, then to her laugh, the way she covers it with the back of her wrist when it’s too much. Then to the way she looked at me.
Ruby said I was safe, but I’m not sure that’s true. I feel wildly off-balance, and I kind of like it.