Chapter 43
Ruby
THE NEEDLE BIT INTO my skin, a hot, buzzing sting that should’ve made me flinch.
But compared to the phantom ache I’d been carrying—the bone-deep throb of missing him—it was almost a relief.
This pain was sharp, real, something I could see and name, not the invisible kind that wrapped around my ribs and pulled tight for weeks.
The buzz of the machine was an anchor; every line the artist inked settled into me before I could admit what it meant.
Before my mind caught up with what my body already knew—that I could bear hurt, maybe even make it mine.
Jump, Ruby. Goddammit, jump. Superman will catch you. He won’t let you fall.
HALLOWEEN CAME AND went. I threw myself into inauguration prep—guest lists, menus, decorations, staff, spreadsheets—anything to keep my head down, my heart numb.
When my friends asked about meeting up, I dodged, claiming the inn as an excuse.
It wasn’t a lie, not really. But it was also easier than facing them and myself.
I evaded reality, but every time my shirt brushed against my ribcage, the skin reminded me—still tender, still too new to ignore.
When I couldn’t escape the meaning behind the sting anymore, I finally messaged them.
“Can we meet tonight instead of tomorrow?” My fingers trembled, like even just reaching out to them was too much, because I knew they wouldn’t let me slip away easily. I was scared of that. But I needed it.
It felt like watching the sea pulling back, knowing the wave was gathering force, knowing it would soon crash me—and needing someone there beside me when it did. My friends.
“Sure.” Evangeline, angelic Eve, replied immediately.
“Let me text Owen, I need to check something first,” Rio wrote.
I had a feeling she read between the lines of my request. She’d tried to pry the truth out of me for days, even threatened to come over herself or send Eve to the inn. When I’d shot back, “Rio, cease and desist,” she’d only answered, “Fine. But you know we’re here.”
Now she added, “I’m free. Where?”
“My place?” Eve offered, just as I’d hoped.
I had to get out of the inn, and I didn’t feel like facing strangers. Eve’s house was cozy and quiet, and a short drive from here.
“Perfect,” I responded. “@Daphne, will we see you?” I added, hoping she’d catch the message in time.
I parked just outside Evangeline’s and met Rio on the sidewalk.
“Rub, you look terrible,” she said, hugging me, pressing me tighter than usual.
“Thanks, you too.” I scoffed, trying to keep my throat from closing up.
Rio chuckled, then caught my elbow and pulled back to study me. “You’ll tell us inside,” she said with certainty. She did read between the lines. As usual.
Eve was already at the door, waving us over. “Is Daphne coming?” I asked.
“She texted to say she’d try,” Eve said, wrapping me in her arms when I reached her. She smelled like a sweet bouquet.
I held on longer than usual, needing the anchor. Maybe Rio felt it too, because she hugged me from behind, sandwiching me between them.
The sea inside me stilled, heavy with the threat of what was coming. And part of me almost wished it would crash already—because anything was better than the waiting, better than drowning in the emptiness of his absence. An emptiness my fears carved.
“Come on, I made brownies,” Eve said, breaking our little circle. “We want to hear it all.”
I looked at her. “You, too?”
“What, you think I can’t decode you? I’m the one with half a degree in Electronics, you know.”
I laughed, though my heart was heavy, my left ribcage still raw from more than the ink.
Rio made coffee, Eve set a plate of brownies on the table, while I stood at the window of her living room overlooking the yard and the sliver of ocean that peeked between the rows of houses beyond.
We took our usual spots—me curled into the deep armchair, the two of them on the couch across from me. The way they looked at me, it was obvious they were waiting for me to open.
“Everything is ready for the inauguration,” I said, as if that was the headline of the night. “I hope you’ve got your outfits picked.”
“Ruby.” Rio shot me a cutting look. The quiet that followed left no room to hide.
I exhaled and finally spoke. Fast. Breathless. “So Sebastian said he loved me and wants to be with me and I said no, and I don’t know what to do.” That was the shorthand version, and the most I could manage.
Eve and Rio waited, eyes fixed on me, holding out for more.
I swallowed.
“If you said no, you knew what to do,” Rio said eventually.
“Yeah, seems like you did. Because you don’t want him,” Evangeline added.
The words cut straight through, sharp and wrong—like I’d stabbed him myself.
I want him, I screamed inside.
They watched me closely. It was probably written all over me.
“You’ll have to say it, Ruby. Only when you hear yourself say it, you’ll believe it,” Eve said, circling closer to the truth I was choking on, forcing me to spit it out.
“The psychology course again?” I shot back. Sarcasm—my oldest shield. My sometimes traitor.
“No. Lifetime of experience,” she said, unfazed.
I wanted to hug her for not flinching. “Okay. So, I said no. Not that I didn’t want him, just ... no to changing us. Doesn’t matter. I ... can’t sleep, I ...” My throat burned. “I cried. A lot. Like every day. I never cry.” The words felt foreign, like they belonged to someone else.
“Oh, Ruby,” Rio said, shaking her head like she was feeling sorry for me.
“So you have feelings for him,” Eve said. “Why is that bad? ‘Cause it’s lots of feelings? I mean, we know you don’t like those ... but ... everyone changes.” Her tone was soft, patient, like I was slow to catch up.
Which, in a way, I was.
“Feelings are ... they’re ... debilitating.” It took me forever to dig the word out of the storm in my head. Which, in itself, proved my point. Feelings were debilitating. I flung a hand at myself as if to say—look at me. Exhibit A.
“They can be,” Rio said, calm as ever. “But they can also be the opposite. They can lift you up.” She didn’t let my silence stop her.
“You know, for a long time I thought you and Sebastian were just placeholders for each other. But that’s not it.
” She was smiling, actually smiling. “You two love each other. A lot. You’re best friends—with ridiculously amazing attraction and sex.
You called me out for being scared to admit my feelings for Owen.
” She tilted her head. She wasn’t smiling anymore. “Well, look who’s talking now.”
“God, I hate that word.” The bitterness burned as soon as it left me. Why am I so screwed up? Why can’t I just be normal?
“What, feelings?” Rio leaned forward, eyes glinting. She wasn’t about to let it slide. “Here are a few other F-words for you: fidelity, forever, future, family.” She lobbed each one at me like she knew exactly where they’d land.
“Flirt, fling, fondness, friendship, fucking! What’s wrong with those?” I shot them back, desperate, clinging to them like driftwood I knew couldn’t save me.
“You think you can do this forever—fucking with a friend?” Rio asked.
“The best marriages have friendship and good fucking.”
“There it is—the forever talk you swear you don’t believe in.” Rio cocked her head, eyebrows raised, like she’d just caught me with my hand in the cookie jar.
She was right. I was the one with Forever and Sebastian on my mind.
Because the persistent truth was: he was already etched into me, in more ways than one, woven through me in ways I could never undo.
My body and my heart had been whispering pieces of it for years.
Now they were screaming the whole of it.
And my mind was finally, terrifyingly, catching up—I wanted him for forever. I needed him for always.
Evangeline’s eyes sharpened, like she’d caught the truth flicker across my face.
She edged forward in her seat, refusing to let me wriggle free.
“You know what you want, but you’re afraid of taking the wrong step.
You’d rather tolerate feeling like you do now because at least you know the outcome, rather than risk it and go for something good, because you can’t be certain of the future. Is that true?”
I didn’t respond. The ocean inside me was holding its breath, the water drawn all the way back, exposing everything raw and vulnerable.
The final recede before the crash. I wanted good.
I wanted Sebastian. The man who “good” was too small a word for.
The anchor in my chaos, the one who saw me, the compass pointing me back to myself.
I want this. You. His words that day, knowing my too-muchness, yet thinking I was enough.
I want this. You. I now wanted to scream, whisper, cry back.
The tears stung so badly my eyes brimmed, threatening to spill. Rio, sitting closest, noticed and laid her hand over mine.
Eve’s gaze flicked to her, worry softening her eyes, but she pressed on.
“You can’t have a guarantee, ever, Rub. Not in life.
Not in love.” She was one to know. “I think you’re hoping we’ll give you that.
But we can’t. No one can. Only you. And Sebastian.
But look at the facts—the love, the years that never wore it down but only deepened it, all he’s done for you, and the ache you carry now.
You don’t ache for any man, Ruby. Except him.
There’s a void in your heart only he can fill.
That’s the truth you don’t want to face. ”
Love. Years. Him. Each word struck another crack in the seawall. She didn’t even have to say his name—just that word, him—and my heart split clean in two. Everything I’d held back poured out, drowning me.
The tsunami hit.
It crashed through me, merciless, unrelenting, and the tears broke free, rushing down my face as wildly as the wave inside me. My chest heaved as the ocean of pain and longing and love, so much love—surged untamed. It shredded down every defense and left me gasping in its force.
The sobs ripped out, raw and uncontainable.
“You’ve tried to play it safe, and I get that,” Rio said louder, her hand on my knee squeezing tighter, undeterred by the fact that I was openly weeping now.
“But, Rub, you already lost, sweetie.” Her tone was soft, like she was soothing a four-year-old.
“You’re not safe. You’re already broken-hearted—the very thing you’ve been phobic of and trying to avoid. ”
“What am I supposed to do?” The words came out ragged, torn between sobs. I felt lost, desperate for answers. I’d broken my own heart and his because I was so afraid of heartbreak. Was it too late now to want what we could be?
“I even did this.” My legs wobbled as I pushed myself upright, uselessly wiping my face before tugging my shirt up.
Their eyes widened, locked on my left ribcage where the small black-and-white shield nestled just beneath the band of my bra. My sobs frayed into rough breaths, and for a moment, that was the only sound.
“You love Superman that much?” Eve whispered, stunned.
“No. He does,” Rio said quietly. “And S is also Sebastian. Am I right, Ruby?” Her voice was hoarse.
“Owen, he ...” I started, fumbling.
Rio’s smile was tight-lipped, like she was holding back tears, too. “You got it from him?”
Owen had tattooed a river and the lyrics of the song Rio was named after, and that gave me the idea.
I nodded.
“Oh my God, Ruby!” Eve shot up from the couch and threw her arms around me.
The buttons of her blouse scraped against the still-fresh ink, but it was nothing compared to the ache splitting me open inside. The two merged until I couldn’t tell which was which. And the phantom pain was still there, sharp and constant, like missing a limb.
Eve pulled back just enough to search my face, her hands gripping my shoulders. “You have to say it,” she said, firm and insistent, as if she was worried I’d retreat into the smart-mouthed shell I always hid in. “Do you love him?”
I sniffled, my face streaked, wet, and raw. With a crooked smile through the tears, I managed to say, “Maybe a little?”
They both laughed. Rio pushed out of her seat and stood up to join us. “I knew it. A little, my ass. You’re barely holding it together because you love him so much.”
“Shut up, you.” I swiped at her shoulder, half-crying, half-laughing.
“Poor thing, she’s new to all of this,” Eve said to Rio.
“I always wondered how it’d go down for her,” Rio said over my head to Eve.
“Hey,” I said weakly.
“You have to tell him,” Eve said, her eyes bright with quiet happiness.
The laughter faded, my shaky exhales and the clumsy swipe of my sleeve across my face filling the space.
Before I could stop myself, the words tumbled out—jagged pieces torn from within.
“What if I’m too much for him? Not now, but later—when it’s all of me, every day, and he finally gets the full dosage? ”
“Oh, Ruby.” Evangeline’s voice was soft, like she’d just seen the heart of the wound.
Rio shook her head, fierce and certain. “Sweetie, if he wanted less, he would’ve walked away years ago.”
Evangeline’s gaze steadied on mine, unwavering. “He won’t get tired of you, Ruby. He keeps choosing you. Again and again. You’re never too much. Not to us, not to him.”
I closed my eyes, willing their words to take root, to replace the self-doubt.
“You have to tell him,” Eve repeated, her voice urgent now. “He already loves you as you are. If you tell him this scares you, he’ll only hold you closer.”
The words thudded gently. I swallowed, still caught between tears, relief, and the ache of not yet daring to believe, when a quick knock sounded at the door.
A second later, Daphne stepped in.
She paused when she caught sight of the three of us standing together in a messy, tear-streaked hug. She raised an eyebrow. “Why are we group hugging? And why is Ruby crying?”
“Because Ruby loves Sebastian,” Rio blurted.
Daphne approached without hesitation, wrapping her arms around all of us and pulling me in tight. “Finally,” she muttered.
Rio chuckled, still holding on. “We’ve been shipping Rubastian for a while now, but we didn’t want to say it out loud. You know, kind of like when you shipped RiOwen.”
Evangeline leaned back just enough to catch my eye. “Show her.”
We all peeled apart, and I hitched up my shirt, baring the mark on my skin.
Daphne’s lips parted in a smile. “Guess you’ve been stamped,” she murmured dryly, but with an understanding glint in her eyes that told me she knew what it meant.
Her words reached deeper than she knew. Because I’d tried to scar myself onto him that night—wild, frantic, terrified he’d forget me. Yet, I ended up with Sebastian literally branded on me.