Chapter Twenty-Five
Saturday
Joshua:
I wake with a violent jolt, my whole body jerking beneath the duvet and my heart going fucking mental while the image of Ruby dead in my arms stays burned into the front of my mind.
I can see her there, limp against me, still hear myself begging her to wake up, and before I’ve even properly worked out where I am, I’m looking down at her because I need to see that she’s breathing.
Ruby is curled against my side beneath the duvet, one arm tucked between us and her hair spread messily across my chest. I realise she’s awake too, blinking up at me through the only eye she can fully open.
The relief is brutal enough to leave me feeling weak, but it barely has time to settle before I really take in her face in the morning light and realise the bruising has got worse overnight.
Her right eye is swollen so badly it’s nearly closed, dark purple and blue spreading from beneath her lashes and over the curve of her cheekbone before fading towards her temple and down along her jaw, while the white of the eye itself is streaked with red where tiny blood vessels have burst. The scrape through the centre of the bruising has dried rough and angry, the skin around it inflamed, and there are darker marks along her arms too, fingerprints coming up where those fucking men grabbed her hard enough to leave them behind.
Every new bruise feels like another detail I somehow missed last night.
My head keeps trying to fill in the gaps, putting her against that tree, putting somebody’s hands on her again, and I have to shut it down before I lose my fucking mind.
She’s here. She’s breathing. Her cheek is warm against my chest, and her fingers are moving lazily over the duvet, and that’s what I make myself look at instead.
“Are you okay?” she asks.
I let out a hollow laugh. “I think I should be asking you that.”
“You’re shivering, Josh.”
“Am I?” I respond, trying for casual even as I notice the tremor running through my arms.
“Yeah.” She snakes one bruised arm upwards and cups my cheek, forcing me to meet her eyes. “Open up to me, please. Just a little bit. Let me inside your head.”
I look at her, fully intending to tell her about the nightmare and nothing else.
I can say I dreamed something bad happened to her.
I can say it shook me up. I can probably even say I’m being a fucking idiot about it and make her laugh, but instead my mouth opens and something completely different comes flying out.
“I have a dead twin.”
Her good eye widens and her thumb pauses against my cheekbone, going so still beneath me she might be holding her breath.
What the fuck was that?
I stare at her, genuinely confused by my own mouth, then look away and scrub a hand down my face. “Sorry. I don’t know why I just said that.”
“Josh…”
“No, seriously, I wasn’t about to tell you that.” I let out a shaky breath and stare at the ceiling. “You asked what was in my head and apparently that was in there. Fuck.”
Her hand stays against my cheek. “You have a twin?”
My head is scrambled. “Had.”
Ruby doesn’t move her hand and she doesn’t start asking me a million questions either, which makes it harder to retreat.
“His name was James,” I mutter. “We were sixteen.”
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
“I know.” I fight the urge to bolt, annoyed that my hands are shaking. “I just… seeing you last night fucked with my head more than I thought it did.”
“It’s okay to admit you care about me, Josh. I care about you too.”
“I more than fucking care about you.” What the fuck am I doing? I can feel myself wanting to shut the whole conversation down on instinct, to make a joke or get out of bed or do literally anything except lie here while Ruby looks at me like she’s in love with me or some shit.
“Josh…”
“Let’s not.” I snap and regret how harsh it comes out. “Sorry. I just—fuck.”
Ruby’s hand slips from my cheek and I feel the loss of it straight away, because her touch calms me down and I fucking hate how true that is.
Ruby is the fucking light of my life. I want to keep her close on the days my head turns on me and I don’t know how to pull myself back out.
She warms parts of me I thought were dead, and I don’t know whether that makes me lucky or completely screwed, because the more time I spend with her, the more I want.
Her hand on my face. Her body beside mine.
Her laugh in my ear. Her turning up and making everything feel less shit without even trying.
I drag a hand over my face again, annoyed at myself for thinking any of it because wanting her this much is exactly why I should keep my mouth shut.
“I’m not trying to be a dick,” I mutter, keeping my eyes away from her.
“I just don’t know how to talk about any of this without feeling like I’m about to say something I can’t take back. ”
“You don’t have to say anything you don’t want to.” She gently soothes, when I turn my head she’s watching me with that bruised face and one swollen eye and more patience than I deserve. “But you also don’t have to keep shutting me out.”
“I’m trying, Rubes. I know it probably doesn’t look like it, but I am. I’ve spent a long time making sure nobody gets too close to any of this shit, and then you turn up and suddenly I’m telling you things I’ve barely said out loud to anyone.”
She melts a little. “Does Ewan know?”
“Yeah. Brooke too, I think. People from home know James existed, obviously, but there’s a difference between knowing I had a brother and knowing…
” I trail off, jaw tightening as my mind immediately supplies the rest, the barn, the rope, the fucking silence afterwards, and I have to push it away before I end up back there with him. “Knowing everything.”
Ruby shuffles closer, careful with her ribs, and her fingers slide between mine. I grip them harder than I should, but she doesn’t complain, just lets me hold on while I try to work out how far I’m willing to go.
“He died when we were sixteen,” I slowly push out, the words sounding flat, as if it doesn’t affect me when it ruins me completely.
“And seeing you last night brought back so many feelings I’ve not felt for ages.
I came outside and saw Oscar’s face, saw yours, saw all that blood and bruising, and my head went to the worst possible thing.
It didn’t matter that you were standing in front of me talking or that the police were there or that you kept saying you were okay.
I could see you were alive and my brain was still acting like I was about to lose you. ”
Ruby’s fingers tighten around mine and I finally look at her, regretting the honesty the second I see the tears threatening in her good eye. “You’re not going to lose me.”
I give a rough laugh because I know better than most how little promises like that are worth, but the sound dies quickly when she keeps looking at me with complete sincerity.
I shake my head. “You can’t promise me that.”
“No,” she admits. “But I can promise I’m here now.”
I stare at her for a few seconds, then lift our joined hands and press them against the centre of my chest. My heart is going far too fast and I don’t have anything clever to say back. “You’re really fucking difficult to keep at arm’s length.”
A tiny smile pulls at her mouth. “Maybe you should stop trying.”
I lift her hand and kiss her fingers. “Maybe I will.”
Ruby’s smile lingers. I’m surprised I don’t panic over what I’ve just said.
I don’t start looking for a way to undo it or turn it into a joke or remind her that we’re friends, because I’m fucking exhausted from fighting myself and she’s right here, bruised and warm and looking at me as though I haven’t just made a complete tit of myself by opening up to her.
I loosen my grip on her hand and slide my arm around her, careful with it as I pull her back against me.
Ruby comes without hesitation, tucking her face into the space beneath my chin and curling one leg carefully between mine, and I feel some of the tension leave my body the second she settles there.
It’s crazy how quickly she does that to me. Now I’ve got her breathing against my chest, her fingers resting over my stomach, her hair tickling my jaw, and my head finally starts shutting the fuck up.
“How are you feeling?” I ask her. “Are you worse today?”
“A bit. But I’m okay.”
“I really wish you’d stop saying that.”
“It’s true. I feel tired, and wobbly, but it kind of feels like it all happened to someone else.”
I don’t like the sound of that. “What do you mean?”
Ruby gives a tiny shrug against my chest. “I don’t know. I remember it, obviously. I remember what they looked like and what they said and hitting them and running, but when I think about it now it feels far away. Like I watched it happen instead of being there.”
I stare down at the top of her head, trying not to let my own panic jump all over what she’s telling me because she doesn’t sound frightened exactly, more confused by herself, and the last thing she needs is me turning it into another reason to hover. “Does it feel weird?”
“A bit.”
“Bad weird?”
“I don’t know yet.”
I rub my hand slowly over her back, feeling the soft fabric of those stupid cat pyjamas beneath my palm. “Do you want Oscar?”
“No. I only want you.” She presses herself closer, cheek settling back against my chest while her leg stays tangled carefully with mine.
I half expect some kind of joke to follow, but Ruby only burrows closer and tightens her arm around my middle, my heart literally constricts in my chest and I suck in a breath. “Only me?”
“Yeah. I only want you.”
I don’t know what the fuck I’m supposed to do with that, so I do the one thing that feels natural and pull her closer, sliding my hand up between her shoulder blades and holding her there while I press my mouth into her hair. “Alright,” I murmur into the top of her head. “You’ve got me.”
Her fingers curl against my stomach. “For today?”
I hesitate, I know what the right answer is. The correct answer. The thing I should be saying. That yes, she has me for today.
But the word feels wrong.
I look down at her and brush my thumb carefully over the back of her hand. “For as long as you want me here, Rubes.”
She sighs contendingly and I realise I’m a no-good liar. I mean it now. That’s the fucked part. Right now I’d stay here for as long as she asked me to, but I know what happens when my head turns on me. I know there’ll probably come a point where I bolt and call it protecting her.
Ruby might want me here for a long time.
I don’t know if I know how to stay.