Chapter 51
Chapter Fifty-One
R uby was nothing if not dedicated to her work.
That and her desperate need to distract herself from thoughts of Rafe had driven her from her bed today.
It had been three days, twenty-one hours, and fifty-two minutes since Rafe had stood on her porch covered in blood, and three days, seventeen hours, and forty-one minutes since she’d stumbled away from his cabin a broken mess.
Not that she was counting. Not that every minute was etched on her soul. Nope. Ruby was really fucking fine.
And werewolf drama aside, she had bills to pay. So she’d forced herself to get up, stuffed her feet into her boots and clocked in to her shift.
Any hope she’d had of forgetting about Rafe while she was at work quickly evaporated when she walked into the bar.
Rafe was imprinted all over this damn place.
The first time she’d ever laid eyes on him had been here.
He had a favorite seat at the bar now, right next to Sal. Seeing it empty made her want to cry.
Getting out of bed had been a grave error.
“Jesus, Ruby. You look like crap.”
She rested her tray on the bar while Macy filled the drinks for her table. “Thanks, Mace. Sweet of you to say.”
Her boss gave her a lopsided smile. “Sorry, but I mean really, you okay? What’s going on? You never miss work.”
What was going on? Well, she and her sister were being hunted by werewolves, her Mate had rejected her, and she was really tired of trying to convince him he was exactly what she wanted. But none of those things felt acceptable to say out loud.
“Rafe and I got in a fight.” Got in a fight, broke up forever. One of those.
Macy’s eyebrows rose.
“What did the big guy do?” Sal asked, chiming into their conversation like he always did.
“I can’t seem to convince him that we make sense together.” Ruby bit her bottom lip, refusing to let her emotions show, not here in front of Sal and the whole damn town.
“Men, am I right?” Sal said, and Ruby couldn’t help her laugh.
“You are definitely right.”
“What happened?” Macy asked.
Ruby shrugged, unable to put the full weight of the past few days into words. “I don’t know. He seems convinced that he’s doing me a favor by staying away. Like he’s protecting me somehow when all he’s doing is hurting me.”
Macy nodded, considering. “What are you going to do?”
Ruby balanced the tray on her hand and spoke the words over her shoulder. “I wish I knew.”
Macy’s concerned gaze followed her through the bar, past Sierra cornering a hapless hiker, past Trina and Shreya whispering and laughing like they were still in the high school cafeteria, past the booth with Bert and Mabel and Steve and Freddie where the two men were regaling their friends with tales of extracting a family of skunks from some out-of-towner’s rental house, past all the faces that made this place home.
They were a rough-and-tumble group but apparently, at some point, Ruby had grown to?…
like them? Appreciate them, at the very least.
“Ruby, we missed you,” Tom said as she put his beer on the table in front of him.
“Oh yeah?”
“Of course.” He smiled, and Kev and Gil nodded in agreement.
“Thanks guys.”
“Everything okay?” Tom asked. “Anything we need to take care of?” He lowered his voice and Ruby felt like she was suddenly talking to a mob boss in an old movie. Was Tom about to make her an offer she couldn’t refuse?
And for a minute Ruby let herself entertain the image of Tom, Kev, and Gil storming up to Rafe’s cabin and kicking his ass. Or attempting to. It was a pleasant thought.
“Everything’s fine, guys. But thanks.”
“We got you, Ruby,” Kev said with a wink.
And that was something, wasn’t it? To have a trio of weathered old Mainers on her side?
She felt like it was. Between Macy’s concerned questions, the phone calls she’d been getting from Gert all week checking in on her, and now Tom’s offer, Ruby was realizing she had friends here.
Even though their average age was somewhere around seventy, it made her feel better.
Ruby let the comfort of being in a place she’d finally learned to call home wear away the tension of the day.
Would she ever feel normal again? Would she ever feel like she wasn’t missing a chunk of herself?
She didn’t know. Certainly not today. Today she felt like she was walking around without her heart, like the space behind her ribs was hollow.
But that wasn’t right either. She wasn’t empty.
She was aching, like a giant walking bruise.
It was different from when her parents died.
Her parents’ deaths had left her feeling alone and scared, like the world no longer made sense.
But her aunt had helped put the pieces back together.
The loss of Rafe was like the world itself had gone dark.
If only she could find him lurking in the shadows.
Part of her screamed to try again, to never stop fighting for what they had, for what they could have.
But every time she thought of doing it, all she could see was his face set in that tormented grimace, the certainty that they shouldn’t be together stamped across his features.
How could she possibly fight that? How could she battle what was in his own heart?
“I forgot to tell you,” Macy said as she went back to the bar for another round of beers. Ruby rested her tray on the bar, happy for the distraction from her swirling thoughts.
“Yeah?”
“ Another guy came looking for you this afternoon.”
Ruby’s heart stopped and the tray wobbled in her hands. She steadied it on the sticky surface of the bar. “Who?”
“He didn’t say.”
It wasn’t Wyatt. Wyatt was dead. The thought didn’t stop her heart from racing.
“What did he want?”
“He just asked if you were around. When I said no, he left. Didn’t even bother ordering anything.”
Ruby swallowed hard, her mouth suddenly bone-dry.
“What did he look like?” Ruby asked, trying to keep her voice calm.
“Tall. Like really tall. Dark hair with gray at the temples. A beard.” Macy wiped the sweat from her brow with the back of her hand. It was cold out tonight and the old heating system was working overtime. “Actually, he kind of reminded me of Rafe.”
Knox . The name rang through her like a warning bell. Knox was here looking for her. What the hell was that all about? Maybe he thought of more to tell them after they left? Maybe he wanted to help?
As much as Ruby wanted to believe that, her strangled heartbeat said otherwise. There was no way in hell Knox being here was any sort of good omen.
“Hm. Strange.” She scrunched up her face like she was trying to think of who this mysterious man could be. “Maybe some long-lost cousin,” she said with a forced laugh.
“Well, don’t worry. I sent him packing just like the other one.”
The tension in Ruby’s body eased, even as she glanced over her shoulder at the door as if expecting Knox to saunter in at any moment.
“Thanks.”
“If he wants to track you down, he can use the internet like the rest of us.”
Macy meant it as a joke, but the idea of Knox trying to track her down sent shivers down Ruby’s body. And not the good kind.
Macy’s gaze flicked to where Ruby held the tray. She’d been avoiding her injured shoulder all night but had forgotten in her muddled confusion about Knox. She hissed in pain and switched the tray to the other side. The damn bite was still sore.
The other woman’s brow crinkled in concern. “If you ever need anything, just let me know. Okay, Ruby?” Macy’s smile was kind and genuine, and Ruby allowed herself to smile back, nodding at Macy’s offer, before returning to her customers. Sal pulled her aside on her next trip to the bar.
“Something’s going on in these woods,” he whispered to her and the hairs on her arms stood up.
“What do you mean, Sal?”
“Wolves.” He raised his gray brows, eyes wide. “Spotted again. And something?… killed them .”
Ruby swallowed hard. She knew exactly what had killed them.
“How do you know that?” she asked.
“Some hunters found the bodies. It ain’t natural whatever happened to them.”
“Shit,” she whispered, fear pooling in her gut. Knowing what had happened to those wolves didn’t make it less terrifying. And what if Rafe had only made everything worse?
“Stay out of the woods, Ruby.” Sal’s rough hand grabbed hers and she squeezed it back.
“I will,” she lied.
Staying out of the woods meant staying away from Rafe and that was a promise she couldn’t keep.