Chapter 8
Nash
The taste of the words is still on my tongue when I push through the clubhouse door. I said them out loud to Ruby, about Vesper.
Before I make it past the bar, the fantasy from last night slams into me: Ruby on her knees in one of those rooms, her chin tipped up, her red lips parted.
The word sir stripped of every joke she's ever attached to it.
My hand on the back of her neck, the weight of it, the stillness she'd give me, the quiet underneath.
Fuck.
My hand hits the doorframe of the war room where Knox left the updated relay data on the table. I grab the folder, and my eyes catch the mug at Malachi's spot. Pink, oversized, BOSS BABE in gold script, left over from the girls' prank on the war room. Malachi hasn't moved it.
I take the folder and keep walking.
East is at the pool table, racking the balls with his big hands and sliding the triangle into position. He looks up when I enter.
"Thought you went home," I say.
"Took Darla home. Rider's on the door." He shrugs. "Came back."
I drop the folder on the bar, cross the room, and pull a cue from the wall rack. I rest it against my shoulder and wait while East finishes the rack, lifts the triangle, and sets it aside.
The clubhouse is quiet; the yard empties out. Through the window, I can see Ruby tying off a trash bag, the balloon arch sagging behind her, and the goat asleep under the picnic table.
The cue presses into my palm. I've already pictured what I'd do to her in that building, every detail.
"You break," East says.
I chalk the cue and line up the shot. The crack of the break scatters the balls across the felt, and two solids drop. I circle the table, lining up the next shot, my shoulders dropping a half inch with the familiar geometry of angles and controlled force applied to a specific point.
East leans against his cue. "You good?"
"Fine."
"You've been fine for about three months. Just checking."
I sink the three ball and move to the next position.
"She got to you today," East says.
I don't answer.
"The fry thing." East grins. "Brother, the whole damn table saw that."
I miss the next shot by barely an inch, the cue ball rolling wide.
East chalks his cue, still grinning as he bends over the table and sinks two in a row without looking up.
"You remember Malachi with Candace? Woman couldn't stand him, told him to his face repeatedly, and the rest of us had to watch that man walk around this clubhouse pretending he wasn't completely wrecked over a woman who called him every name in the book. "
I don't answer.
"I was worse. I fucked everything that moved trying to keep Darla out of my head because I thought wanting her meant letting go of Declan.
" He sinks another ball and straightens, his grin fading into something quieter.
"We all had our reasons for fighting it, but you're more like Kai.
You'll stand at the wall and watch her walk away every night until something breaks, and by then you might not get to choose how it breaks. "
I set the cue butt on the floor. The overhead lamp hums.
East racks the balls again. The clubhouse is empty, bikes having peeled off down the road, the last of the afternoon light fading across the yard.
Through the window, Ruby is at the far end of the fence with the goat at her feet.
Her tank top is damp from the heat, and clings to the curve of her waist. The strip of skin at her abdomen catches the last of the sun.
She crouches to scratch behind the goat's ears, and her shorts ride up the backs of her thighs.
My grip tightens on the cue. She straightens, pushes her hair off her neck, and her red lips move like she's talking to the goat.
I watch her mouth shape words I can't hear through the glass, and my chest pulls tight.
She's standing still. Ruby, who never stands still.
"Your break," East says.
I line up from the near rail and strike clean, three balls dropping as the crack of the break echoes in the empty room and settles into the walls.
East studies the table, walking a full circuit before choosing his shot with one hand loose at his side and his cue balanced against his shoulder.
He takes his time. East plays sloppy with everyone else, misses easy shots, lets Kyle think he has a chance.
With me he plays for real. He's methodical. Patient.
"Darla's been craving pickled okra," he says, leaning over the table to line up the eleven.
"Which is fine, except she wants it at three in the morning, warm, and she wants it with ranch.
" He sinks the shot, straightens, and walks to the chalk.
"Then she comes out in my T-shirt and watches me stir it, and she knows exactly what she's doing because that shirt hits her mid-thigh and she doesn't wear anything under it.
" He grins. "We don't always get around to eating the okra.
" He chalks the cue. "You could have that, you know. "
Ruby in my apartment. Ruby in my shirt. The image arrives fully formed and hits somewhere behind my sternum. Her bare legs. Her hair loose. The hem of my shirt brushing her thighs while she leans against my kitchen counter at three in the morning.
I sink the cue ball into the side pocket. Scratch.
"That bad, huh?" East says.
He circles to the far side and lines up another shot with a good angle and right alignment, but misses by a margin too clean to be accidental. I take my shot, and the six drops clean.
"You look like shit, by the way."
"So I've been told."
"Ruby?"
"Ruby tells me every morning."
"I bet she does." He steps back from the table, leans the cue against the rail, and folds his arms. The posture is loose. His jaw isn't. "You good?"
I line up the four ball, take the shot, and watch it drop before moving to the next without answering.
"Nash."
I should answer. The words I'm good are right there, two syllables I've said a hundred times. But my hand tightens on the cue instead, the grip shifting as the wood presses against the callus on my palm.
East watches my grip. He sees everything, always has, and I feel him clock the shift in my knuckles.
He holds the silence, letting the jokes, questions, and running commentary that usually power every room he's in fall away. He stands there with his cue against the rail and his weight on one hip. The room holds still around him.
I take two more shots, both dropping, and the table is nearly clear. East hasn't picked up his cue since he leaned it against the rail.
He lifts it now and sinks three in a row without speaking, each one precise with clean angles, the cue ball finding position as if it's been told where to go. He closes the game, sets the cue down, and grips my shoulder with one hard squeeze that registers through the cut.
"When you figure out what you're carrying," he says, "don't wait too long to put it down." He lets go, crosses to the door, and pauses with his hand on the frame. "Go home, Nash."
East leaves, and the sound of his truck starting filters through the walls. The engine catches, revs, then fades down the road. The refrigerator behind the bar clicks on.
I rack the remaining balls, hang East's cue and mine, then turn off the overhead lamp. The pool table disappears into the dark.
Ruby is still at the fence when I push through the back door. The goat is curled at her feet, asleep. She doesn't turn when she hears my boots on the gravel, but her shoulders shift. She knew I was coming.
"Go inside," I say.
"I'm fine out here."
"Ruby."
"I'm looking at the sky, Nash. It's a sky. It's not going to hurt me."
I stop beside her. Close enough to smell vanilla and the charcoal smoke that's settled into her hair from the cookout. She still hasn't turned.
"You're staying at the clubhouse tonight."
She turns now. "One more night. Then I'm going back to my apartment."
"We'll talk about it."
"No, we won't. One more night. Then I go home." Her chin lifts. "You put a deadbolt on my door and cameras on my building. I'm not living in a spare room forever."
My jaw tightens. She holds my gaze without flinching, and the stubbornness on her face is the same look she gave me in her hallway when I told her to pack a bag. The one that makes my pulse kick.
"One more night," I say. "Then we talk."
"That's not what I said."
"That's what's happening."
Her eyes narrow. Her mouth opens. Closes. She holds for a beat, then exhales through her nose.
"Fine." She bends down, scoops the goat up under one arm, and walks past me toward the clubhouse. "But you should know I'm keeping score, and you owe me approximately nine arguments at this point."
"Go inside, Ruby."
"I'm going. This is me going. Voluntarily. Again."
The door closes behind her.
The headlight cuts through the dark two-lane highway, the tree line closing in on both sides as I take the left at the county line, cross the bridge over the creek bed, and turn onto the unmarked gravel road that leads to the warehouse district. Forty minutes from Willowridge on back roads.
East's voice in my head. When you figure out what you're carrying, don't wait too long to put it down. Ruby's voice under it. You owe me approximately nine arguments.
The sound hits first through the corrugated metal. Crowd noise. Shouting. The dull thud of someone hitting the mat. The parking lot is gravel and mud with twenty vehicles scattered under a dead streetlight. I park at the far end and kill the engine.
I move through the warehouse along the perimeter.
Concrete floor, metal rafters, the ring lit under industrial fixtures where two women circle each other, both light on their feet.
The air carries sweat, adrenaline, the metallic tang of blood from the earlier bouts, voices layered into a roar that strips individual words into nothing.