Chapter 4 #2
"He's Teddy's father." The confession ripped out of me in a whisper, and suddenly I couldn't breathe. The room tilted again, and I pressed my hands to my face, trying to hold myself together. "Oh God. Oh God, Mei, he's Teddy's father."
Silence. Complete, suffocating silence.
Then Mei's hands were on my shoulders, firm and grounding. "What? Ruby, are you sure? How...?"
"I'm sure." My voice broke. "That voice. I'd know it anywhere. It's him. The one who..." I couldn't finish. Couldn't say it out loud, couldn't give voice to the memories. "From that night. He's the one who found me. Who saved me."
Mei's face went pale. She knew what night I meant. She was the only one who knew.
"The man who rescued you," Mei said slowly, carefully. "He's out there. Right now."
I nodded, tears burning my eyes, threatening to spill over. "What do I do, Mei? What the hell do I do?"
She pulled me into a hug, and I let myself collapse against her for just a moment, letting myself be weak and scared and overwhelmed. When she pulled back, her dark eyes were steady on mine.
"Ruby, listen to me. I know you're scared. But he rescued you that night. Whatever else happened, he saved your life."
"I know," I whispered. "I know he did. But Mei, I don't know anything about him." Just fragments. His voice. The way he touched me—so gentle, like I was something precious. "What if he's not..." My throat closed up, choking off the words.
"What if he's not what?"
I shook my head, unable to articulate the tangle of fear and hope and shame knotted in my chest. The truth was, I'd thought about him.
More than I should have. In the dark, quiet moments when Teddy was asleep, and I was alone with nothing but my memories and fantasies, I'd let myself imagine a warrior who'd given everything to save me.
A male who would have stayed if he could.
Who was probably dead because of what he'd done for me.
And now he was here. Alive. Real.
"Help me hide Teddy," I blurted out, fear taking over rational thought. "Just for now. Just until I can figure out—"
"Ruby, no." Mei's voice was sharp. "You can't do that. You can't keep his son from him."
She was right, deep down I knew that. Shame welled up inside me, hot and suffocating.
"I'm not... I will tell him. I just need a minute to wrap my head around this.
To figure out what kind of male he is before I.
.." Before I introduced him to the most precious thing in my life.
Before I let him into our world and risked Teddy's heart along with my own.
Mei studied my face for a long moment, then sighed.
"Okay. I get it. But Ruby, you need to know something.
" She paused, choosing her words carefully.
"He's a cousin to House Asad, one of the wealthiest and most respected families in the galaxy.
Cristox is an officer aboard the Historia, and from everything I've heard, he's respected.
Honorable. He was an operative with Asad intelligence before he was captured and enslaved to the gladiator pits. "
The room tilted. Gladiator pits. The words echoed in my skull, hollow and terrible, conjuring images of blood and sand and violence. Tau Ceti hosted its share of those rescued from such a life. Males whose souls were as broken as their bodies.
"When?" My voice came out strangled, barely more than a breath. "When was he captured?"
Mei's expression shifted, something like pity flickering across her features. "About five years ago, give or take. The records aren't exact, but..."
Five years.
The math slammed into me like a freight train. Five years ago. Right around the time he'd rescued me.
Oh God.
"Ruby?" Mei's hand was on my arm, steadying me as the world spun. "What is it?"
"He was taken because of me." The words scraped out of my throat. "He got me out, and they caught him. They put him in the pits because he saved me."
The guilt clawed up my chest, squeezing my lungs.
All this time, I'd never known his name, but I'd mourned him.
I'd lit candles in the darkness and whispered thanks to a ghost. And he'd been suffering.
Fighting for his life in those brutal arenas while I raised our son in safety and sunshine.
A son I thought would never know his father.
The first sob tore out of me before I could stop it. Then another. And another. And suddenly I was crumpling. Mei caught me, her arms wrapping around me as I shattered.
"I didn't know," I choked out between sobs. My face pressed against her shoulder, tears soaking into her shirt. "I didn't know. All this time, I thought… I thought he was dead. I thought he'd died getting me to safety. But he was there, he was fighting, he was suffering, and I..."
"Shh," Mei murmured, stroking my hair. "It's okay. Let it out."
But it wasn't okay. Nothing about this was okay. My body shook with the force of all the years of grief and guilt and fear pouring out all at once. Mei held me through it, steady and solid.
"He saved me," I gasped, my voice ragged and broken. "He gave me everything. He gave me Teddy. And I—I didn't even know his name."
"You didn't know," Mei said firmly, gripping my shoulders. "Ruby, you didn't know. You can't blame yourself for something you had no way of knowing."
I shook my head, tears still streaming down my face, hot and endless. "But he's been there. For years. While I've been safe, while I've been happy, he's been…"
My voice broke again, splintering into a thousand jagged pieces, and Mei pulled me back against her, letting me cry until I had nothing left. Until I was empty and hollow and wrung out.
"Ruby, listen to me." Mei's voice was fierce. "Everything I've heard about him, from the crew, from people who know him—he's a good male. Whatever happened, whatever he went through, he's still that male. The one who saved you."
I wanted to believe her. God, I wanted to believe her so badly.
"He's staying in my guest house," Mei said quietly. "You need to talk to him. I can ask him to wait for you there. Give you time to process this, to pull yourself together."
"Yes," I managed, my voice hoarse from crying. "Please. Ask him to wait." I swallowed hard. "And can you send Craig in? I need to talk to him."
Mei nodded, squeezing my arm once more before slipping out.
I sat there, trying to pull myself together. Trying to figure out what the hell I was going to say to the man whose heart I was about to break. But I knew it had to be said. Cristox's arrival had changed everything, even though a part of me was too terrified to admit it.
The door opened, and Craig stepped inside. His face was drawn with worry, his uniform slightly rumpled, and the sight of him—so good, so steady, so utterly wrong for me—made my heart ache with a different kind of pain.
"Ruby." He crossed to me in two strides, reaching for my hands, and I let him take them even though it felt like a lie. "Are you okay? What happened?"
The concern in his voice, the genuine care in his eyes, made me feel like absolute shit.
Because I knew, deep down in the pit of my stomach, that I didn't feel the same way about him.
I'd tried. God knows I'd tried. He was good and kind and steady, everything a woman should want. Everything that made sense.
But he wasn't Cristox.
My mouth opened, but for a moment, nothing came out.
I could feel the weight of what I was about to say pressing down on my chest, making it hard to draw breath.
Craig's hands were warm around mine, his thumbs tracing gentle circles over my knuckles, a gesture that should have been comforting but instead made guilt twist in my gut like a knife.
"Craig, I..." The words caught in my throat. I forced myself to take a shaky breath, to meet his eyes. "That male. His name is Cristox."
His brow furrowed, confusion flickering across his features. "I know. Do you know him?"
The question hung between us, so innocent, so unsuspecting. I watched his face, memorizing the moment before everything changed.
"He's Teddy's father."
The words dropped like stones into still water.
I watched the ripples spread across Craig's expression—confusion first, his eyes widening as he processed what I said.
Then understanding, dawning slowly and painfully.
And finally, hurt, raw and unmistakable, flashing through his gaze before he carefully smoothed his features into something neutral.
"I thought..." He cleared his throat, and I heard the roughness there, the emotion he was fighting to contain. "I thought Teddy's father was dead."
"I thought he was, too." My voice cracked. "But he's here. He's alive. And I..." I pressed my hands to my face, trying to hold back the fresh wave of tears threatening to overwhelm me.
"Hey." Craig's hands were on my shoulders, steady and warm, and it was so like him to comfort me, even now. "It's okay. It's going to be okay."
But it wasn't. Because I could see it in his eyes—he already knew what I was going to say.
"I need to figure this out," I whispered. "For Teddy. He deserves to know his father, and I need to understand what this means."
Craig was quiet for a long moment, his jaw working. Then he nodded slowly. "I understand."
"Craig..."
"No, Ruby. I do." He gave me a sad smile. "I always knew there was a part of you I couldn't reach. I told myself it was just because you'd been through so much, that maybe with time..." He trailed off, shaking his head. "But it was him, wasn't it? It's always been him."
The tears spilled over, hot and shameful. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. You've been nothing but good to me, and you deserve someone who..."
"Don't." His voice was firm but not unkind. "Don't apologize for your feelings. You can't help who you love."
The words hung in the air between us, unspoken but understood. Because he was right. I'd been in love with a ghost for five years, and nothing—not Craig's kindness, not logic, not common sense—could change how that made me feel.
"I should go," Craig said quietly. He leaned in and pressed a kiss to my forehead, gentle and final.
"Craig, wait..." But he was already moving toward the door, and maybe that was for the best.
He paused at the threshold, looking back one last time. His eyes were shadowed, haunted, but there was something else there too—a resigned acceptance that made my chest ache. "For what it's worth? Cristox is a good male."
Then he was gone, and I was alone with the wreckage of what I'd just done and the terrifying knowledge of what came next.
But even through the guilt, through the chaos of emotions, one thought rose above the rest, clear and bright and undeniable.
Teddy was going to meet his father.
And nothing—not my fear, not my confusion, not even my own broken heart—was going to stand in the way of that.