Ruby
I woke up gasping for breath, and trying to free myself from the strong arms that were confining me.
“Let go of me!” I screamed.
I was instantly freed, leaving me confused and terrified.
“Ruby, you were dreaming. You were screaming.”
Jett?
I recognized his comforting baritone almost immediately.
I wrapped my arms around myself protectively, my conscious mind beginning to slowly work again.
I’d been in the grips of a nightmare, one of many that I’d experienced in my life.
Taking slower breaths, I began to calm down, and my eyes opened to the dim light.
I’m with Jett. I’m safe.
I turned my head and saw Jett sitting patiently on the other side of the massive king-sized bed. He’d obviously moved away from me when he realized I needed space.
I ran a shaky hand through my hair. “Oh, God. I’m so sorry. I have nightmares sometimes.”
It was the first one I’d had since I’d been staying with Jett. Had I thought about it when I’d come to the condo, I would have taken the bedroom farthest away from his. I never got much of a reprieve from my nightmares.
“Don’t be sorry, sweetheart,” Jett answered in a low, husky baritone. “You can’t exactly control them.”
His slow, easy tone calmed me down.
I’m with Jett. I’m safe.
Those words were becoming my mantra, and it was comforting to know I wasn’t alone. “But I didn’t mean to wake you up. Was I loud?”
“Loud enough to scare the shit out of me,” he answered in a troubled voice.
The only light in the room was coming from the hallway, so I couldn’t see his face. But I could tell that he was only wearing a pair of pajama bottoms. He hadn’t bothered to cover his upper body before he’d come to see if I was okay.
“I didn’t mean to yell at you,” I said hesitantly. “Sometimes it takes me a few minutes to realize that I was dreaming. And I don’t usually like anyone touching me in any way. Well, except for you sometimes.”
I was still shivering, even though it wasn’t cold. My pajamas had a T-shirt top and short bottoms, but I was covered in the sheet and blanket. My inability to stop trembling was simply the aftermath of the frightening dream.
“I get it,” Jett said reassuringly. “I still have bad dreams about the accident occasionally. I don’t remember a whole lot, but my memory must have retained some of it because those dreams are pretty damn vivid.”
How was it that Jett always knew just what to say to make me feel like I’m not alone?
“Do you remember crashing?” I asked curiously.
“Only from my dreams. I’m not sure if it’s what really occurred, or if it’s only a nightmare not based on fact.”
“Mine are real,” I confessed softly. “And they’re usually so scary that I can’t get back to sleep.”
“Are you okay now?” he questioned.
“I think so. Everything seems a lot easier since I met you.”
I hadn’t meant to blurt those words out, but they were true.
“Do you want me to stay with you?” he offered.
I wanted desperately to keep Jett here with me. “Only if you’ll be comfortable.”
He responded by getting up and opening the window, then made his way back to the bed and climbed underneath the covers, making himself comfortable for a moment before he was completely still.
I snuggled back down in the bed with a tired yawn.
Glancing at the clock, I noticed it was three o’clock in the morning, so it was no wonder that I still felt exhausted.
“You know you’re wasting energy, right?” I asked Jett. “If you open the window, the air conditioning has to work harder.”
“Just listen,” he requested huskily.
I was silent, and it only took me a moment to recognize the sounds of the ocean. I sighed as the rhythmic noise of the waves hitting the shore lulled me into a more relaxed state.
Finally, Jett’s voice broke the silence. “The sound of the ocean helps me remember that there are some things so much bigger and more powerful in life than my problems.”
“It’s amazing,” I answered.
“Worth a little extra energy?” he asked with humor in his deep baritone.
I smiled. “Sometimes keeping your sanity is probably worth any price.”
Honestly, I’d never had the luxury of experiencing the sense of calm I had right now. My life had always been about survival. There was no room for anything else except living through another day.
“I feel like Cinderella right now,” I admitted. “None of this would be happening if it wasn’t for you. And I’m still not quite sure how to deal with it.”
“You don’t have to do anything to handle it, Cinderella. Just let it be. You should have a home, and you should be able to feel safe. This country is supposed to be considered the land of opportunity, but sometimes circumstances screw you.”
“Before my parents died, I wanted so many things. I dreamed about having my own catering business, and I’d fantasize about the day I could actually be…free.”
My hopes for the future were the only thing that had gotten me through the bad times before I’d become an adult.
“Were you happy as a kid, Ruby?” he asked. “When your parents were alive, did you have a good life?”
I hesitated for a moment, but I finally answered, “I was happy with my mom and dad. We didn’t have a lot of money, but my dad could always find a way to make things fun. And I knew that they loved me.”
“All those things you wanted should have happened for you, Ruby,” Jett said gruffly. “You got fucked over by life.”
“I’m scared,” I murmured, less afraid of expressing my fears to Jett in the darkness. “I don’t understand why you’re helping me, and I’m afraid it will all come to an end.”
“You don’t trust me yet,” Jett said flatly. “But trust takes time, especially after all the things that happened to you.”
“I’m a stranger to you, Jett.”
“Not anymore,” he grumbled. “And you’ll eventually learn that I’m not going anywhere.”
“Do you trust me?” I asked hesitantly.
“Yes,” he said immediately.
“Why?”
“Because you haven’t given me any reason not to trust you.”
In truth, Jett had never given me any reason not to trust him, either. “I’m sorry. I should have more faith in people, I guess.”
“Bullshit. You’ve never had a reason to trust anybody since your parents died. Our life experiences are different, Ruby. Other than my accident, I’ve led a pretty charmed life. You’ve never had that experience.”
I let his words sink in. Our perspectives were incredibly different. “So you trust everybody until they give you a reason not to?”
He chuckled. “Hell, no. I’m a businessman. If I trusted everybody, they’d screw me over. But sometimes you know in your gut who to trust and who not to trust. I went with gut instinct with you, Cinderella.”
“I’m not always a good person, Jett,” I confessed. “Sometimes I was actually so hungry that I stole food. But I never stole money or other things. But when you’re hungry—”
“Don’t, Ruby,” he warned in a dangerous tone. “Don’t justify trying to survive.”
“I’m not,” I answered. “I guess I just want you to know everything bad about me. Since you trust me, you deserve to know.”
“You never have to explain yourself to me.”
“Maybe I want to talk about it.”
“Then go ahead,” he said unhappily.
I took a deep breath before I said, “When I was really hungry, I considered selling my body for money or food.”
“Why didn’t you?” he asked roughly.
“Because I decided I’d rather die than to let somebody use my body. I couldn’t stand to just lay there and let somebody touch me just to get off. And what if they ended up violent like my uncle?”
I heard Jett’s sharp intake of breath before he replied, “I want to hunt your uncle down and make him regret every fucking time he touched you.”
His comment probably should have scared me, but instead, his protectiveness made my heart ache. Nobody had ever stood up for me. Nobody had ever tried to keep me safe. However, the last thing I wanted was for Jett to get himself in trouble. “He’s not worth it,” I said.
Jett released a masculine sigh. “Maybe not. But I think he needs to be investigated so this doesn’t happen to another kid.”
I’d actually never thought about that, and my stomach did a flip at the thought. “Maybe I should have talked. I never even considered that he might do that to another child.”
“Of course you didn’t,” Jett replied in a softer tone. “You weren’t in a position to be strong. He kept you controlled and underneath his thumb.”
“Is there some way we can check him out to make sure he isn’t doing this to anybody else?” I asked.
Jett chuckled. “Cinderella, you have no idea how much I’m capable of doing. I’m an expert hacker, and I have a lot of connections.”
“You’re a hacker?” I said, astonished.
“Not exactly. But cybersecurity is my specialty, so it goes with the job.”
“Will you teach me?” I asked hopefully.
“Only if you promise not to try it on your own,” he said thoughtfully. “It’s pretty damn easy to get yourself in trouble if you don’t know all the subtleties of getting in and out without a footprint.”
“I promise,” I said eagerly.
“What about your dreams of having your own catering company? You can’t give that up to become a hacker. I do it because I’m testing the strength of systems. Otherwise, it’s a crime.”
I sighed. “I only wanted to learn because I pretty much want to know everything. And I’m never going to have a popular catering business. I think that’s pretty much just a fantasy. There are a lot of startup costs, and I’d need to learn how to handle the business part of things. I’d hoped that I could manage to get some kind of business degree before my parents died.”
“Don’t ever let go of your dreams, Ruby,” he warned.
“There are dreams, and then there’s reality. My real life was way too far away from my dreams to even consider starting my own business after my parents died. I just wanted to get a job. Any job. But when you’re dirty, homeless, and have absolutely no skills, nobody is going to take a chance on somebody like that.”
“I’m willing,” he shot back.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Sometimes I have to wonder if your brain is completely functional.”
“I have an IQ of 155, so I’m technically a genius,” he said with mock defensiveness. “And I double majored in business and cybersecurity in college, but I was already a damn good hacker even before I went to school.”
“Okay, so maybe there’s just one tiny portion of your brain that’s dysfunctional,” I answered as I smiled.
I’d already known that Jett was gifted. He carried around a lot more useless facts in his head than I did.
“Not true,” he insisted. “I guess you just need to understand that you deserve every dream you’ve ever imagined.”
His words made me mute. I’d never believed that I was worth much of anything. I’d never felt worthy of being pulled out of homelessness and poverty. Probably because my self-esteem had always been bad.
“Thank you,” I finally said in a quiet but sincere tone.
“For what?”
“For being you,” I replied simply.
What else could I say? There was no way to really explain how special Jett was.
“I’m not all that great,” he muttered humbly.
Fun fact: Jett knew how to encourage and look after other people, but he didn’t think it was a big deal or that he was special in any way.
“You are pretty great,” I answered sleepily. “You just don’t see it.”
I closed my eyes, and fell back to sleep to the sounds of the ocean.
Maybe it was the knowledge that Jett was so close that kept any and all bad dreams away for the rest of the night.