CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

"When was the last time you got a good night's sleep Ruby?" asked Holly as she took a box of Earl Grey down from the cupboard. Hands on hips, she looked concerned as she regarded the young woman slumped at the table in front of her. "If you don't mind me saying it, you look dead on your feet. I know I offered to make tea, but if you'd rather go upstairs and take a nap, no one will think less of you."

 

"Yeah, we're not easily offended," piped up Regan from the living room from where she was texting furiously.

 

"No no," said Ruby, waving her off, though she knew Holly was right and she must look like hell. She'd only gotten a few hours' sleep at Desiree's, after all, and she hadn't had time to redo her makeup or even comb her hair since they'd left. "What kind of guest would I be?" Ruby said, gesturing vaguely around the cozy kitchen, vaguely stunned. How had she gotten here, and why? The turn her life had taken in the past two days felt like a particularly vivid dream. "Why are you doing this for me? You've never even met me."

 

"But we met Kyle. I know it's hard for you to believe, but the Jockeys are a family, and Kyle was like another son. We all loved him." Ruby knew it wasn't her imagination that at the mention of Kyle's name, Regan braced her shoulders and looked up from the sofa, where her thumbs were rapidly tapping at the touch screen of her smartphone. She didn't say anything, but she nodded imperceptibly.

 

"It’s not that I don’t believe you," said Ruby. "I know there was an aspect of his life that I never knew about. One I refused to know. And that was my choice, not his. He would have let me into it if he could have. It's just hard for me to--to imagine this," she gestured around her to the oaken cabinetry and stainless-steel appliances, the cherry-red oven mitts hanging from pegs. "When for so long, when I imagined the Steel Jockeys, I imagined something so...different."

 

Holly laughed, a sound that was deep, husky, but not in the least bit unpleasant. She opened the cupboard door and took out a giant pink mug with the Harley-Davidson logo on it. Ruby was strangely reminded of Fox; they'd had mugs like that at the dealership. That all seemed like so long ago, when she'd been happily employed as a budding salesgirl, making deals and taking care of business.

 

It had been at least a day since Fox had even crossed her mind. She wondered if he'd thought of her. Whether he'd gotten wind of the break-in at her apartment and thought the worst, or was even taking action, trying to figure out where she’d gone.

 

She maybe should have felt guilty at the fact that the man who had done so much for her had been replaced in her thoughts. He’d been replaced almost entirely by the man who had not only likely been involved in her brother's death, but had basically kidnapped her--and seemed to want her so much it made him hurt, and her hurt for him. She flashed to how Joe had looked at her on the bed when she'd collapsed onto her back, curious and intense, as if he were trying to figure out a particularly thorny riddle.

 

But then she reminded herself once again of the necklace she'd found and replaced in the pocket, reasoning there'd be time enough to get an explanation out of Joe. He'd been there the night of Kyle's death; she knew it, had probably pried that necklace out of her brother's cold, lifeless hand. If he hadn't necessarily lied to her, he'd certainly misled her by omission.

 

He couldn't be trusted. There was an explanation for why he had that jewel and she was going to find out what that was. She and Kyle deserved answers. And if it mean turning her back, if it mean shying away from the same young man whose face had come to dominate her mind, whose closeness, or lack thereof, had tortured her the entire way down from Fresno on his bike, then she was prepared for that.

 

She remembered bracing herself against the wind, teeth clattering against one another, wondering if he cared--or even noticed--that she was no longer pressing herself up against the warmth of his body. No longer savoring that heat. He hadn't said anything; she hadn't let him help her off the bike or even met his eyes when she'd hopped off.

 

If he was curious, or hurt, he hadn't shown it.

 

"Milk?" asked Holly as she poured. "Sugar? Artificial sweetener?"

 

Ruby put in her request. This was pretty much the last place in the world Ruby would have expected to find a biker who looked like Colt living--but then again, she would never discount a woman's influence, even one as hard-edged as Holly looked.

 

She'd lived with Kyle long enough to know that it was her own efforts to keep a decent home that kept curtains on the windows and prevented him from trying to save money on toilet paper by using the Sears catalog instead. Then Ruby’s gaze caught on a refrigerator magnet with the glittery pink outline of a Harley and the tagline “Whiskey takes the bitch right out of me”. Maybe some of her stereotypes were right after all.

 

"You were imagining smoky bar rooms with sawdust floors, and guys getting their teeth knocked out with pool cues, weren’t you?"

 

Ruby couldn't help but grin a little as Holly placed a mug down in front of her. "Maybe."

 

"There's a fair bit of that, too. No mistake," laughed Holly. "But I make Colt leave it outside when he comes home."

 

"Hey, if that’s what you want, you could always come to work with me tomorrow," said Regan brightly.

 

"You work at the biker bar?" Ruby asked.

 

"As a barback, and I fill in for bartender when Mark's busy."

 

"Are you even old enough to drink?" demanded Ruby, surprised by the motherly tone creeping into her own voice.

 

"Not technically," replied the teenager, with a telltale role of her eyes that seemed to confirm her immaturity.

 

"Not at all," warned Holly. "And not just because you'd be grounded for a year if I caught you."

 

"Holly, I'm nineteen. You can't ground me."

 

"I can as long as you still live at home and your dad and I are paying for that fancy cell phone of yours. You know any whiff of underage drinking could get the bar shut down, and half of your father's livelihood with it."

 

"Oh right. As if that's the worst thing that goes on down there. Besides, you know Dad would find some way to buy them off."

 

"Nevertheless."

 

"It took some convincing of Colt," said Holly to Ruby, as if she were afraid Ruby would get a picture of her as a poor parent. It was almost funny.

 

"Daddy finally let me when I told him it was either there or at Trump's over in Ross Canyon, which is way grosser than the Bird."

 

Ruby had to agree. That was the one the bikers hung out at when they passed through her town. The few times she'd been there, she'd jumped into the shower immediately afterward to wash off the sweat, smoke, and grime that seemed to stick to her body. Not to mention the memory of the leering comments and unkempt facial hair of the men who frequented there.

 

"At least he knew there would be guys at the Bird who would keep an eye on me. Plus Kyle--" Regan stopped herself, glancing nervously from her stepmother to Ruby, as if she were about to reveal something she wasn't sure if she should. "I told Kyle I wanted to bartend when I got older, so Kyle taught me how, after hours. So that when I applied for the job, I'd already know how to make everything. He said I should know a skill that will always be in demand." She shrugged.

 

Ruby smiled. That sounded like her brother. "Did he teach you how to make a Midnight Sun?"

 

"Patron, orange juice, grenadine, and blue Curacao?"

 

"That's it!" exclaimed a delighted Ruby. "That was his specialty. He always said he was going to bottle and sell it. I always thought it was kind of gross, but--"

 

"Gross? It's delicious!" She glanced at her stepmom, whose gray eyes were sharp enough to cut diamonds, and giggled. "Oops."

 

"How did I not know this?" Holly stared down at her nose at her stepdaughter.

 

Regan looked a little sheepish. "We thought you wouldn't approve of me hanging around the bar."

 

"You're damn right I wouldn't approve."

 

On one level, Ruby hated the fact that Kyle had shared parts of himself that she'd always believed he'd only shared with her. But because she'd lost her parents, she thought that never again would she ever have the opportunity to talk about him like that again, and she hadn't realized until this moment that she missed that, and him, with an ache as big as an ocean. The whole thing was surreal and she dropped the handles of her mug, slid her hands over the table, and rested her chin on the backs of her hands, closing her eyes briefly.

 

"Ruby?" asked Holly, concerned. "Are you okay?"

 

"Yeah," she said quickly, blinking away a moistness in her eye. "I'm fine--it's just. For years, it was just me and Kyle. We were each other's whole worlds. Or at least, he was mine. And now..." She made a gesture that she hoped would fill in the words.

 

"You can be part of it now, if you want," Regan said shyly. She got up hesitantly, as if she weren't sure what the reaction would be, and slid into the kitchen chair next to Ruby.

 

Ruby turned and met the small young woman's deep brown eyes for a second at least. She deserved to know that Ruby was listening to her, even if she was still a bit overwhelmed by the newness of it all. "To meet you, to look at you," she said. "It's like a little piece of Kyle is still here." There was a subtext under that: stay for a while. Stay forever. But how was that possible? This wasn't her life.

 

"Did Joe know about these bartending lessons?" asked Holly. Ruby wasn't sure whether she was still ticked off about her stepdaughter having lied to her for so long or if she was trying to be helpful by alleviating the heavy emotion in the moment.

 

"Not at first," her stepdaughter replied. "Once I turned eighteen and Dad let me take the job at the bar, we kind of spilled the beans to him. He never told you because he promised us he wouldn't. You know Joe."

 

"I do know Joe," said Holly with a cryptic little smile. "He’s got this code of honor that utterly blindsided me when I met him, considering the way he was raised. His mother barely had the right to call herself a mother and, needless to say, his foster parents were even worse. The things that boy had been through..." She stopped herself. "I'm such a mom. He'd hate that I was talking about him like this. He's tried so hard to toughen up, to put that all behind him, bless his heart. Anyway, it's really not my place to say. It's his," she said, with the ghost of a smile as she regarded Ruby.

 

"That may be, but he hasn't exactly been forthcoming so far," replied Ruby. Not that she'd asked--but it didn't mean she wasn't curious. More curious than she had any right to be.

 

"I don't see why not," pointed out Regan. "You've spent the last two days on the back of his bike. You would think that--"

 

"Nothing's happened," spit out Ruby. "Absolutely nothing. I only went with him to begin with because I feared for my life, and I'm only here with him because I had no other place to go."

 

"Mmmhmm," Regan smirked.

 

"When Colt first met him, he wouldn't tell us anything. He didn't trust anyone. It took me three months of prying to even let me touch his laundry long enough to throw it in the washer. He'd do it himself, late at night.

 

“Two t-shirts and a pair of jeans were just about all he owned in the world, and it's like he was afraid even those would be taken away from him. Everything else in his life had been. Colt tried to draw him out, but it was rough going there for a while. Anyway, it was Kyle who convinced Joe to join the Jockeys, and the rest was history. Once he opened up to Kyle, he started opening up to us."

 

"Joe lived with you?" Ruby felt her mouth forming the words but didn't register saying them. She knew it may be dangerous to reveal how curious she was about Joe, but the nuggets of information mother and stepdaughter had been dropping were too delicious not to want to scrape up more crumbs.

 

"For a year, when he was seventeen. He never mentioned it?"

 

"Like I said, he's never really mentioned anything. I'm not sure he'd want me to know."

 

She thought back to Sean, and the brief bit of information he'd offered about Joe's upbringing, or lack thereof. She hadn't asked about where he'd gone after his mother's death; certainly his options hadn't been ideal.

 

When they lost their parents, she and Kyle were lucky enough to have each other, which had saved them from being thrown into the system.

 

Joe hadn't had anyone, and he'd been even younger.

 

"Not about that, anyway. What..." she took a deep breath. She couldn't believe she was about to pry like this into Joe's past, but she reasoned it was necessary. If she was going to get to the bottom of his involvement in Kyle's death, if she was going to understand why he was the way he was; he was going to have to know more about him.

 

Her interest was--had to be--purely in the interests of giving herself the upper hand. She'd been so foolish at the rest stop, thinking about what her and Joe's life together might be like. That maybe she could coax him out of the Jockeys or she could fix him or shape him into the man she felt he could be, or should have been. He was unchangeable, and his past had made him that way. They may be on his turf, but from now on, she would have to make sure that every other advantage would go to her.