CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

"You've got to be kidding," she growled in response to the knock at the door.

 

"Ruby, I--" Joe hesitated for just a second. "I'd offer to explain, but I know there's no explaining this."

 

"Good. We're in agreement."

 

A second ago, up in the spare room, Ruby had been packing up her meager belongings and throwing them into her handbag, her vision blurred and unfocused, her movements automatic. But now she set it down on the bed. The truth was, she had no idea where she would go when and if she walked out the door of the Curtis house. Ever since she'd been forced to flee her apartment in Oakland, this had been the closest she'd come so far to a safe haven.

 

Yes, Holly and Regan and Colt been kind and welcoming to her, but they were also delusional--and they would take Joe's side. Yes, she was Kyle’s sister, but they'd known Joe for longer; they'd had time to accept the idea that he was upright and honest. But Ruby knew now she could no longer trust the judgment of others over her own.

 

If she didn't look out for herself, who would? In her life, she had trusted only Kyle, and if fate and the Jockeys had torn him away from her, then she was left with only herself. It could be no other way. Although the wind and cold already seemed to seep through the window and eat at her through her thin sweater, she would walk out, and she would find a way to go on.

 

She opened the door, knowing she would have to push past Joe without looking at him. He didn't try to physically stop her, just stood beside the door. She lowered her head.

 

"Listen. Don't leave. It's not safe."

 

"Safe? That's rich. I think war-torn Syria would be safer than here." She slung her handbag over her shoulder.

 

"Okay,” he said, taking a deep breath, looking down at the floor as if to gather his thoughts. “Here’s the deal. I'm going to try to explain, but if whatever lame speech I’m about to choke out isn't enough, Holly and I agreed that I should be the one to leave. Not you."

 

"What about Morgan?"

 

Joe's rolled his eyes. "That kid is missing the next party, that's for sure."

 

"What, her mom's punishing her for telling the truth?"

 

"The truth as she believes it,” he replied. “Look, yes, there is a Lydia. It's my fault for not telling you about her earlier. She's Aaron Beeson's cousin. I ended it with her a month ago. She went to stay with Aaron in Mexico, and I haven't seen her since."

 

Ruby stayed silent, hoping he'd get the point that she'd need more of an explanation than that.

 

"Morgan believes in the philosophy of keeping your enemies close.” He explained. “She's been texting her, screwing around with her and trying to stir up trouble. I guess she figured if she couldn't get to Lydia, she'd try to get to you, using Lydia."

 

"This girl--" Ruby began. "Does Morgan love you, or does she want to get you killed?"

 

"All I know is that she's absolutely terrifying. She's only thirteen, but I swear, if I drop dead tomorrow, she'll be running the Jockeys the very next day. But," he added, "I know this isn't about her. Or Lydia."

 

He was suddenly silent, and when Ruby looked up to see why, she saw that he held the ruby necklace out like an offering. It looked strange, frightening almost. It was like blood running out of his ivory-hued palm, like stigmata. His full lips were parted a little, and his fiery amber eyes shifted, as if he weren't sure whether to look at the necklace, or at her. It was the tangible symbol of the onus, of the guilt that he carried over Kyle's death.

 

As she stared down at his hand, she realized she couldn't walk out on that. She knew he hadn’t had to come upstairs to try to talk to her. He didn’t need to bring her back the necklace at all. She bent down and in a second, snatched it out of his palm, hoping not to touch any part of his hand and thus give the illusion of intimacy. The gold chain was warm against her own skin as she slipped it over her neck. She dropped her handbag to the floor and reentered the room. She crossed her arms and slid onto the edge of the bed, hoping not to give the impression that she was too comfortable. That she could walk out the door with the drop of a hat.

 

"You were there that night," she murmured, hugging herself. "The night Kyle died. It was you I saw. In the darkness, far off down the street. Sean knew it too. That's what he was hinting at the other night."

 

"You're right," he said after a beat. "I was."

 

"Then why didn't you do anything?!" she demanded, the frustration and grief reflected in the volume of her voice.

 

"It was too late, Ruby!" exclaimed Joe, back against the wall, hand raking through his hair in agony. "By the time I figured out what was going on, the cops were already a block away. I had just enough time to grab the necklace and get out. I knew if I stayed, it would only mean getting myself killed or arrested. Or worse, traumatizing you in a way that it would make it impossible for me to ever get close to you again. You already hated the Jockeys. Kyle made it clear he never wanted us to come near you. I respected that."

 

"But if you knew I didn't trust you, why didn't you give me the necklace?"

 

"I think tonight's dinner demonstrated that pretty well," he replied, unable to disguise the bitterness in his voice, though she knew it wasn't directed at her.

 

Ruby had to admit he was right. "Still," she said. "You know how much it would have meant to me. I only have the vaguest notion of what happened that night. I would give anything to find out. If you had nothing to hide and if you're so obsessed with earning my trust, why did you lie about the one thing that mattered most?"

 

"Because, think about it, Ruby. When I met you, I had five minutes to get you out of your apartment safely. Would you have gone with me if I'd showed you that necklace? Or would you have kicked me in the nuts and run out screaming? I couldn't take that chance. Yes, I said I’d be honest with you. But there's also something you don't know." Joe took a deep breath. “The night before he died, he told me that he needed to know that if anything happened to him, that I would protect you. And I promised him I would."

 

"You did?"

 

"Although I can see now that I pretty much fucked it up in every way imaginable."

 

"Well," Ruby said with a little turn-up of her lips, "I'm still alive, aren't I?"

 

"I know you don't believe me now, but that promise was more important than anything else. I already hate the fact that Kyle died instead of me. If I'd lost you too...” He faltered; the grief, even theoretically, overwhelming. “I would have broken my promise to Kyle. You were all I had left of him. I had to take the chance at a little dishonesty to get you to trust me in the long run.

 

“Why do you think I kept the necklace at all? If I had no intention of giving it to you, I would have pawned the damn thing. Thrown it in the river, even. I just...” Slowly, he edged toward the bed, but did not sit. Instead, he slid cautiously onto the floor, as if not to crowd her. She shifted, but did not inch away. “I wish I knew more, Ruby. Then I could tell you what really happened. I could do what I said I'd do and put an end to all of this insanity with Fox and the Reapers. I could let Kyle rest in peace."

 

"Joe," she said slowly, the beat of her heat seeming to punctuate every word. "Tell me. Did Fox kill Kyle?"

 

There was nothing she could do now to make up for the fact that, if true, she had lain in the open jaws of a monster. But she just had to know. She had to believe that she was woman enough not to fall apart; that instead she could take it and act. Kyle, at least, would have believed that she could.

 

Joe took a deep breath and turned to her, resting one hand on the bed, the one above whose wrist were the beginnings of the tattoo Ruby had not yet had the time to examine properly. She fixed her eyes on it now, realizing how incredibly grateful that Joe, of all people, would be the one to tell her the truth. Coming from him, it wouldn't be so hard.

 

"I wish I could tell you." She deflated. "But all I know is that Fox was up to something. Kyle thought he was legit, but he wasn't."

 

"He wasn't?"

 

"No. And Joe found out too late, after he was already in too deep to get out. And so did I--too late to help get him out."

 

Ruby thought back to when Fox had been the face of her salvation, the one chance for her and Kyle to get out of the outlaw life. Fox, with his designer clothes, money, and his plastic angel's halo.

 

She should have known that was all too good to be true, but she was desperate to believe in him, in the benevolent white prince who could carry her off to his castle.

 

For all her supposed independence, she'd been as silly and naive as the next girl. And she hated for Joe to know that about her. Joe, who stared at the floor and swallowed, who was gorgeous, even righteous, but nobody's prince.

 

A knight, she'd give him, maybe. A black knight. A knight-errant.

 

"But Ruby, whether or not he was responsible, I do know that Fox is not a good guy." She must have looked skeptical. "And I’m not just saying that because I don't like him. Or because I’m jealous. Even though I am,” he added, and she hid a smile.

 

“He was willing to betray us, his brothers. His own family. And not only that, he hurt people. And not just to get what he wanted. He hurt people for no reason. For fun. He liked hurting people.

 

“Obviously when you're in a club full of outlaws, you have to expect that kind of thing. But even with us, there's a limit to what's considered okay. But with Fox, there was no limit. For me, knowing that you were with him, that you worked with him, that you spent time alone with him...

 

“Well, let's just say I haven't gotten a lot of sleep over the past year. Not like I ever have." He sounded really tortured, and to Ruby's surprise, she was suddenly ashamed of herself. Due to her prejudice toward the club that had been her brother’s whole life, due to her inability to listen to reason, she could have saved Joe from that agony. Instead of blaming the Jockeys, she could have gone to them for help.

 

"Plus," he was staring across the room, toward the door, and she followed his gaze--but he wasn't looking anywhere, really. He cocked his head toward her. "Something happened.”

 

"What?”

 

"I liked you. I didn't expect that."

 

Ruby crossed her arms. "Gee, thanks."

 

"No, I...Jesus, Ruby, what do you have against accepting compliments?"

 

"Better men than you have tried." She gave a grin and looked down at the floor. She was suddenly conscious of how the tone in their conversation had changed. Was it a bad thing to let him apologize, to let him explain everything away? He had lied to her, and he had admitted he had lied to her, and here she was, joking around with him all over again, as if she could forgive him. As if he deserved to be forgiven.

 

Of course, it wasn't lost on her that the young man who was now in the room was the same one who had so bewitched the teenager downstairs that she'd practically thrown a digital temper tantrum when she learned she couldn't have him. And the way Regan had described her reaction when Joe had first come to live with them was beyond a schoolgirl crush.

 

It was starting to seem like every woman Joseph Ryan had ever met had had the same reaction to him eventually--and even men weren't immune to it. She remembered how Sean Donovan had described the slow burn of Joe's looks, how they crept up on you before you realized how truly devastating they were.

 

"So yeah, in that way, I was thinking of myself,” he continued with a sigh. “It was part of the reason I waited longer than I should have to show you the necklace.”

 

"Wait. Back up. Did you just say you liked me?"

 

"Should I not have?" There was a bit of a laugh in his voice. "I thought you knew."

 

"Maybe you even...wanted me?" He was looking up at her on the bed. Coincidentally, there was something almost chivalric about it. A knight saluting his lady. Joe never ceased to surprise her in that way. For all the leather, tattoos, and tough posturing, there was something inherently gentlemanly about him. He had never known his father, so where had he learned it? Maybe it was innate. "The other night, I figured it was just, you know, an act. To fool Sean."

 

"Really? If I was that good an actor, I'd be on Broadway right now. Seriously, do you think I couldn't keep my eyes off you all night because I liked your sweater?"

 

"I don't know," she responded primly. "It's a nice sweater."

 

"I was sure Colt was going to start giving me shit about it. Thankfully, he has more restraint than I thought."

 

Ruby felt the corner of her mouth turn up. Joe looked so pained and earnest. It astounded her that someone who was so self-possessed most of the time seemed to lose his cool when he was around her. There was no subterfuge to that, she decided, and there was no reason to doubt that she was starting to be able to figure him out. She thought she'd been wrong to trust him, but where perhaps she'd really gone wrong was in doubting her own ability to read people. She'd put it to such good use selling motorcycles for Fox, but it was a genuine talent, and it had spoken to her somewhere very deep, even unconsciously. She needed to trust it.

 

"Jesus Christ, those pants, lady. Thank God you were sitting across from me and could only see my top half, or it really would have ruined dinner."

 

Ruby laughed. "They were Regan's idea. Frankly, I thought they looked silly." He didn’t have to know the truth.

 

He looked down at her hand poised on the bed, and she realized his own had had brushed against it; such an innocent gesture. As she'd noticed before, his skin was cold--like his circulation was something to be desired. But that didn't mean her own hands didn't feel warm next to his.

 

The gesture had seemed tender, but there was a glint of something devilish in his expression. He slid up onto the bed again.

 

"What's silly is you pretending I don't make you feel the same way." He grabbed for her waist, trying to tip her back theatrically like some grand romantic gesture from an old movie, half-pinning her underneath him on the bed. His hair came loose from behind his ear, brushing the skin around her lips…

 

He was joking of course, but it wouldn't have been so amusing if there hadn't been a grain of truth in it. Joe had that strange quality of being fully aware of how attractive he was, even being cocky about it, without being obnoxious or arrogant. That was a rare gift--not that Ruby would ever let him know it.

 

"You bastard," she laughed as she wriggled away and sat up again. She let him get away with a lot--but she wouldn't let him get away with that.

 

"You want me?" he asked casually, easily catching her again by the waist, echoing her words from earlier. She watched his chest expand and contract, his cheeks a bit flush. He was excited, she realized. And so was she.

 

"How do you do it?" Unconsciously, she reached up to touch the lock of hair that always fell down from behind his ear and over his eye. The one that hid the healing wound on the side of his face.

 

She touched the tender place gently, and he closed his eyes, then opened them again. She almost literally got lost in his eyes as she watched their amber-gold fire react to her fingers on his skin. It really was hypnotizing. She was back in the place she'd been in at Desiree's, heartbeat heightened, prepared to give in. She would let this happen. She wanted it to happen, she realized. How could she not?

 

"What can I say?" he whispered. "A little brains. A lot of talent." He bent down and brushed his lips against her ear and neck in a gesture that resembled, if she didn't think about it too much, a kiss. Enough of one, at least, to make her feel alive under the touch of this gorgeous young man that she desperately wanted.

 

She was aware that his hands had migrated up underneath the hem of her shirt, and were now touching nothing more than bare skin, an inch or two below her breasts. The mere thought of that was enough to make her nipples harden. She could feel them poke out, curious, desiring. Down lower, against her hips, she felt a rock-hardness against her thigh. She gasped. This had to stop.

 

"Don't you understand, Joe?" she countered, as much to convince herself as to convince him. "This can't happen."

 

"Why not?" His tone was bit childish, like a little boy who’d been told he couldn’t have his ice cream until after dinner.

 

"If I let you do whatever you want, I'd only be stroking your ego. I'd be proving what you think you already know. That I can't say no to you; that I can't resist you or disbelieve you. That no one can. I'd be doing it all over again. Making the same mistake and expecting different results. You know what that's the definition of?"

 

He pulled back a little, amusement on his face. "Insanity, they tell me. But then again, my education wasn't the greatest."

 

She laughed. She didn't want to think about the mixed messages she was sending out. "Seriously, stop."

 

To her surprise, Joe obeyed her immediately.

 

He sat up on the bed and slumped against the wall, though she could sense his growing physical excitement--his breathing had picked up, and the pupils of his eyes had started to dilate as he watched her. Although he was trying to get himself under control, he didn't really try to hide it, either. The fact that he was obviously so turned her on by her was enough that it had aroused her further, sending up her heart rate and igniting the nerve endings on her fingers, her neck, and between her legs.

 

Wildly, she thought of taking back her words and grabbing his thigh. It was a magnetic, almost chemical reaction, like she wanted to crash into him and see what sparks resulted. But all of this, this desire to surrender, to let go, proved what she already knew. It was all the more reason to take this slowly. And there it was, her brain and her body fighting it out again, all because of Joseph Ryan.

 

"There's something I still have to know."

 

"Anything."

 

"You're going to regret you said that."

 

"Probably."

 

She forged ahead. "Did you tell Colt? The other Jockeys? About what happened that night?"

 

Joe sighed. "The less they know, the better. Unfortunately, the less they know, the more irrational they get. They want somebody--anybody--to pay. It's just how they are. Luckily, I've had Colt to help me talk them down from the edge. So far, anyway."

 

Something about the way he said the last few words, and the way he turned his eyes briefly up to the ceiling, half-closed, made her heart feel funny. She realized that Joe, in the past few days, had been through every single hardship and indignity that she had, if not more--all while maintaining constant vigilance over her. It was kind of an awesome responsibility, and one she knew he didn't take lightly. For her part, she'd still managed to catch sleep at Desiree's and earlier that afternoon, while Joe--who knew?

 

"When was the last time you got any sleep at all?" she asked, echoing Holly’s question to her from earlier.

 

"I don't need sleep," he said automatically. He immediately yawned, of course, and they both laughed. She suspected it was more like he had trained himself not to think about it. It made a little lump in her stomach, because she suspected he'd let the kind of life where he'd had to do that too often.

 

“It's just like you to want me to believe that you're some kind of all-powerful demigod who lives on nothing but ambrosia and beer. But I," she said grandly, "have talents, too, you know. And one of them is seeing into people. Besides, you said I could ask you anything."

 

"Okay," he said with mock seriousness. "I'm going to hereby come clean and admit that I am not, in fact, superhuman. I would never do that, normally, because I have an image to uphold. However, there's something about you, Ruby, that makes me want to be more honest." When Ruby cleared her throat, he added. "To try to be more honest. Because the more I show you of myself, the more I might get to see of you. And needless to say," he said, gazing up at her mischievously, and Ruby's body responded in kind, to know that he was switching from serious to playful in hopes that she would go along in a sign that all was forgiven--or even that some was forgiven. "I think there's lot more I want to see of you."

 

"Oh, I can imagine there is."

 

He laughed. "Yeah. But it's not just that."

 

"I fascinate you?" she teased breathily.

 

"A little." Although he may have not known how to express the emotions she evoked in him, he had other ways of getting it across. "It's depth, maybe. I don't meet a lot of people--women--with depth. It's like--" he took a deep breath, and she could see his mind trying to form the words. She suspected he didn't spend a lot of time talking this way to his friends. "It's like looking into a clear ocean, where you can see all the way to the bottom. But not quite."

 

"It's Kyle," she reasoned, trying to temper her own heart from making her lean into the almost-poetic things he was saying about her, to cling to his words like a bee to the inside of a flower, sipping up the nectar. "You're just seeing in me what you miss about him. It's as simple as that."

 

"Maybe," he said slyly. "But there's certain...things you offer that Kyle definitely did not."

 

"Oh yeah? Like what?" she asked, then added, "Besides my butt in these pants."

 

"If only someone would invent a way for you to sit in front of me on the bike."

 

"If they do, God help us all."

 

He slid off the bed, and she felt her body sink disappointingly with the knowledge that this was it--it was over for the night. She’d really turned him down. He’d go no further. But he paused, bent down, and kissed her forehead. There was nothing seductive or devious about it at all. He really just wanted to kiss her goodnight. Joe was surprising. He could be a gentleman. He could be sweet. He could be a lot of things, she thought as she yawned, suddenly sleepy. She wondered if he could ever be good.

 

"Sleep well. Remember, I'm right down the street."

 

"You jerk. That's the one thing that’s going to keep me up."

 

He laughed and shut the door.