That night, I just hold Ruby, and that’s all. Even though I still want her more than I can put into words, even though I’m always aching for her still-virginal body, I don’t do anything.

I just hold her, because tomorrow she’ll be gone.

I know she doesn’t live that far away. I know that she used to come into the road house every so often, that there’s no reason we can’t keep seeing each other.

Except that she’s twenty and I’m more than ten years older than her. When she came into the road house, I wasn’t even allowed to sell her alcohol, just the cherry coke she always drank.

Ruby’s going to want to find someone her own age. She’ll go back to school, meet another twenty-year-old, and I’ll be forgotten. I’m just a blip in her past.

That’s why I haven’t taken her virginity. That, and I don’t deserve it.

Ruby rolls over in my arms, sighing in her sleep. She’s so beautiful right now I can hardly stand it. I can’t comprehend how this willowy slip of a girl has taken so much of my heart in the past few days, but she has.

It’s hers. I’m hers.

Before, when I saw her sometimes, I thought I was obsessed. I thought that my yearning for this girl who I barely knew would pass, and I’d get over her, but I was wrong.

I didn’t get over her.

I’ll never get over her for as long as I live. Once Ruby leaves my life, I know that I’m going to look back on these days forever.

It must be one o’clock in the morning before I finally drift off, even though I’m trying not to. I want to stay awake tonight so that I can memorize everything about Ruby.

The way she looks when she sleeps. The way she breathes softly, eyelashes fluttering through a dream. The way she curls onto her side, dark hair fanning over the pillow, the soft skin of her neck beating with her pulse.

I don’t ever want to forget a single moment of this.

I wake up suddenly and completely to dead silence. It’s dark in the cabin, a blackness so thick I feel like I could swim through it, but instinctively I know something is wrong.

I just don’t know what. Ruby’s still asleep in my arms, her face buried in the pillow, limbs askance. She’s taking up at least two-thirds of my king size bed, but I don’t mind.

I just lay there, awake, wondering why I’m awake.

Then I hear it. It’s so faint that I think I might be making it up for a moment, but then I hear it again. The softest, faintest squeak of a floorboard. From the sound, I know it’s one of the ones in my living room — the support beam underneath is a few inches off of where it should be, so the floorboards there always squeak.

Every muscle in my body tenses, and I sit up silently in bed.

It’s him, I think. It has to be him. He waited until we thought he wasn’t coming, and then he came for her.

There’s another squeak. There’s no light leaking around the bedroom door, so I’m sure he’s not using a flashlight and it’s so dark here in the woods, with all the lights off, that he’s probably stumbling around my cabin, lost, banging his shins on my furniture.

“Ruby,” I murmur into her ear.

Nothing.

“Ruby,” I murmur again, shaking her shoulder slightly.

In the inky blackness I can just barely see her eyes come open, and I hold a finger to her lips. Ruby nods, her eyes wide.

“Go into the bathroom and shut the door,” I say, keeping my voice as low as I can. “And no matter what happens, don’t come out.”

“Is it him?” she whispers, glancing at the door.

I nod. Even if I haven’t seen Viper yet, I can feel it in my bones.

“Jax,” Ruby whispers urgently. “Let me help, I can’t let you—”

I cover her mouth with my hand, and she falls silent.

“Don’t worry about me,” I say. “Go. Now. I know how to deal with men like him.”

Ruby goes without further argument, and I’m glad to see that for once, the bathroom door shuts properly.

But now to the matter at hand. The floorboards have stopped squeaking, but now that I’m listening, I can hear soft footfalls coming slowly closer and closer to the bedroom door.

I don’t keep a gun in the house — I’ve seen far too well what they can do, and I hate the damn things — but right now, I’m wishing I did. Instead I grab the baseball bat that I keep underneath my bed for situations like this and heft it in my right hand.

My back is pressed against the wall. I want to get the drop on this asshole, so I can hit him once and it’s over, so I wait.

The footsteps get closer. And closer. Finally, the door to the bedroom opens, and my whole body tenses in anticipation.

Not yet, I remind myself. He’s on the lookout, doesn’t know the layout of the room, doesn’t know where you are…

In the dark, I raise the bat, holding it with both hands. I want this to be one and done, because anything more than that and it’s out of my control.

The black shadow steps into the room fully, standing at the edge of the bed, hovering like he’s squinting, trying to make out my form. Now I’m slightly behind him, the angle of attack perfect.

I wind up, but just as I start swinging, there’s a noise outside the room. With perfect timing, Viper turns back, moving toward the door, and my bat glances off of his shoulder.

“Shit!” he shouts. “You fucking—”

Before I know what’s happened, the light is on and someone’s kneed me in the solar plexus, knocking the air out of my lungs. I clench my hand around the bat and try to force air into my body, blinking at the sudden brightness.

But before I can do that, someone’s behind me. They wrench the bat from my hands, nearly pulling my arm out of its socket, twisting it up behind me.

I’m still blinking with the light when Viper’s face comes into view, standing in front of me.

He’s holding a gun.

I brought a bat to a gun fight.

Viper cocks it and aims it at my forehead. Whoever’s got my arms locked behind me twists a little harder, and I break out into a sweat, pain radiating through my whole body.

“Where is she?” asks Viper, snarling, his teeth bared like his namesake.

I don’t answer. With our skirmish he got turned around, and now his back is to the bathroom door, with Ruby right behind it.

I need to distract him, get him away from the door somehow. Maybe if I try to run for it he’ll—

As if he can read my thoughts, the guy behind me raises my arms up even further, the pain searing through my joints and sending flickering white spots across my vision. I try to stomp on his feet but it’s pointless — he has every advantage on me right now.

I flick my eyes to the bathroom door again, trying to figure out how to lure him away from Ruby, as Viper prods my face with the gun again.

“I asked you a question,” he says, his voice deadly serious. “I know she’s staying here with you. We know everything the cops know. Now I’m just gonna ask you one more time: where is my girl?”

My vision flashes white, then red, and it’s not just pain. It’s rage.

“Ruby is not—” I start, as the guy behind me jacks my arms up again. Something burns hot in my shoulder joint, like it’s tearing.

“—your. Girl,” I grit out, the words hissing between my teeth.

I glance at the bathroom door again, praying that she went through the tiny window.

Slowly, Viper grins. He pulls the gun back, then looks over his shoulder at the bathroom door.

“You put her in the closet?” he says, that same ugly smile still on his face. “I’d hoped you were a little more creative.”

He holds his gun down by his side. I’ve got sweat dripping down my whole body, and even though I think my shoulder might be dislocated, I writhe against the guy holding me back.

I have to save her. This is all my fault, and she’s in there, helpless against this evil man. He’s going to take her and it’s going to be because of me, because I thought I could protect her.

I try one more time to get away, but the giant behind me pulls and twists my arms so hard that the pain sends me to my knees, something in the joint cracking. Viper steps to the bathroom door, only looking back to look at me once and raise an eyebrow.

There’s nothing I can do or say as he opens the bathroom door slowly, the hinge creaking.

“Come out, come out,” he calls, his voice a spine-chilling sing-song.

Ruby’s not there, but the shower door is closed and there’s a dark shape inside, behind the frosted glass. I have a feeling like a bowling ball to the gut as I wonder why she’d try to hide in there when she knows full well that it’s no hiding place at all.

“Is that you, little girl?” he snarls. “Don’t you know better than to try to hide from the big, bad—”

He pulls the shower door open in a rush.

It’s not Ruby.

It’s a towel draped over a broom resting against the side of the shower. In a better state of mind, I’d have realized it instantly, but my head is fuzzy with pain and I don’t think Viper was ever that bright to begin with.

“What the—" he starts.

He doesn’t finish his sentence because there’s a burst of movement from behind the door. Ruby rushes out her dark hiding place, wielding something big and white.

Moments later, Viper is on the ground, screaming, and Ruby’s standing over him.

“Whoa!” the guy holding me shouts, and he loosens his grip on my arms for a second.

It’s not long, but it’s enough. I ram one elbow backward, my whole arm blazing with pain, and I catch him just under the ribs. He grabs at me again, and for a split second my shoulder is pure fire, but then I turn away and this time I get him with a knee to the solar plexus. Fair payback.

He drops. I’m on him, one of my knees in the center of his back as he gasps for air. I twist one of his arms up behind him, and even though I’m tempted to nearly break it like he did mine, I don’t. I just make sure he’s not going anywhere.

“Ruby!” I call out, my stomach still knotted with panic as I finally look into the bathroom.

She’s on the floor, hunched over with her long hair obscuring her face, and for a second my heart stops.

“Ruby!” I call out again, hoarsely, desperately looking around for Viper. My vision is still sparkly and fractured with the leftover shards of pain, but I can’t find him.

Then Ruby looks up. She’s in the bathroom, on her knees, and when she shoves her hair out of her eyes, I finally see him.

Viper is on the floor, stretched out, bleeding and unconscious. There are panicked tears in Ruby’s eyes as she looks at me, the beautiful blue orbs red-rimmed as she heaves a breath like she’s trying to get control of herself.

“I’m fine,” she whispers.