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“Leonard can install the security system,” he says.
I nod, and he sets up a group call on his phone. It’s still early enough for a Saturday, but they all pick up. Burke, Leonard, and even Drew, our buddy who moved out to Puerto Rico with his fiancée.
“What’s popping?” Leonard asks.
Danny turns to me with a half-smile. Wry as ever, he says, “There’s no contest the great Shane Royce can bear to lose, so he got married before any of us.”
Chapter Twenty
Ruthie
Italked to my mother this morning for the first time in years. She was unrepentant about sidling up to Izzy at school, because if I’d done my job as a parent and child, she wouldn’t have needed to resort to such extreme measures. I asked her why she suddenly gave a shit, and she claimed that religion had opened her heart.
I don’t buy it. Not from her. She wants something, and it’s not selfless. So I told her to back down or else I’d involve the police.
Her response was, “What did I do wrong, Ruthie, for you to wind up like this?”
“Would you like me to text you a list?” I asked.
She bit into me for being a surly, ungrateful child. For siding with Danny and turning my back on family, for which the good lord would definitely smite me.
Leave it to my mother to mold the teachings of religion to best serve herself.
She said she’d stay away from Izzy but asked me to give serious thought to officially introducing them. I lied and said I’d think about it, and that was that.
Afterward, I asked Tank if he could grab coffee, because I suddenly felt a powerful need to get out of the house. He agreed, and we’re here now, Tank sitting across from me at a table much too small for him. I’ve just told him the whole story about Shane—minus the sex—and he’s watching me with the concern you’d show someone who’s suddenly started hearing voices.
This particular coffee shop thoughtfully added a little play area for young kids, so Izzy’s coloring a unicorn at the kids’ table, a small hot chocolate in front of her, while we discuss my poor life decisions. A couple of college-age girls at a table near us keep darting glances at Tank, like he’s a fish they can reel in if they stare hard enough.
“You married him?” Tank asks, his voice gruff.
I have the inane urge to quote Charlotte Brontë—“Reader, I married him,” but that probably wouldn’t improve Tank’s opinion of my sanity. It hits me that Shane is probably with my brother right now, spilling the news to him. Last night, our stolen night, was…
It was incredible, but today’s like the morning after the kind of night out where you drink excessively and say “that’s tomorrow’s problem!”
Yeah, I’ve done that too.
“It’s no big deal,” I insist, messing with the top of my hot chocolate as if it—and not me—might be the problem. The sore throbbing between my legs and the cold jewel trapped beneath my shirt both insist I’m a liar. “It’s a purely platonic, logical arrangement.”
He gives me a look that sees more than I’d like. “That’s bullshit, Ruth. You’ve known him your whole life and disliked him for most of it. Why would you give him this kind of power over you? You’ve always said he’s manipulative. A jerk.”
Despite myself, I lift a hand to the slight lump under my sweater, feeling the ring through the fabric. There’s the strange urge to defend Shane, but I deny it.
“I didn’t give him anything,” I lie, thinking of last night, of the way Shane looked up at me after I tied his wrists together and how it felt to move on top of him. Like I really was a queen. But power is a give and take thing. Sometimes you’re giving it away without even realizing until it’s all trickled out of you, and you’re empty of the ability to do anything but survive. Maybe Tank’s right, and I’ve already started down that path. Maybe I’m a fool to think I can play a game with Shane Royce and win.
“I don’t like this,” Tank says with frustration, running a hand back through his hair—light brown and not long enough for a ponytail but getting there. “If you needed help with insurance, you could have come to me. I would have married you.”
“I know,” I say softly. “And that’s why I couldn’t.”
Because on the night Tank stayed over, he told me he was in love with me, complimented my muscular thighs, and then fell asleep in a drunken stupor on my couch.
I love Tank too, but I’m not in love with him. I wish I could be. He’s a man any woman would be lucky to love—a man who opens doors and remembers birthdays, who wants to celebrate just because, and who always, always is concerned about other people’s feelings. But I’ve always had a wild heart, one that doesn’t know what’s good for it. You can’t bridle a heart like mine into submission, however much you try.
My friend may have slept that night away, drawn into it by the alcohol, but I spent every excruciating minute awake—attacking myself. Because if I were any kind of mother or friend, I’d find it in myself to fall in love with this man who wants so badly to take care of me and my daughter. This man who’d love us the way I’ve always dreamed of being loved. But my fool heart wouldn’t listen, and I couldn’t lie to him.
So I told him the truth in the morning: I love him, but not like that.
That was eight months ago now. I want him to move on—to find someone who’ll deserve his sweet cinnamon roll of a heart. I worry that I’m selfish for still wanting him in my life. But he’s stuck by me like the steadfast man he is, and I can’t find it in myself to push him away for his own good.
