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He opened up the door, his expression shaded, half-hidden in the shadows.
“Ruby.”
“I know. You told me to stay away from you.”
“You’re not very good at following directions.”
“Sadly no. I’ve been that way since I was a child. A little bit too independent. I always have to see why something is a bad idea for myself. I really don’t learn until the mistake has been made.”
He looked... Sad. Hollow. “I’m not a mistake you want to make, Ruby McKee. You are a golden girl. All I could ever do is tarnish your shine.”
He was warning her away because he didn’t want to resist.
Well, neither did she.
She took a step forward, closing the door behind them. And she put her hand on the center of his chest. “You are not what other people say you are. You’re this.” She pressed her hand more firmly against his chest, and she could feel his heart beating there. Strong and steady. And then she could feel it quicken. “You are everything inside of you that they couldn’t take. You are not your father’s fists or your mother’s disappointment. You are not the suspicion of a town full of people who are just afraid. You did not go missing when she did. You’re here. And I see you.”
He wrapped his hand around her wrist and took it away from his chest. “Why?” His eyes were wild, fierce, and they were searching for answers. And how could she give them? She didn’t know who she was. She was sixteen years younger. And he was raw and scarred and bruised from all that he had suffered.
But if she was going to be a miracle, then she wanted to be a miracle right now. Except she didn’t feel like there was any magic inside of her. Anything that made her particularly special, not right now.
She was just a woman who cared an awful lot, and who was faced with the sharp, hard reality of this man who had been so badly damaged by the people that were supposed to be... They were supposed to be his.
He’d been wounded by this community that had meant so much to her, that had rallied around her and seen her as something special.
And in him they had found their villain.
If they could be so wrong about him, then they could be wrong about her.
They could be so very wrong about her.
It felt a terrible thing that she needed so desperately for them to be wrong and right all in the same moment. Because she needed to believe that she had something special inside of her, the same as she needed to believe that he was good.
And maybe those couldn’t exist together. Maybe the lie and the truth couldn’t come from the same place. So both had to be true or both had to be false.
It doesn’t work that way.
Those words filtered through her so strongly she had no idea where they’d come from.
If only life were so simple.
But it wasn’t. It couldn’t be.
These stories are just a lot of people trying to make life simple.
And right then, in the middle of that truth, it made sense.
That the good object and the bad object of the town should be in one room together. Looking at each other.
As if they contained the mysteries of each other’s universe.
Because they were both, and they were neither. Because they were simply what scared, confused people had decided they were. Except they were also so much more. And maybe they were the only people who could help each other find the truth.
“Because we get to decide,” she said. “That’s why. Because we are both what they made us. How can I go on as I have knowing that they made you into a monster the same as they shaped me into an angel? I’m not an angel. I’m not made of glass, and I can’t be broken. I was left to die on a bridge. I am so much more than they think. I am flawed. And I am sad. I’m wrong, as often as I’m right. Why wouldn’t you be the same?”
And that was how she found herself being pulled forward, gripped in his strong arms, held flush against his iron chest. And she could feel his heart.
She hoped that he could feel hers.
