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She sat up and started pulling on her clothes from the night before, tossing his at him as she went. “We have to get dressed. And then… and then… I don’t know. This is… this is bad.”
He stood and took her face in his hands, swam through her eyes. “It’s going to be okay.”
She shook her head. “You don’t know him.”
“No, but I know myself, and I’m telling you, it’s going to be okay,” he said. “Let’s get dressed. Then we’ll deal with him.”
He was still tucking in his shirt when the knock sounded at the door. Ruby hurried toward it, then turned to look at him, standing in the living room.
“I… I didn’t want you to meet her this way.” She was distraught, her cheeks flushed, eyes bright with worry. She was talking about Olivia. She probably hadn’t planned for them to meet at all, certainly not this soon, and now Roman was going to meet her daughter under the angry and watchful eyes of her ex-husband.
“I know,” he said. “But it’s going to be okay.”
She opened the door and Roman heard a little girl’s voice say, “We got you an egg-and-cheese!”
Adam’s deeper voice sounded behind her. “I tried to call. Last minute meeting at the station.”
Then they were stepping into the room, Olivia rushing forward in a tornado of chestnut hair, a shirt that looked like it was made out of blue glitter, and Ruby’s sea-green eyes.
She was carrying a purple backpack and a brown paper bag. She stopped short when she saw Roman.
“Mommy, who’she?” she asked, her eyes growing wide as they traveled up Roman’s frame.
Adam stood a few feet inside the door, wearing his uniform and holding a canvas tote bag. His expression was stony, but his eyes burned with anger.
“Yeah Mommy, who’s he?” Adam asked, his eyes still on Roman.
Roman met his gaze without blinking, waiting for Ruby to explain in whatever way she thought best because shoving the guy out the door and saying,I’m the guy who’s going to kill you if you so much as look at Ruby the wrong way,seemed inappropriate in front of a child.
Not that he knew the first thing about what was appropriate for a child.
“This is my friend Roman.” She looked at Roman. “Roman, this is my daughter Olivia and her father Adam.”
Roman ignored Adam and walked toward Olivia. Why did he feel nervous meeting someone so small?
He crouched down to get on her level. It was like looking into Ruby’s eyes, except this version of Ruby was small and helpless.
Supremely vulnerable.
It hit him like a punch to the gut — the same desire to protect that he’d felt with Ruby. It was so disorienting, so powerful, that it almost took his breath away.
“Hello,” he said, holding out his hand. “I’m Roman. I’m very happy to meet you.”
“Hi, Roman!” she said breezily. “You’re like… agiant! Sorry we didn’t get you an egg-and-cheese. We didn’t know you’d be here.”
Her hand was tiny in his. She shook it vigorously, then pulled away to take the paper bag from Adam.
The grown-ups stood awkwardly by while she scooted onto one of the chairs at the small dining room table. She turned the paper bag upside down, dumped out two foil-wrapped sandwiches, and went to work unwrapping one of them as if finding a strange man with her mom wasn’t unusual when Roman knew for a fact that it was very unusual indeed.
I haven’t been with anyone since Adam.
Adam walked toward Ruby, then stopped when Roman took two long strides toward them, the implication clear: take another step and you might lose a leg.
“What the fuck?” Adam hissed, glaring at Ruby.
Roman could see what Ruby might have saw in him as a nineteen-year-old young woman. Tall and blond, he looked like the epitome of the all-American hero.
“You should go,” Ruby said.
