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“No,” Roman said firmly.
Liar.
Mikhail studied him. “A man’s ability to be honest with himself is his greatest asset.”
He turned his back on Roman and made his way down the boardwalk, his form eventually swallowed by the gloomy day.
18
Ruby
Their late night-movie had stopped seeming like a mistake and had started to feel like a routine, which was dangerous in and of itself.
Obviously.
But it had been so gradual she’d hardly noticed crossing the chilly abyss she’d put between them, and the truth was, she was lonely.
It had been three weeks since her rescue. She spent every day alone, either in the loft or on the roof deck, tipping her face to the sun or wind, wondering when she would be free to walk the streets again, to take Olivia for pizza or ice cream (there was always enough money in the swear jar for ice cream).
Sometimes she prowled the loft, looking for clues about the man who had barreled into her life, beating a path of destruction behind the happiness they’d so briefly experienced before everything went to shit.
But other than her bedroom, which had clearly been made cozy for her, the house itself was devoid of information. It was like living in a museum.
Talking to her dad and Brooke helped, but they felt so far away it was like dialing home from an outpost on the moon.
She saw Vera when she came to cook, which wasn’t every day (Ruby sensed more to that story but didn’t want to pry), and Max when he hung around the loft to talk business.
The other men came every few days, but their business seemed serious and confidential and Ruby always made herself scarce during their meetings.
Other than that, it was just her and Roman, and her appetite for giving him the cold shoulder was dwindling by the day.
She didn’t know where he’d been today but he’d returned to the loft looking windblown, his face raw and ruddy from the cold. They’d eaten separately — Ruby still took her food to her room when Roman was home, a kind of pathetic last stand — and she’d read for a while, the scented candles flickering on the bedside tables.
She told herself she didn’t care about the movie, that it was just another way to pass the time, but she was antsy and unfocused, and she slogged through the chapters of the book she’d been immersed in earlier in the afternoon.
Finally, the time on her phone flipped over to 11:30 p.m., the unofficial start time of their late-night screenings, and Ruby headed for the living room.
Roman was already there, legs extended onto the coffee table in a pose that still seemed strangely casual for a man who had seemed almost formal when she’d first gotten to know him. He was wearing gray sweatpants and a long-sleeve black T-shirt and looking more delicious than any man had a right to look in such haphazard attire.
“Sure you don’t want to pick this time?” he asked.
A bowl of popcorn sat on the coffee table along with two beers.
“I’m sure,” she said.
She’d been surprised to find her lack of agency in the loft had an upside: she didn’t have to make decisions. Her food was prepared by Vera with nutrition and calories in mind — Vera insisted Ruby needed to gain weight after her ordeal and Ruby enjoyed Vera’s food too much to argue the point — and placed in front of her on the table or left for her in the fridge. She wore clothing that had been chosen for her (by Roman or by Vera, she didn’t know) before her rescue, all comfortable and more expensive than any she could have afforded in her previous life.
After years of shouldering the weight of her life with Olivia alone, it had been a relief to relinquish control over the minutia. If she had to be trapped here, she might as well take advantage of it, rest her brain.
That went for movies too. Roman was partial to action movies, which suited her just fine. She wasn’t up for anything heavy and she wasn’t sure she could bring herself to laugh.
He handed her one of the beers and raised the other one.
“Who needs sleep?”
His dark hair was a little shaggy, his features shadowed and angular in the room lit only by the title card on the movie he’d cued up. Unrestrained by his cotton T-shirt, his shoulders looked even broader than usual, and she had a memory of his bare chest under her palms.
He looked roguish, dangerously attractive.
