Chapter 2

Ruby slammed the door and bolted the lock, her breath sawing painfully in and out of her lungs. She thumped her back against the door and slid down to the floor. Holy shit. What was that? Who was that? Ruby squeezed her eyes shut and rested her forehead on her knees, waiting for her heart rate and her breathing to return to normal. But when she did, the man’s silver eyes stared at her from behind her closed lids. She blinked them open again, shaking the image from her head. Her heart still rammed painfully against her chest and her breath was ragged. She needed to get a grip before she passed out.

She ran her hands over her bare legs and then over her arms, convincing herself that she was fine. Alive and well. Completely unharmed. Totally fine, she repeated to herself over and over until finally she could breathe without panting and the panicked beat in her chest lessened. Whoever he was, he hadn’t hurt her.

This time.

Ruby pushed the unhelpful thought from her head. The man had had plenty of opportunities to hurt her and he never did. She was home and she was safe. And even though she had run, she still had a hard time believing he would actually harm her. Which was probably further evidence that she was screwed up. More for the townies to whisper about.

Not that she cared. Ruby stopped caring what other people thought of her a long time ago, right around the time her parents died and the other kids in her third-grade class decided dead parents were contagious and stopped talking to her. Ruby decided she didn’t need them anyway. Moving in with her mother’s great-aunt in her crumbling old Victorian only solidified her reputation as a weirdo.

She didn’t let it bother her. Most of the time she steered right into it. With her entirely black wardrobe, her affinity for Edgar Allen Poe, and her habit of reading in the town graveyard, she let herself become a caricature. It didn’t matter that she loved wildflowers just as much as she liked dead poets. Or that she read in the cemetery to feel closer to her parents. Or that despite her black clothes her fingernails were always painted a different bright color every week.

No one bothered to learn anything else about her. Not that she wanted them to. Not that she cared. It was still her mantra even now at twenty-five. She told herself she didn’t need anyone besides her sister, Lena. And she didn’t.

Besides scaring away the townsfolk, her parents’ death had knocked the ability to feel real fear about anything out of her. What did she have to be scared of when the worst possible thing had already happened? It made her immune. Death was inevitable and it had visited Ruby early in life. Not that she particularly wanted to die, but she’d made her peace with it much earlier than most people.

She rose from her seat against the door and stood on shaky legs. She might be immune to most fears, but apparently her flight-or-fight instincts still worked. Her body left her no choice but to flee from that big hulking man in the shadows. But now from the safety of her house, her thoughts ran back to him, over the width of his chest and the intensity of his gaze and the size of those hands. She would bet they were rough and calloused. They would scrape against the soft skin of her thighs, easily holding her in place—

The stairs creaked, pulling Ruby from her daydream.

“Lena?” she called, but it was Lucifer, their sleek, black cat that rounded the corner, not Ruby’s sister. Ruby leaned down to give the little demon a scratch between his ears before heading upstairs to find her sister.

The small upstairs hallway led to two bedrooms and a bathroom. Light seeped out from beneath Lena’s door. “Lena?” Ruby pushed the door open and found her sister staring out the window toward the woods. Had she seen Ruby run? Had she seen the man?

“Lena.” Ruby squeezed her sister’s shoulder, but Lena didn’t budge. “Lena!” Ruby shook her sister, her voice rising. “Not again, not again,” Ruby muttered as she turned Lena in her chair, forcing her to look away from the window. “Lena, can you hear me?”

Lena turned toward the sound of Ruby’s voice, but her pale eyes were blank and unblinking, like she wasn’t seeing Ruby’s face in front of her own. Ruby swallowed the panic in her throat and squeezed her sister’s arms, giving her another shake. “Lena, it’s me, Ruby. Can you hear me? Come back to me, please.” She had to cut off the sob rising to the surface. Crying would get her nowhere; panicking would get her nowhere. It never had in the past.

Memories of her aunt sitting in her old rocker with the same blank expression on her face crowded into Ruby’s mind, but she pushed them away. Her aunt was gone and Ruby had no one to ask about her strange habits, about what was happening to Lena.

Finally, Lena’s unseeing gaze settled on Ruby. Her pale hair hung around her face and even though she was two years older than Ruby, right now she looked so young, so helpless. Ruby shook her fiercely. “Snap out of it, goddamn it!”

Lena cocked her head, as if hearing something no one else could. “They’re coming.”

Ruby froze, her fingers digging into her sister’s flesh. “Lena, please.” Her voice was nothing more than a choked wail.

Lena blinked. “Ruby?”

Ruby collapsed into her lap with a sob. “You’re back, you’re back, you’re back,” she repeated until Lena tugged her upright again, worry etched into her features.

“What did I say this time?” she asked as Ruby plopped down onto the floor at her feet.

“The usual. They’re coming.” Ruby sighed, running her hands through her long hair. Her sister was getting worse. These episodes were coming on more and more frequently, and she didn’t know what to do about it. Her aunt had never mentioned her episodes after they happened, and Ruby convinced herself her aunt was just old and tired.

But Lena was young and vibrant. Or at least she used to be.

Lena pressed her fingers against her temples and squeezed her eyes shut. “I don’t know what it means.” She shook her head, dropping her hands in her lap. “I’m sorry, Ruby.”

“Don’t be.” Ruby patted her sister’s knee through her pink fuzzy bathrobe. “You don’t need to apologize. It’s not your fault. We’ll figure it out.” It was the same every time. The same apologies, the same promise to figure it out. But Ruby still didn’t have any answers. “Come on, I think there’s leftovers in the fridge from yesterday.”

She grabbed Lena’s hand and tugged her up. Her fingers were cold and clammy and Ruby held them tight, warming them the best she could.

Downstairs, under the soft yellow light of the kitchen, Ruby studied her sister as they ate their cold lasagna in silence. They sat at the tiny kitchen table, just big enough for the two of them. They never had guests anyway.

Lena picked at the food on her plate, a furrow of worry between her brows. In the wake of their parents’ deaths, Lena had grown soft where Ruby had developed hard edges. Lena was well-liked, well-behaved, and accepted by her peers. She always had plenty of friends and their parents seemed to want to coddle her, to take her in and comfort her. Invitations to sleepovers and birthday parties were never in short supply for her sister, while Ruby stayed home with their octogenarian aunt and watched reruns of Murder She Wrote.

It didn’t matter. Ruby loved her aunt and her sister. She completely understood why they loved Lena because she did too. But her sister was falling apart and no one had stuck around to help. No one but Ruby.

Ruby scraped the edges of the pan, getting every last bit of crispy cheese.

Lena gave her a tired smile. “I’m sorry you’ve been working double shifts.”

Ruby waved her fork as though she could brush away their problems. “It’s fine, really. I don’t mind.”

Lena had to quit her job at the local preschool when her mind drifted away during story time. Ruby maintained that the incident only proved what an amazing teacher Lena was. Not a single child moved from their seat as they waited patiently for Lena to start up the story again. Unfortunately, her assistant teacher had returned from bathroom duty and found her unresponsive on the brightly colored alphabet carpet, The Very Hungry Caterpillar in her lap.

Every doctor they’d visited had found nothing wrong with her. The bills for CAT scans and MRIs were crammed in Ruby’s desk drawer away from Lena’s worried gaze.

Ruby reached across the table and took her sister’s hand again. “It’s going to be okay, Lena. I promise.”

Her sister sighed and shook her head.

“It will,” Ruby insisted. “Now go get some sleep.”

Lena’s pale blue eyes met hers. She looked as though she might say more, but instead, pulled her bathrobe tighter around her and shuffled back up the stairs to her bedroom. Shuffled, when she used to run 5K’s for fun, when she used to be the center of every party. Lena was the popular sister, the beauty, the beloved one. Now she spent most of her days asleep and Ruby had no idea how to help her.

Ruby listened to her footsteps overhead, the sound of her door clicking shut, the creaking of her old mattress as Lena sunk into it. And only then did she let her thoughts slip back to the man in the woods.

* * *

Ruby’s face hurt from the fake smile she plastered there. Surly girls don’t make good tips, she reminded herself as she set the customer’s beer down on the bar.

“Can I get you anything else?” she asked, not recognizing the bubbly tone in her own voice. But she needed those tips. Bad.

The man in front of her—overly styled hair, wide perfect grin, far too much cologne, distinctly not her type—let his gaze linger a beat too long on her chest before bringing his eyes up to meet hers.

“I’m good for now, sweetheart.” He flashed more shiny white teeth at her, and Ruby had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from telling him to fuck off for calling her sweeheart and for staring at her tits.

“Okay, let me know if you change your mind.” She turned to go, but the man grabbed her hand.

She stared at where his hand covered hers on the bar and then looked up into his smirking face.

“I’d enjoy my beer more if you stayed here and talked with me for a minute.”

The cloying scent of his cologne mingled with her rage and nearly choked her. How dare he touch her? He still hadn’t moved his hand, so she yanked hers out from underneath him.

“I really need to get back to work,” she ground out, still needing those tips, still thinking about that stack of medical bills, still fucking smiling.

The man glanced around the nearly empty bar. Damn it. It was a Wednesday night and the dinner crowd had cleared out hours ago. She literally had no work to get back to. Maybe she could marry the ketchups? Slice more limes? Do anything rather than stand here and talk to this asshole.

He grinned. “I think you could spare a minute.”

Ruby sighed.

There were only two types of guys that went after Ruby. The first type knew her sad backstory. They knew all about poor orphaned Ruby and her odd quirks. The problem with living in the same small town she grew up in was that this type was all too common. They wanted to comfort and protect her. They got off on her tragedy. She despised type number one.

The second type was convinced that girls who dressed in black and wore dark red lipstick were kinky in bed, and was just dying to find out if it was true. This type could be fun, sure, but with them she always felt like she was playing a role. Ruby, the kinky goth girl. It was exhausting.

Ruby assumed from the fact that she’d never seen this guy around town and from the way he kept glancing at her breasts in her tight black tank top that he was type number two. And she was not in the mood for type number two.

“Ruby?” Ruby’s manager cut in before she could stab a little pink drink umbrella into the man’s eye. “What are you still doing here? Your shift ended half an hour ago.”

Ruby turned toward her boss, finally letting the smile fall from her lips. “Thanks, Macy. I guess I lost track of time.”

Macy’s knowing gaze flitted to the man at the bar and back again. “You’ve been here since lunch. Go home.” She shooed her away from the bar, her purple braids spilling over one shoulder.

Was that a wrinkle of concern on Macy’s face? Ruby wasn’t used to having outsiders care about her. It was unsettling.

“Okay, sure. I’m heading out now.” Ruby didn’t bother with a backward glance at the asshole at the bar. She’d been standing since noon and it was now well past eleven. All she wanted to do was to get home and land face-first in her bed, boots and all. Which she was sure Mr. Type Number Two would find sufficiently kinky.

She tossed her bar apron into her locker in the back room and grabbed the boxed-up leftovers Macy had set aside for her from the fridge. Still pondering what all these nice gestures from Macy meant, she pushed the door open into the alley. The night air was hot and sticky and did nothing to improve her mood.

She was wearing her typical work outfit, black tank top, short black skirt, black boots. The only thing that changed in colder months was an added black cardigan and black tights. Red lipstick all year round. Without it douche bags might never hit on her, but she liked her red lips and she wasn’t about to give them up.

She twisted her long dark hair in a knot on top of her head in an attempt to stay cool on her walk home but it didn’t work. By the time she reached the path to the woods, she was a sweaty, tired mess.

Ruby stared into the darkness beyond the trees. She could stay in town and walk home through the well-lit neighborhoods. She should do that. But the path through the woods was so much shorter. And she was so tired.

And why shouldn’t she be able to take any route home that she wanted?

She was being reckless.

He might be there.

It was dangerous.

A new warmth spread to her core. A tingle of anticipation ran down her spine.

Maybe she was just as kinky as people assumed. She shifted the leftovers to her other hand, grabbed the pepper spray out of her purse, and strode into the woods.