Whatever I say, it won’t be right, or what she wants to hear.
Tears stream over her cheeks and she wipes them away with the back of her hands. Her mascara’s smeared under her eyes and I’ve never seen her more upset. “I haven’t had many relationships, Santiago, but the ones I have had haven’t been great. My first real boyfriend, Devin, he said he’d wait until I was ready to have sex. We were in freaking high school. He said he was going to give me all the time in the world. Long story short, he was sleeping with my biology partner behind my back. So, this . . . this feels so much like that.”
“This is nothing like that.”
“They had dated before too, and so have you and Shiloh! This feels an awful lot like what I’ve gone through already.” Ruby shakes her head as emotions ripple through her. “I don’t know why’d you keep something like this from me! If I was really important to you . . . you would’ve told me about this.” Ruby darts off down the street and before I know it, she’s turned the corner and I’m left standing here, not sure what the fuck just happened.
One thing I do recognize is the fact she feels some sort of old feelings coming back up from her own experiences, and as much as I might’ve thought this had something to do with me, it really doesn’t. It has to do with some asshole abusing her heart in the past. Regardless, I’m going to make this right between us.
“Where’d Ruby go?” Shiloh’s voice comes from behind me so I turn back to her.
“She just went around the corner. Hammer told her that you—”
She raises her hand up in a dismissive manner. “I know. I’ll handle it. You just get back to the club and stay away from Hammer for the time being. I made him pay for lunch, all things considered. I’ll calm her down, so don’t worry.” Shiloh jogs down the sidewalk and heads in the same direction Ruby just darted off in.
Well, I hope she helps and doesn’t make this mess even bigger.
Chapter Fifteen
Sweet girl, it wasn’t that you weren’t enough. It’s your energy . . . it asks others to rise up, and not everyone is willing, to go where they would grow.
~ Butterflies Rising
Ruby
I could be going crazy, like honestly, I might be . . . but I’m trying to calm myself down. I turned the corner and didn’t even think about where I was going. I was a woman on a mission and somehow ended up at the little bench across the street and sat down. Now I sit here catching my breath, trying to process this.
He had a relationship with her in the past, one he didn’t tell me about, and . . . and I saw her grab his shoulder and talk to him from inside the window of the bakery. He probably doesn’t even realize I saw it, but she fucking touched him and then every fear came rushing back. Every memory of my relationship with Devin came to the forefront of my mind. How helplessly in love with him I was, how I thought I might even marry him, and then the scenes of my seventeen-year-old heart came back. My weird short pixie cut I had at the time with a Charger’s jacket to support my school football team. I was in the damn cafeteria when Lyndsey came up to me and publicly outed how she’d been sleeping with him, in front of the entire school. It was not only mortifying, but gut-wrenching.
“Ruby, are you okay?” Shiloh’s voice rings out from around me and I glance up to see her maybe ten feet away. You’ve got to be kidding me.
She waltzes right up and plops down on the bench beside me. “Okay, I know you’re not. God that was a dumb question. Sorry.”
I breathe in and out slowly, trying to come up with something to say to her. Instead I feel awkward as hell. Why did she even come after me? Did Zorro ask her to?
“I don’t understand why you’re even here,” my words come out much harsher than I intended, but when I say I need air, it means I need fucking air, not for people to come following me down the street.
“You have a right to be upset considering Hammer was an ass, but you don’t have a right to treat me like shit.