She nodded. “Beau has been teachin’ me some stuff. Aiden too – I feel like a ninja now and know how to use a gun other than a shotgun. I totally wasn’t goin’ to shoot myself in the foot or whatever. Beau said I was a fast learner.”
I trusted her confidence with her skills and a gun, even if a small piece of my brain was distracted by once more flagging the way she said Beau’s name as something suspicious. The way hersmile almost seemed brighter too was even more of a sign for my brain to witness and wonder.
Not that I would wonder for long – I had decided to just ask.
“You and my uncle…” I spoke softly, when she and Mo had finished their dress conversation and Mo was concentrating on the drive. “Are you friends now? I wonder sometimes because he does not do lady friends and yet, here you are. Plus, you date the man he cares for too. And I have never known Beau to be lenient with sharing the things he has.” He’d always shared things with me or my daddy, but that was different, and he had never once seemed inclined to play nice with others outside of our family bubble.
The bottle of Champagne was slowly lowered from Ruby’s lips, her cheeks turning red as she swallowed hard. Her reaction alone had me sure I was on the right track with being suspicious – she was either more than friends, or she wanted to be. Both were fine with me, so long as Beau was happy.
“Do you… do you have an opinion on it?” She asked slowly. “You’re only a handful of years younger than me and I don’t want you to think it’s weird that I’m… I’m friends with your daddy.”
She’d never called him my uncle. Sure, she hadn’t known at first – Beau had admitted he introduced me on accident as his daughter the first time he’d met her. But I had never corrected it, and I didn’t want to even if I couldn’t understand why. It was like a tiny part of my brain loved the idea that even though I had lost Ford, I still had someone to fill his role a tiny bit.
It reminded me that I wasn’t as alone as I sometimes felt – I had Beau. He had not left me yet.
“Doesn’t bother me. I like you, Ruby. You are a nice friend and I think you are sweet.” I snickered and stole the Champagne back. “As sweet as the peaches, like you say. But I was just beingnosy because I keep seeing things being different in Beau, and I wondered why.”
“Well good. Because I like you too – you’re adiamondof a girl.” She patted my arm, once again giggling to herself and making me smile.
“Beau has…”I weighed my words up carefully. “He is unhappy on the inside for so many years that sometimes he forgetshowto be happy. But with you – with Aiden – I see him begin to remember. So, whatever you are, if friends or something not so friendly, I don’t care. All I care for is that he is happy and that he finds peace in his life.”
Aiden hadn’t been around as much, so I hadn’t had a chance to get to know him as well yet; Beau had him on the ‘gory shit’ that had required a firm touch and a violent streak. I wasn’t entirely sure what he’d been doing to the people he’d been hunting but I knew he was tracking down every single gangster who’d betrayed me with Kalvin and John, and was making sure they wouldn’t be able to do it again.
He was doing Malone’s job and even if it hurt to know mytíohad been replaced in a way, Aiden was perfect with it.
He was a ghost, almost.
“I don’t know why Beau seems happier.” Ruby snorted. “I’m mean to him all the time. Just this mornin’, I stole his coffee and made him all huffy.”
The fact he was even having coffee with a woman was shocking enough, let alone that he’d allowed her close enough to take his drink and he hadn’t shot her for stealing from him. But I kept that to myself, not wanting to spoil Ruby’s denial when she seemed so content with it.
“I think you are good for him.” Satisfied I had satiated my curiosity enough, I hurried to end the conversation. “And if you turn out not to be, that is no problem either. But I do not have this concern.”
“’Cause you’d kill me super dead.” Ruby grinned. “But don’t worry; I fully intend on bein’ nice to him for as long as possible. I’d never tell him to his face, but he’s not so bad and I like bein’ friends with you.”
“Friends?” I tasted the word on my tongue. “I like being friends with you too.”
Turned out I had been right when I had wished for a friend to fall out of the sky for me. Not only had it happened, but it had come far faster and better than I could have ever imagined.
I had more than one friend – more than one woman I was happy to have in my life that seemed to like me for me, and not just the money in my bank. So it was with a smile that was not false, and the thoughts of a potentially better future on the horizon, that I headed back to my home, ready to face another day. Another fight.
Chapter Twenty
Three things were pissing me off right now and only one of them was fixable. First: Sapphire had been using my phone to make playlists for all our car journeys, and me being an idiot had hit shuffle before my drive without thought. Now I was being forced to listen to Justin Bieber hits from way too many years ago, as though that was ever something I needed to have burned my ears.
The second issue was that my entire body hurt way too much for me to be driving so much. I’d been doing it far too often lately, with random outings, missions, searching for Sapphire, and now today’s quest of acting like a damn stalker. Not only were my freshly attached, non-robotic fingers still healing. But the bullet wound in my shoulder and the general aches from the car crash weren’t helping. Mental stress and grief aside, I felt like complete shit. I’d spent almost an hour sat on the shower floor,just letting the hot water scald my spine as I stared into the void and tried to empty my mind.
I couldn’t control the first two issues, even the music. I wasn’t in the mood to stop speeding so I could find a different playlist. But I could control the third problem that seemed far more important than little old me - I could fix my mother and Misha’s relationship just a bit so that my baby brother wasn’t going around with as much guilt as he had been that he did not deserve. And maybe I could help wipe some of the tears off his face and the stress from his brain. That was what I could do.
The hotel my mom stayed in, just past the Vegas strip, was nice and all, but it wasn’t as fancy as I had been expecting. It was a generic three-story building, with a small helpdesk and a single member of staff, and that was it. There was no security, no cameras, and no fancy statues, art and whatever the fuck else I had presumed would be here. A quick look around at the map as I headed to the room number my mother had told me she was in, there wasn’t even anything more than a single small restaurant and a tiny gym. No pool, or bar, or anything else. It was judgemental of me, but I had been expecting more from a hotel owned by Raya. But I supposed it made sense that not everything in her portfolio catered to the rich – she needed to have control over things the everyday man use as well, and this place seemed the sort of location that the shadier types of folks would stay.
Within three minutes of snooping through the ugly patterned carpet corridors with the slightly too orange lights, I found the right room. My fist pounded against the door a handful of times as I called out, trying not to be too loud and piss off the other people staying nearby.
“Mom, it’s Linc. Open up!” I didn’t know if she would speak to me, but it was worth a shot.
As much as I didn’t like being ignored by her for so long, I wasn’t here for me. I was here for Misha because he genuinely needed her – he needed his mom. So as much as I would have preferred to leave her be until she felt ready to come back to us, I couldn’t. I had no patience left to wait for her to figure her shit out. Perhaps she felt the need for our reunion the same way I did, because I heard her call out that she was coming. And a moment later she opened the door, but didn’t wave me in. Instead, she hovered in the doorway, looking a little worse for wear.
I didn’t want to go inside, though. One look through the door could show just how unlike herself she truly was, even if Sapphire had said she seemed fine when the pair had met up in the hospital. There were empty bottles overflowing out of the trash can, a couple of no doubt empty pill bottles on the desk in the back. My mom didn’t exactly scream MDMA taker, but she was more than likely on something for anxiety, depression, or whatever the hell else I figured was wrong with her from a single look at her facial expression and the haunted lifelessness to her dark eyes.
