Lessons in Heartbreak: Chapter 4

“Shit,” I muttered, watching helplessly as Ruby pushed through the door of the coffee shop.

“You think she’s coming back, bro?”

Bro? I gave him a dry look.

The new guy’s eyes widened when he took in our matching outfits, eyebrows arching in sudden comprehension. “Ahhh . . .”

“Where’d you travel in from?” I asked, watching through the floor-to-ceiling windows as Ruby walked briskly across the street and disappeared between two buildings. Her shoulders were pulled up tight by her ears, and her short legs moved way more quickly than I thought possible for someone of her height.

“Vegas,” he answered. He blew out a short breath. “It’s not, uh, illegal there. You know . . .”

My mouth flattened. The thought of Ruby Tate paying for a prostitute made my brain melt.

I gave him as friendly a smile as I could manage. “I’d head back to your hotel for the time being. I’m gonna go talk to her.” Slapping a hand on his shoulder, I was mildly gratified to see him flinch. “She’ll get in touch if she needs you.”

“Oh, I think she needed something, considering how much she was paying me to fly over here and show her a few things. None of the really fun things, of course. Can’t engage in those outside of a few very specific places back home. If she wanted to for free, though . . .” His eyebrows bounced. “Wouldn’t have been a hardship. I love it when they’re tiny like that. You know what I mean?”

As I pulled in a slow breath, I imagined the headlines if I broke this guy’s ribs in a quaint little coffee shop in the middle of fucking nowhere, Colorado. My agent would probably drop me. Sponsors sure as hell wouldn’t be happy. My brother would shake his head, feeling perfectly settled on his moral high ground as the Good Brother. In fact, I might get arrested, unless I could get him to swing first.

That should be easy enough, actually. If I had any talent in this life, it was pushing the right buttons to really piss people off.

And it wasn’t like I had to break all his ribs. Maybe like, four. He could live with four broken ribs, right?

“Yeah?” I asked, and the quietly dangerous tone of my voice sharpened his gaze. “Maybe you should forget you came here.” I took a step closer, extremely fucking gratified when he had to tilt his head up. “Forget you met her, in fact. I think you’re better off, bro.”

Instead of backing away, though, he lifted his eyes to mine. “You her keeper?”

I loved guys like this. Who thought they could intimidate me. I straightened to my full height—six five—and met that look of his head-on with one of my own. The kind of look I saved for when I lined up on the field before a snap. When I stared down the offensive line and imagined tearing through every fucking body they had lined up against me. The kind I saved for the quarterback right before I took his ass to the ground.

His throat worked on a nervous swallow.

“I’m an old friend,” I said steadily. “And I promise you, that’s so much fucking worse for you right now.”

He snorted. “Whatever you say, dude.” With a haughty sniff, he brushed his hands down the front of his shirt and angled his head toward the counter. “Nice meeting you,” he said, sarcasm a little too heavy for my taste.

I walked over to the counter, and the woman with the blue hair arched her eyebrow. “Need another muffin?” she asked.

“Do you know where Ruby lives?”

Her eyes flattened immediately. “You’re off your rocker if you think I’m gonna tell you that.”

Blowing out a frustrated breath, I looked in the direction of where she ran. “Fair enough.”

“She works at the library,” Mr. Prostitute answered from behind me.

My jaw tightened as I turned. “What’s that?”

He was studying the baked goods. “The library in town. She had to supply some information to my employer.”

The blue-hair behind the counter muttered something that sounded decidedly unfriendly, but it wasn’t clear enough for me to understand. But she stopped me with a wave of her hand, putting one of the blueberry muffins into a to-go bag. “I don’t think Ruby ate breakfast,” she said. “Bring her this if you find her. Can’t have her going hungry before work.”

Ten seconds later, I was jogging across the street in the direction she’d fled. The narrow alley between the two-story brick buildings was clean, leading straight through to the next block. Through the alley, there was a long stretch of empty land on the other side—a weeping willow tree and tall grasses, bright groupings of wildflowers, and a small creek cutting through the middle of the land as it meandered toward a one-story brick building wrapped with windows.

Everything about this place was quiet and clean and peaceful, except for the way my brain reacted when I caught sight of an ivory blouse and messy golden waves on a wooden bench. She was staring at the weeping willow tree. Next to her was the big dog from outside the bakery.

Her hand rested on the back of his neck, idly scratching his short fur.

When you get older, you stop thinking about your childhood, don’t you? Unless something very specific happens. A song that pulls you back. Or you see something that triggers a memory. I’d gone years without thinking of Ruby Tate. A lot of them too.

I couldn’t even say that we’d known her well, but she was always there.

There wasn’t even a lingering sadness when I’d heard that she and her parents had moved away when we were in high school. Once or twice, I’d glanced up into that oak tree that straddled her yard and mine, at the empty spot where she used to sit.

Approaching quietly, I tried to figure out what the hell my endgame was here.

There was only one place in my entire life where I could read people well, and that was on the field. I didn’t have practice consoling a kid or a spouse or a girlfriend. There was no navigating personal relationships once I got home from work.

Wasn’t that how I’d ended up here? It was all the outside shit that got me twisted up. The constantly seeking something shiny and new and exciting so that the quiet at home didn’t make me feel like I was drowning.

I knew how to play the game. I knew how to prep for those games—in the weight room and on the field and in studying film.

I knew how to be a good teammate. All my friends did the same job as me. Most of them had families to go to when they walked out the facility doors. Some were single like me. Those were the guys I partied with, traveled with.

I knew how to do that too. The moment I was on my own, separate from that big part of my life, there was no one who relied on me. It left me reeling now, as I approached where Ruby sat.

Don’t fuck it up, I thought. That was about the best pep talk I could muster. Just . . . don’t fuck it up.

When I neared the bench, Ruby’s frame went visibly stiff, her hands moving to her lap as her dog popped up on four legs to greet me.

“Careful,” she said airily, in complete contradiction with the tension visible in every inch of her body. “He’s really mean and overprotective. He might bite.”

“No kidding.”

“Yup. One word from me, and you’re toast.”

I whistled low. “Hope you aren’t thinking about saying that word right now.”

Bruiser tilted his head as he stared me down, and for a split second, I wondered if she was being serious. Nah. She wasn’t serious. Even though she didn’t turn her head, Ruby eyed me from her spot on the bench, gnawing on her bottom lip and looking ten times warier than her dog did. There was no tail for him to wag—his was docked—but his entire butt wiggled back and forth when I came a step closer.

I kept my arms loose by my sides, and Bruiser wiggled sideways against my legs, nudging my free hand with his big ol’ head. “Yeah, he looks vicious.”

Ruby didn’t say anything, simply kept her head straight forward, but her eyes kept cutting over to me and her dog.

“Hey, Bruiser,” I murmured. “You’re not gonna eat me, are you?” His response to that was a happy groan as my fingers dug into the spot right behind his ears. Ruby scoffed quietly, and the annoyed sound made me grin. “You love me.”

“How do you know his . . .” She snapped her gaze forward. “Never mind.”

“Bruiser and I met outside the bakery.” I smiled as he licked my fingertips. “He’s definitely happier to see me than you are.”

Her brow furrowed slightly. “Of course he is. He’s a dog, and his critical thinking skills are lacking because you taste like muffins.”

“Nah, I think he’s a great judge of character.”

“You would think that.”

I fished around in the bag and pulled off a piece from the top of the blueberry muffin. “May I?”

Her answer was a tiny roll of her eyes, but her chin dipped a fraction of an inch.

“Bruiser, sit.” His butt kept wiggling. “Sit. Gotta do something good to earn it, buddy. Otherwise, the next thing I know, you’ll be chomping my face off because she said the scary word.”

Ruby pinched the bridge of her nose, sighing heavily.

The massive pink tongue hanging out the side of his mouth made me smile, but his butt went nowhere close to the ground.

“Bruiser, wiggle your butt,” I commanded. That he did epically, so I tossed the chunk of muffin in the air. His mouth opened wide, and the muffin bounced off the side of his snout. Ruby rolled her lips together to hide a smile, and we both watched as he snuffled the piece off the ground.

Since she wasn’t commanding her dog to eat me, and she had yet to tell me to get the fuck away from her, I decided to risk it. There was enough space on the bench that I could sit and my shoulder wouldn’t brush hers, so I set down the bakery bag first, allowing it to serve as a buffer between us. Ruby eyed it as if it were a bomb.

“That’s from, uh, the blue-hair.”

Ruby dropped her chin to her chest briefly. “Blake,” she said. “She owns the shop. She’s always . . . always making sure I eat something when I come in for my morning tea.”

I nodded slowly. “Good to have people like that.”

Instead of answering, Ruby reached into the bag and broke off part of the muffin, chewing quietly while I stared at the small creek. Tall grasses lined its banks; rocks covered in soft green algae popped out of the slowly moving water as it wound its way around a bend and toward the large brick building next to us. In front of the building was a deep-green sign with white letters—the library where she worked, apparently.

Ruby brushed the sugar crystals off her hands, and in my peripheral vision, I saw her lick a few crumbs off her bottom lip.

“How long have you lived here?” I asked.

“I thought about punching you in the bakery,” she said instead of answering.

My head reared back, my mouth fighting a smile. “Yeah? I bet you’ve got a mean right hook, Tate.”

“I wouldn’t know. I’ve never hit anyone in my life.”

I whistled. “You’re missing out. Very few things in life feel as good as whaling on someone who really deserves it.”

“So you’re admitting you deserved it? I’m shocked at the self-awareness.”

Her dry tone had me grinning. “Maybe a little.”

“There would be a certain poetic justice to you being my first. First boy who teased me about how I was always reading.” She turned her knees to the side, facing me with big, earnest eyes. “You made me think you were him.”

“Actually, you assumed,” I told her, wagging a finger in the air. “I never once told you that I was an escort. You have to admit, it’s not something that comes up much in polite conversation. Naturally, I was curious why a pretty thing like you would need to hire someone to . . .”

Even though her cheeks flushed pink again, her eyebrows arched slowly. “To what?”

“Anything.” I held her gaze. “He wasn’t exactly very forthcoming with me after your sudden exit.”

Ruby faced forward again, blinking rapidly, her chest rising and falling on short breaths. There was a slight wrinkle in the high neck of her blouse from where she’d crumpled it in her fist.

“I am not talking about this with you.”

As I watched, her eyes pinched shut, a furrow appearing in between her brows that shouldn’t have been cute but was.

Ruby, in fact, was cute. Very cute.

While she sat there, I studied her slightly off-balance features objectively. Her mouth was a little wide, her eyes a little big. Her nose was cute and small, and her cheekbones were high.

But everything about her worked, somehow—this small, pretty woman who used to hide in trees and watch me and my brother play.

“Okay.” I sat quietly, taking in a deep breath. The air was clean and fresh and sweet, and I wasn’t sure how much of what I was smelling was the trees and the grass, and how much was Ruby.

Glancing briefly in her direction, I noticed her eyes were open again, and she was staring at the creek too. In front of us, some children ran across the open field, pulling off their shoes to wade into the creek. Her face softened as she watched them. They clutched buckets in their hands and immediately started scooping up water.

“How does one go about hiring someone like him? I should’ve gotten his name. You never know when you’ll need an escort.”

Ruby didn’t answer right away; only the slightest bend to her eyebrows even let me know that she’d heard me.

“I literally just said I wasn’t going to talk about this with you.”

“Oh, mine was a rhetorical question.” I waved my hand in front of us. “Just putting it out into the universe in case someone wanted to talk about it.”

“Someone doesn’t,” she snapped.

On the grass in front of us, Bruiser rolled onto his back, wiggling around with a contented groan.

I slowly stretched my arm out along the back of the bench, careful to keep my fingers from touching her shoulders, which she kept locked with tension. “I’m an excellent listener, Ruby.”

“Most professional athletes are. I bet you have that listed right at the top of your personal strengths, don’t you? ‘Listens well to the problems of others’?”

“Ah, so you do know who I am now.”

She motioned to her phone, sitting on the bench next to the bakery bag. “Not really. Thought about googling you but decided that would just make it worse.” She plucked at another piece of muffin and ate it. “Your brother play too?”

“Nope. Not anymore. He got injured a few years ago and retired. He’s a coach now.”

“Seems like he’d be a good coach. He was always so smart.”

Of course she’d say that. Everyone knew Barrett was the Smart One. My jaw tightened briefly, but she didn’t seem to notice.

“People say he’s great, but I think my head would explode if I tried complimenting him.”

Her eyes shifted to the side of my face, but I kept my gaze forward. “Why? I remember the two of you being so close.”

I’d smiled a few times at Ruby Tate, but this one was different. Tight with tension. Filled with uncomfortable subtext. “When we were younger, we were. Not anymore.”

“That’s sad,” she said. “I always wished I had a sibling. Even if it was someone to fight with on occasion. It’s better than feeling alone.”

Oh, and wasn’t that an interesting little clue?

“You feeling lonely, little birdy? That why you’re paying for dates?”

“I wasn’t ‘paying for dates,’” she answered through gritted teeth. “Do you know how embarrassing this is? I haven’t seen you in fifteen years, and you’re here now. Today of all days.”

Instead of answering, I pushed my tongue against the inside of my cheek.

Ruby let out a heavy sigh. “You’re not going to leave me be until I tell you, are you?”

“Unlikely. I’m here on vacation for a couple weeks, and I’m bored out of my absolute mind.”

She blinked over at me. “Vacation? Here?”

I hummed. “My agent has a house just outside of town. He grounded me because I’ve been causing more trouble than he prefers.”

“And you’re bored,” she said cautiously. “How long have you been here?”

“About thirty-six hours.” Ruby blinked again. “Anyway,” I continued, “tell me all your deep, dark secrets, Ruby Tate.”

She rolled her eyes. “They’re not deep, dark secrets, it’s just . . . mildly embarrassing.”

“Who better to tell than someone you haven’t seen in fifteen or so years and will be out of your life in a couple weeks?”

“Won’t you be out of my life after this conversation?”

“Nah. I’ll probably come visit you at the library, because now I know where you’ll be every day.”

She blew out a slow breath. “Great,” she muttered.

I nudged her gently with a press of my hand to her shoulder. “Come on,” I coaxed. “You know you want to unload on someone.”

“I don’t know anything of the sort.”

“Ruby,” I said. My low, pleading tone made her neck turn that same pink shade as her cheeks, and I briefly wondered how far down her chest that color went. “Please?”

“You’re relentless,” she whispered, pinching the bridge of her nose again. I wanted to assure her that it was common for me to have that effect on people. “You’d be the worst person to talk to about this.”

“I’m the perfect person.” I shifted closer on the bench. “Think about it: I don’t know anyone here, I’m so fucking bored I could scream, and this is the most entertaining thing that’s happened to me in a while.”

She cut me a scathing look. “I am not here to be your entertainment, Griffin.”

I held up my hand. “You know what I mean. I’m safe,” I said. “Harmless as a puppy.”

She snorted. “You look it. A six-five, two-hundred-and-fifty-pound puppy.”

“You can’t hold my height against me, it’s hardly fair.”

“You are exactly the kind of man who makes speaking to men impossible.”

“What’s impossible about me? I brought you baked goods. Your dog loves me,” I pointed out.

Said dog chose that moment to flop back over onto his stomach and start licking his privates. Ruby shook her head and sighed. “You don’t know what it’s like for us normal people.”

“You think athletes aren’t normal people?”

“No,” she answered dryly.

I clucked my tongue. “So judgy. Dealing with men is easy, birdy. I promise.”

“You would say that, because you probably have a dozen groupies lined up outside the locker room after a game and you just point to one and they trot right after you.”

“Ouch. I’m a little more discriminating than that.”

“Are you?”

“Yes.” I laid a hand on my chest. “I always talk to them first. Pointing comes later, once I’ve made them do a little song and dance for me.”

The horrified look on Ruby’s face had me bursting out laughing, and she smacked me in the chest. Hard. “Not funny.”

“Sort of funny,” I said, still smiling.

Her eyes darted over to my face, and she shook her head. “I need to go to work.”

“Aww, come on. You can sit with an old friend for a little while longer, can’t you? I’ll join story time at the library or something. I bet even I could understand those picture books.”

“No.” She stood, smoothing her hands down the front of her trim black pants. Her dog bounded to his feet, accepting some head-scratches from his owner.

“He goes to work with you?”

“Most days.”

“The dog is allowed in there but I’m not?”

“The dog isn’t going to pester me all day.” She sighed. “Besides, he’s a certified therapy dog. We use him to help kids who struggle with reading.”

I eyed the animal, with his giant tongue hanging out his mouth. “He can read? What kind of dog is this?”

Ruby’s eyes closed briefly, like she was praying for patience. “The kids like to sit with the dogs. Makes it easier to read out loud.”

“No kidding. No wonder he’s outranked me.” I stretched my arms over my head. “When do you open tomorrow? I’ll come in for some reading material. As long as they don’t have too many big words.”

She sighed. Again. “Goodbye, Griffin. I hope you enjoy the rest of your vacation.”

Ruby executed a sharp pivot, and with her beast of a dog by her side, she marched toward the library, and I watched her until she disappeared.

“Huh.”

That was interesting.

I was very, very interested in what was going on here.

Since I had nowhere to be, I sat on the bench for a while longer, staring at the creek, then stood, whistling as I walked back to my car.