Page 15 of Nash
Chapter 5
Nash
Rubysleepsinthespare room at the clubhouse. I take the chair by the door.
Getting her there took longer than it should have.
"I'm not leaving my apartment because some asshole rearranged my desk drawers." She stood in her hallway with her hand on her hip, bag at her feet, chin up. "This is my home. I'm staying."
"You're not staying here tonight."
"Watch me."
"Ruby."
"You can't just say my name in that voice and expect me to do what you want."
"Get your bag."
"No."
I stepped closer. Close enough that she had to tip her chin up to hold eye contact. Close enough that her breath caught and her hand slid off her hip.
"Get your bag," I said. Quieter. "Or I carry you out of here."
Her eyes widened. Her lips parted. She held for three seconds, jaw tight, chin up, daring me.
My pulse kicked. The defiance on her face hit somewhere low in my gut and stayed there. Her mouth, red and open, formed words she hadn't said yet. My hand flexed at my side. I wished to pick her up, put her over my shoulder, and feel her fight the whole way down the stairs.
"You wouldn't."
I reached past her and picked up the bag.
She grabbed her jacket off the hook and walked out the door ahead of me. "For the record," she said over her shoulder, "I'm choosing to leave. This is not compliance. This is strategic relocation." She hadn't changed. Sleep shorts under the jacket, bare legs, wet hair dripping down her back. I kept my eyes on the hallway.
"Whatever you need to call it."
"I need to call it what it is, which is me making an independent decision that happens to align with your caveman bullshit."
"Get on the bike, Ruby."
She got on the bike.
She didn't talk on the ride over. Her arms around my waist, her forehead between my shoulder blades, and the silence where her voice should be sat heavier than anything she's ever said out loud.
Candace met her at the door. Pulled her inside. I heard them through the wall for an hour, Ruby's voice running bright andfast, Candace's quiet underneath. Then the talking stopped, and the spare room went dark.
I don't sleep. Every time I close my eyes I see the sketchbook open on her bed, the drawing she made of me, and the fact that someone else found it first.
The drill bites wood at six a.m. I'm on my knees in Ruby's doorway across town, setting the new deadbolt into the frame I reinforced with steel after I pulled the damaged strike plate. The original lock gave on a single strike. Whoever came through this door knew exactly how much force the frame could take and used exactly that much.
I test the bolt. Retract it. Test it again. A third time.
They went through her drawers. Her shelves. Her closet. Moved things, touched things, opened things that belonged to her. Took nothing. The laptop is on the desk. The cash is in the jar. Everything in this apartment is exactly where she left it except the sketchbook they pulled from the bottom of a stack and opened on her bed to a drawing of me.
My molars grind until my jaw aches.
By seven, I've secured every window with secondary latches and mounted a motion-sensor camera above the door. I lock up with the new deadbolt and ride to the clubhouse.
